Because I am reading a book of essays about "primitive peoples," On Primitive Peoples: and other forbidden topics, by anthropologist C.R. Hallpike, I am experiencing the critical border between the world of pre-literate peoples and post-literate peoples.
And one of the critical differences is the emergence of law, meaning the disposition of interpersonal conflicts by means of courts and judges, rather than what I believe is called the lex talionis, or an eye for an eye, or, more prosaically, Vengeance. Hatfields and McCoys, and all that.
Now, I was also reading extracts from Frederic Bastiat the other day. And he was expatiating on the whole point of law: that it resolves disputes without the use of force. For, he repeats again and again, when you are talking about force you are talking about plunder. Says Walter E. Williams:
So when our Democratic friends running for President talk about "reparations" they are talking about plundering their fellow Americans in pursuit of vengeance for African Americans.
I am not going to go into the question of whether blacks are owed something, or whether it is impossible to determine who owes what to whom a century and a half after the freeing of the slaves, or even whether, since slavery was ubiquitous two hundred years ago it makes sense to draw a bright line between the villains and the victims today. No. I prefer simple-minded stuff.
So that is why I say: Reparations is neo-vengeance.
The point about the lex talionis is that there is no end to it. There is no end to the fight between the Hatfields and the McCoys until all the men on one side are dead. Right now I am reading the second novel in the By the Hands of Men series by Roy M. Griffis. He's writing about the Russian WWI nurse returning to Russia during the Red-White civil war. When a town is captured by the Reds the Cheka, the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, moves in next day and starts shooting all the bourgeoisie: you can tell who they are by their clothing and their soft hands. Teach 'em a lesson.
See why I say that the Left is a Great Reaction? What a grand idea, to wipe away the accretion of centuries of written law -- going back to Hammurabi or earlier -- and replace it with the good old ways of murder, rape and plunder. And Vengeance, because it is time someone taught those guys a lesson.
As I say, it is really not surprising that, in the aftermath of the most astonishing cultural revolution in human history and prehistory that a movement of rejection should appear: a Great Reaction.
For when I say that socialism is neo-slavery, that the welfare state is neo-feudalism, that identity politics is neo-tribalism, that activism is neo-knight-erranty, and now that reparations is neo-vengeance, it all connects. If you are trying to gussie up a political movement the obvious thing to do it to appeal to some instinct deep in what we now call the unconscious.
Slavery, you ask? Well, back in the day, 1,000 years ago, serfs could go to their lord, place their hands within his, and become slaves. Hey, what's not to like? You get three squares a day, or at least the promise thereof. And slaves, they tell me, do very little work.
Feudalism, you inquire? Well, it is clear that most of us are more comfortable working for wages for an established business than founding or going to work for a tech startup. What is a corporate employee but a gussied-up serf?
Tribalism, you ask? What else explains the multitudinous tribes in the leftist Coalition of the Fringes? Yes, you can organize humans into tribes every which way from Sunday, on any basis of affinity. Used to be that this affinity would be blood relationship, but even then it was possible to get adopted into a tribe as an honorary member. The point of the tribe, of course, is to have an implacable enemy. Thus all the neo-tribes of the left have frightful enemies that are about to commit hate crimes without number. Christian bakers, for example: better keep a sharp eye on those guys. But everyone has an enemy. The workers have the bosses. The feminists have the patriarchs. The blacks have the KKK. Of course, back in the day, we Americans had the Commies.
Knight-errantry? What else do you call the ruling-class-approved culture of activism, traveling the world on your faithful nag Rocinante in the search of the next helpless victim?
So what, you ask, is the point of all this?
Imagine you are talking to you liberal friend about the new crop of democratic socialist politicians. Suppose you say, well, this is all very well, but let's face it: socialism is nothing but neo-slavery.
You lefty friend will not really know how to respond to this. After all, nobody talks like this on MSNBC; nobody writes like this at The New Yorker.
Good point. So, you should get out more, lefty. You might learn something.
