{"id":169,"date":"2011-08-01T17:43:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T21:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=169"},"modified":"2011-08-01T17:43:11","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T21:43:11","slug":"american-exceptionalism-setting-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/08\/american-exceptionalism-setting-the-record-straight.html","title":{"rendered":"American Exceptionalism: Setting the Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dean Malik has been busy fending off critics of his \u201cIdentity Politics: the denial of American Exceptionalism,\u201d which American Thinker <\/em>published a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I am among those critics. I will focus on what Malik had to say about my remarks in his,\u201cAn American First, Always, and Last: a Response to Critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

My rebuttal is divided into three sections.\u00a0 In the first I respond to the specific charges that Malik made against my arguments.\u00a0 In the second, I correct his mischaracterization of Burke.\u00a0 In the third, I draw the reader\u2019s attention to three of our nation\u2019s Founders\u2014George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin\u2014in order to show that when it comes to the issues of race, ethnicity, and religion, they shared the sensibilities of their <\/em>contemporaries, not <\/em>the politically correct sympathies of ours. <\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

I select these three Founders for two reasons.\u00a0 First, time and space constraints prevent me from extending the list indefinitely\u2014as I effortlessly could have done.\u00a0 Second, given Malik\u2019s enthusiasm over what he calls \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d (AE, from now on), who better to refute his view than \u201cthe Father of our country\u201d (Washington), the author of the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson)\u2014that document upon which all champions of AE root their doctrine\u2014and he who remains famous for his liberality, philanthropy, and opposition to slavery, Franklin.<\/p>\n

Bogus Criticisms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Malik begins his response to me by claiming that my argument rapidly \u201cdevolves into a somewhat obtuse discussion of the origins of classical liberalism (today known as conservatism) in the philosophy of Edmund Burke, peppered with a few ad hominem attacks, strained analogies, oddly out-of-place references, and a few factual errors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let us begin with the last charge first.<\/p>\n

There is one<\/em> \u201cfactual error\u201d to which I admit: I wrongly identified Charles Murray, author of the controversial, The Bell Curve, <\/em>as Jewish.\u00a0 Murray, several readers were quick to inform me, is Scots-Irish.\u00a0 This error on my part is easy to explain.\u00a0 You see, Murray co-authored <\/em>this study of IQ with Richard Herrnstein.\u00a0 I had simply (but, admittedly, sloppily) thought of the latter while I mentioned the former.\u00a0 Yet not only was this mistake honest enough, it is also negligible, both in itself and<\/em> relative to the blunders that pervade Malik\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Other than this, there isn\u2019t a single other \u201cfactual error\u201d for which I am responsible.\u00a0 At the very least, there are none that Malik identified.\u00a0 And his failure to substantiate this <\/em>charge is just as complete as his failure to substantiate every other charge that he levels against me.<\/p>\n

Next, let us turn to Malik\u2019s accusation that my essay was \u201cpeppered with\u201d ad hominem assaults.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is indeed strange that someone as determined as Malik is to cast aspersions against Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow, men who, to his own admission, possess both \u201cerudition and civility,\u201d and Steve Sailer, who he concedes has both a stellar \u201cwit\u201d and a \u201cgood nature\u201d to match, should be so ready to accuse me of resorting to ad hominem attacks against him.\u00a0 There is nothing in my reply to his original article that so much as remotely approximates the potentially devastating conviction of \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d that he unreservedly renders against, not just these writers, but, in his latest article, me. <\/em><\/p>\n

