Wednesday, May 16, 2018

"The Liberal Delusion Of #Resistance Genealogy"

Um...well...this is delusional, alright...but not for the reason the author thinks.  It's delusional because it's a big, fat tu quoque. Finding out that my great-great-aunt was a notorious horse thief gives me no reason whatsoever to believe that horse-thieving is a noble profession.
   Oh, and: being against illegal immigration isn't racist...but there's really not much sense in paying any attention to progressive accusations of racism anymore. They're just the background music of contemporary political conversation. If you're white, you're racist. If you disagree with progressivism, you're racist. If you are white and disagree with contemporary progressivism, you're, like DOUBLE RACIST or something.
   But anyway: "resistance genealogy" isn't ineffective because its targets are racist; it's ineffective because its arguments are fallacious. The author quotes Peter Brimelow refuting her central point--and the central point of "resistance" genealogy...but she's so blinded by the left's obsession with racism that she can't seem to appreciate the point:
What about the idea that Americans who benefited from immigration in the past should not “pull up the ladder” after themselves—that they should, knowing their family’s history of struggle and success, give others the chance their ancestors were accorded? Liberals, animated by a sense of fairness, can’t believe that somebody descended from Italian peasants can live with the idea of excluding Syrian refugees today. But what looks like the most galling hypocrisy to liberals seems, to immigration hawks, like self-protective common sense. In one passage, Brimelow mocked the core of the very argument animating #ResistanceGenealogy: “How can X be against immigration when the nativists wanted to keep his own great-grandfather out?” This concept is illogical, Brimelow writes: “This, of course, is like arguing that a passenger already on board the lifeboat should refrain from pointing out that taking on more will cause it to capsize.”
Brimelow's absolutely right. Onion & co. are absolutely wrong. The point isn't in any way difficult to understand...if you're not blinded by ideology...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home