Then you add, just for an encore, that of course the whole leftist project is a return to the primitive culture of vengeance.
And one of the critical differences is the emergence of law, meaning the disposition of interpersonal conflicts by means of courts and judges, rather than what I believe is called the lex talionis, or an eye for an eye, or, more prosaically, Vengeance. Hatfields and McCoys, and all that.
Now, I was also reading extracts from Frederic Bastiat the other day. And he was expatiating on the whole point of law: that it resolves disputes without the use of force. For, he repeats again and again, when you are talking about force you are talking about plunder. Says Walter E. Williams:
Bastiat observed that "when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."Only, when you do that you do not have a legal system any more. You just have loot and plunder.
So when our Democratic friends running for President talk about "reparations" they are talking about plundering their fellow Americans in pursuit of vengeance for African Americans.
I am not going to go into the question of whether blacks are owed something, or whether it is impossible to determine who owes what to whom a century and a half after the freeing of the slaves, or even whether, since slavery was ubiquitous two hundred years ago it makes sense to draw a bright line between the villains and the victims today. No. I prefer simple-minded stuff.
So that is why I say: Reparations is neo-vengeance.
The point about the lex talionis is that there is no end to it. There is no end to the fight between the Hatfields and the McCoys until all the men on one side are dead. Right now I am reading the second novel in the By the Hands of Men series by Roy M. Griffis. He's writing about the Russian WWI nurse returning to Russia during the Red-White civil war. When a town is captured by the Reds the Cheka, the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, moves in next day and starts shooting all the bourgeoisie: you can tell who they are by their clothing and their soft hands. Teach 'em a lesson.
See why I say that the Left is a Great Reaction? What a grand idea, to wipe away the accretion of centuries of written law -- going back to Hammurabi or earlier -- and replace it with the good old ways of murder, rape and plunder. And Vengeance, because it is time someone taught those guys a lesson.
As I say, it is really not surprising that, in the aftermath of the most astonishing cultural revolution in human history and prehistory that a movement of rejection should appear: a Great Reaction.
For when I say that socialism is neo-slavery, that the welfare state is neo-feudalism, that identity politics is neo-tribalism, that activism is neo-knight-erranty, and now that reparations is neo-vengeance, it all connects. If you are trying to gussie up a political movement the obvious thing to do it to appeal to some instinct deep in what we now call the unconscious.
Slavery, you ask? Well, back in the day, 1,000 years ago, serfs could go to their lord, place their hands within his, and become slaves. Hey, what's not to like? You get three squares a day, or at least the promise thereof. And slaves, they tell me, do very little work.
Feudalism, you inquire? Well, it is clear that most of us are more comfortable working for wages for an established business than founding or going to work for a tech startup. What is a corporate employee but a gussied-up serf?
Tribalism, you ask? What else explains the multitudinous tribes in the leftist Coalition of the Fringes? Yes, you can organize humans into tribes every which way from Sunday, on any basis of affinity. Used to be that this affinity would be blood relationship, but even then it was possible to get adopted into a tribe as an honorary member. The point of the tribe, of course, is to have an implacable enemy. Thus all the neo-tribes of the left have frightful enemies that are about to commit hate crimes without number. Christian bakers, for example: better keep a sharp eye on those guys. But everyone has an enemy. The workers have the bosses. The feminists have the patriarchs. The blacks have the KKK. Of course, back in the day, we Americans had the Commies.
Knight-errantry? What else do you call the ruling-class-approved culture of activism, traveling the world on your faithful nag Rocinante in the search of the next helpless victim?
So what, you ask, is the point of all this?
Imagine you are talking to you liberal friend about the new crop of democratic socialist politicians. Suppose you say, well, this is all very well, but let's face it: socialism is nothing but neo-slavery.
You lefty friend will not really know how to respond to this. After all, nobody talks like this on MSNBC; nobody writes like this at The New Yorker.
Good point. So, you should get out more, lefty. You might learn something.
Then you add, just for an encore, that of course the whole leftist project is a return to the primitive culture of vengeance.
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