In my last article I said of Malik that inasmuch as his account of America\u2019s origins appears to be rooted in the same rationalistic abstractions to which Burke\u2019s enemies\u2014the Jacobins\u2014subscribed, and inasmuch as this species of rationalism sets itself over and above the wisdom of the ages\u2014\u201cprejudice,\u201d \u201cprescription,\u201d and \u201cprejudice\u201d\u2014it is hubris run wild.\u00a0 Thus, in endorsing it, Malik succumbs to hubris.\u00a0 I also called Malik out on his uncharitable treatment of Jared Taylor and Samuel Francis.\u00a0 Malik referred to them as \u201cwhite nationalists\u201d and, worse, \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d (again, while refraining from the labor of defining such emotionally-charged terms) even though his targets have explicitly rejected both labels while articulating reasons for doing so<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But these are hardly ad hominem insults.\u00a0 In any event, unlike \u201cwhite supremacy,\u201d they are utterly devoid of the demagogic efficacy that Malik exploits when he attempts to stack the deck against his opponents from the outset by reducing them to a bunch of disreputable and dreaded \u201cwhite supremacists.\u201d\u00a0 This is a truly disgusting tactic, the weapon of choice of intellectual bullies.\u00a0 We needn\u2019t dwell on it, though, for there are still so many weaknesses to expose in Malik\u2019s argument but so little time to do it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Third on the list of spurious charges to combat are \u201cthe out-of-place references\u201d that I reportedly made.\u00a0 I admit, I don\u2019t really know what Malik is talking about here.\u00a0 I suspect <\/em>that he may be speaking to my appeals to the black thinkers Thomas Sowell and Carol Swain.\u00a0 However, contrary to his characterization of this move in my argument, by invoking Sowell and Swain I was not attempting to \u201cconstruct a fig leaf to cover\u201d my \u201cnaked white nationalist apologetics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem with Malik\u2019s take is that I have no such apologetics, a fact that my discussion of \u201cwhite nationalism\u201d should have definitively established for Malik and everyone else (in fact, I doubt very much that AT would have published any of my work had its editor suspected that I was associated with anything as nefarious as Malik evidently thinks something called \u201cwhite nationalism\u201d is).\u00a0 Moreover, I mentioned the race of Sowell and Swain only to show that the empirical facts concerning race, IQ, and minority identity politics that engages the attention of the Jared Taylors (and Peter Brimelows and Steve Sailers) of the world are equally acknowledged by non-whites like Sowell and Swain.\u00a0 Thus, if there is something disreputable aboutTaylorand his ilk for relying upon it, there must be something equally disreputable about Sowell\u2019s and Swain\u2019s doing the same.\u00a0 To put it another way, ifTayloris a \u201cwhite nationalist\u201d or \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d because of the considerations that he accepts as facts, then insofar as Sowell and Swain accept these very same facts, they too must be \u201cwhite nationalists\u201d and\/or \u201cwhite supremacists.\u201d\u00a0 Does the reader see how very ridiculous this is becoming?<\/p>\n

Fourth, in my interrogation of Malik\u2019s uncritical presupposition thatAmericais \u201cexceptional\u201d by reason of its allegedly unique \u201cpromise of escape from tribal loyalties and hatreds\u201d I engaged in some analogical reasoning.\u00a0 If partiality toward the fellow members of one\u2019s race and\/or ethnicity is \u201ctribal\u201d and, thus, impermissible, then why isn\u2019t partiality toward one\u2019s family, spouse, friends, and nation not similarly \u201ctribal\u201d and, then, impermissible?\u00a0 Malik dismisses these analogies as \u201cstrained.\u201d\u00a0 In reality, though, it is evidently his ability to follow an analogy that is strained, for consider his response to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cKerwick then attempts to justify tribal politics by making an analogy that leads me to believe that he actually thinks that all white Americans may be related to each other in some form of a geometrically expanded polygamous marriage, which frankly leaves me at a loss for words.\u201d<\/p>\n

That an applicant<\/em> to law school should fail as profoundly as Malik has in following a few simple analogies is bad enough; that a practicing lawyer should do so is scandalous.\u00a0 Hopefully, Malik really does <\/em>grasp the crux of my point here but pretends not to in order to kill two birds with one stone: he spares himself the hard work of lifting from his shoulders the burden of actually arguing for what he assumes while making me look silly in the process.\u00a0 But whether his impervious to elementary logic is born through advertence or inadvertence, he invites a most unflattering reading of himself.<\/p>\n

Most people would have recognized that the purpose of my analogies was to put into question the unabashed and purportedly \u201cself-evident\u201d moral universalism that Malik supposes is the <\/em>moral point of view.\u00a0 For quite some time, ethicists or moral philosophers have noted and explored the tensions between, on the one hand, the idea that morality demands an impartial and universal perspective and, on the other, the fact <\/em>that the stuff of which the moral life consists, that which invests our lives with meaning and makes us who we are, is the particularity<\/em> of the relationships within which we find ourselves and the partiality <\/em>that we experience\u2014and believe we ought <\/em>to experience\u2014toward those with whom we have those relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, it is not Thomas Paine\u2019s and the French Revolutionaries\u2019 \u201cthe Rights of Man\u201d that motivate most of us to aspire toward virtue.\u00a0 It is, rather, our friends, spouses, parents, children, churches, and local communities\u2014\u201cthe little platoons,\u201d as Burke referred to these institutions that stand in between the government and the naked individual\u2014that hold this distinction.<\/p>\n

Burke<\/strong><\/p>\n

My \u201csomewhat obtuse discussion of the origins of classical liberalism (today known as conservatism) in the philosophy of Edmund Burke\u201d occupies exactly two paragraphs out of a total of 23.\u00a0 Furthermore, while Burke was indeed both a liberal and a conservative in the classical senses of these terms\u2014he was a conservative-liberal, if you will\u2014my point in supplying all two references to him was not <\/em>to supply an account of the origins of either philosophy; it was simply and solely to illustrate that this widely recognized \u201cpatron saint\u201d of conservatism and ally of the American colonists <\/em>resolutely eschewed the very same abstract metaphysical fictions upon which Malik presumably relies in order to vindicate his conception of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately, I have no option but to presume <\/em>that Malik endorses this dubious vision of morality because he still refuses to define the doctrine for which he insists on being a polemicist.<\/p>\n

Malik thinks that my \u201cheavy reliance\u201d on Burke (again, I make but two <\/em>references to him) places me on \u201cshaky ground.\u201d\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Malik explains: \u201cBurke defended the concept of prejudice as a valuable social commodity and as a ready tool for decision-making, obviating the need for introspection and judgment.\u201d As if this weren\u2019t terrible enough, \u201cBurke was also skeptical, if not overtly disdainful of Democracy, and argued that governing power should be vested within society\u2019s hereditary elite, rather than within regularly elected officials from the common population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

First of all, Burke never contrasted \u201cprejudice\u201d with reason, as Malik suggests.\u00a0 Rather, he contrasts the tradition-centered conception of reason that he favors with the robust, trans-historical, trans-cultural conception of \u201comnicompetent\u201d Reason championed by the likes of Robespierre, Thomas Paine, and those of his opponents who typified the excesses of Enlightenment rationalism.\u00a0 Burke\u2019s more humble account of reason has elicited the endorsement of many an illustrious figure, including, in our own day, Thomas Sowell, F.A. Hayek, and the philosopher Michael Oakeshott.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Secondly, while Burke was <\/em>\u201cskeptical, if not overtly disdainful of Democracy,\u201d our Founding Fathers were no less distrustful and contemptuous toward it<\/em>.\u00a0 As Malik should well know, they were of a single mind on this issue: it was a Republic <\/em>that they were determined to bequeath to their posterity, emphatically not <\/em>a democracy.\u00a0 And as for \u201cthe common population\u201d that composed the electorate of the newly createdUnited States, the authors of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d made sure that it consisted exclusively of citizens who were: white; men; and property-holders.<\/p>\n

Malik couldn\u2019t be wider of the mark insofar as his reading of Burke is concerned.\u00a0 He writes that \u201cBurke is known chiefly for opposing the concept of natural law [.]\u201d\u00a0 But Burke no more opposed natural law than he opposed reason.\u00a0 Not only is neither of these concepts self-interpreting, both admit of a staggering multiplicity of definitions.\u00a0 Burke opposed the Enlightenment rationalist\u2019s doctrine of Natural Rights.\u00a0 <\/em>Insofar as this doctrine relies upon a version<\/em> of natural law, it goes without saying that he rejected this <\/em>version of it.\u00a0 He did not reject natural law as such.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, while Washington, \u201cthe Father of America,\u201d and Jefferson, the father of the Declaration of Independence\u2014the document that, embodying, as it does, \u201cthe purest expression of natural law ever formulated in a political document,\u201d in Malik\u2019s words, is the basis for belief in \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d\u2014continued to accumulate more black slaves, Burke, the enemy of both \u201cthe Rights of Man\u201d and <\/em>the institution of slavery was busy designing a plan for the gradual abolition of the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This observation is not intended to criticize the Founders.\u00a0 It is intended to put the lie to Malik\u2019s suggestion that it wasn\u2019t until the establishment of Americathat \u201ctribal loyalties and hatreds\u201d dissipated.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founders<\/strong><\/p>\n

Malik\u2019s \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d centers around, not the Declaration of Independence as such, but the first line of this document.\u00a0 This is important to note, for as we read just a bit beyond this line that has become ensconced in the American consciousness, we can\u2019t help to notice that the grievances listed therein forces the abstract universalism of its most famous assertion to give way to a historically and culturally concrete morality. The Declaration, that is, reveals an internecine conflict between the English in Englandand the English in America.\u00a0 Yet considering that it wasn\u2019t their \u201chuman rights<\/em>\u201d for the sake of which it was written but, rather, their \u201crights as Englishmen<\/em>,\u201d this is what we should expect.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, it is worth considering what Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration and, according to Malik, a co-author of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism,\u201d really thought about, say, the relationship between blacks and whites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jefferson believed that blacks were by nature <\/em>intellectually inferior to whites and couldn\u2019t have been clearer as to his estimation of the prospects of their inhabiting the same country as equal citizens.\u00a0 \u201cNothing is more certain,\u201d he declared, than \u201cthat the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.\u00a0 Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was Jefferson a \u201ctribalist,\u201d we must ask Malik?\u00a0 That Jefferson, not unlike virtually every one of his contemporaries, was more partial to his state <\/em>(in his case,Virginia) than to the country as a whole may constitute further evidence, in Malik\u2019s estimation, that he was.<\/p>\n

Neither was Jefferson particularly fond of Indians (\u201cNative Americans\u201d), to whom he referred as \u201csavages\u201d within just that document that Malik thinks supplies us with \u201cthe purest expression of natural law\u201d to which the world has ever born witness. \u00a0<\/p>\n

What about the Father of our country, George Washington?\u00a0 Surely,Washingtonheld that the members of all races, ethnicities, and religions could co-exist inAmerica, correct?\u00a0 Well, during the Revolutionary War,Washingtonissued an order imposing a ban on recruiting blacks into the Continental Army.\u00a0 He states: \u201cThe rights of mankind and the freedom ofAmericawill have numbers sufficient to support them without resorting to such wretched assistance\u201d\u2014i.e. black recruits.\u00a0 At the same time, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation inviting blacks to the British side.<\/p>\n

It is also worth noting that by the time of his death,Washingtonowned about 312 black slaves.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Franklin, though eventually a sworn opponent of slavery, nevertheless owned slaves himself, and his newspaper regularly ran ads for slaves that were on the market.\u00a0 Moreover,Franklinwas anything but timid when expressing his partiality for anAmericathe vast majority of the population of which wasn\u2019t just European, but specifically English or \u201cAnglo.\u201d\u00a0 Of the German immigrants flocking into his home colony,Franklinwrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy shouldPennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Germans, \u201cnot being used toLiberty\u2026know not how to make a modest use of it [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Franklin lamented that the \u201cthe Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small.\u201d\u00a0 Africa is \u201cblack or tawny,\u201d and \u201cAsia\u201d is \u201cchiefly tawny.\u201d\u00a0 The peoples of Europe\u2014\u201cthe Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, <\/em>and Swedes,<\/em>\u201d as well as \u201cthe Germans <\/em>also,\u201d are of \u201ca swarthy Complexion.\u201d\u00a0 In his estimation, it is only \u201cthe Saxons,\u201d <\/em>along with \u201cthe English,<\/em>\u201d that \u201cmake the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.\u201d\u00a0 Of these \u201cWhite People,\u201dFranklin asserts, \u201cI could wish their number increased.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reader should be mindful that it is in no way my objective here to further the leftist\u2019s cartoonish caricature of the Founders as a bunch of villainous \u201cracists.\u201d\u00a0 It is my objective, rather, to undermine the cartoonish caricature of the Founders that fuels the imagination of a certain segment of the right.\u00a0 This caricature is a one-dimensional portrait according to which the Founders were gods\u2014or, what amounts to the same thing, as far as this sort of rightist is concerned, 21st<\/sup> century-like democrats whose thought, owing nothing to contingencies of culture or time, was oblivious to racial, ethnic, and religious differences.\u00a0 Upon a single abstract principle of which no one until that juncture had the slightest inkling, these bulwarks of universal Reason itself, so this story runs, erected a new Heaven on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas Sowell once quipped that ideology is just fairy tales for adults.\u00a0 If so, we know what Malik\u2019s favorite fairy tale is.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Malik has been busy fending off critics of his \u201cIdentity Politics: the denial of American Exceptionalism,\u201d which American Thinker published a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I am among those critics. 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