The Problem with Anti-Whiteness

All the usual idiots are coming up with comical indictments of "whiteness." There are several charts about "whiteness" in Edward Ring's American Greatness piece on "The Origin and True Agenda of Anti-Racist Politics." I wrote about it last week. They really are sophomoric.

The problem with "whiteness" as the foundation of all evil in the world is, of course, that those bloody whites are the ones that invented the modern world -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. And everybody else is playing catch-up.

So why did Western Europeans pwn the world from about 1500 to 2000? How did they do it? What was the secret to their success, their Baldrick's Cunning Plan?

It wasn't just one thing; it was everything. Europeans had developed ships that could sail around the world. They had developed financial systems to finance long trading voyages. They had guns. And they had young men that were prepared to go to the ends of the Earth to earn a living.

Now I've been doing a bit of reading about pre-1500 Europe. If you read "The Saxon Chronicles" of Bernard Cornwell you read about a world where the bloody Danes had developed amazing longships which were dandy for raids on the bloody Saxons in England. But the Danes couldn't really think beyond capturing slaves and looting silver and seizing good arable land.

Or there is Britain's Edward II that I am reading about through a biography of his Queen Isabella. You see the beginnings of reliance on Italian bankers. But otherwise kingly life was about juggling earldoms and valuable agricultural estates, and tuning up for the Wars of the Roses in the next century.

But read what this Chinese guy, a "Dr. Wu," said about Europeans at the beginning of David Aikman's Jesus in Beijing published in 2003. Dr. Wu and others had been tasked with accounting "for the success, in fact, the preeminence of the West all over the world."

We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism, and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this.

Somebody tell President Xi about this.

The error that our lefty friends make about "whiteness" is that they cannot think outside of a political context. They seem to imagine a white conspiracy to conquer the world, and to dominate and subjugate all non-whites.

Not at all. For instance, the conquest of the world began with a bit of a cock-up on the exploration front. Christopher Columbus was not trying to discover America in 1492; not at all. He was trying to find a sea route to India. For trading purposes. Guess why they called the native Americans "Indians?"

When the Portuguese started trading with India around the Cape of Good Hope it was to avoid having to pay the high prices for spices from the Arabs. And it is pretty amazing that you could make money on months-long voyages from Europe to India. The Portuguese weren't trying to conquer India. They wanted to trade with India.

But here's the thing. What do you need to organize a round-the-cape trading system with India? You need ships that can do the trip. You need guns to keep the pirates down to a dull roar. And you need capital, to fund the months-long trip. If you ask me, it ain't as easy as gussying up some Critical Race Theory training course in "white fragility" and forcing all the white kiddies to show up, or else.

One fine day the current religious, cultural, political and economic society variously created by peoples out of Western Europe will be superseded by something else. Not a doubt about it. But the superseders will not be CRT academics or activists. I promise you that, on a stack of Das Kapitals.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of mysteries to ponder over.

Why did the Brits and others create the anti-slavery movement in the 18th century? What did they mean by that?

And why did the US write the Civil Rights Acts to give full civil rights to a small minority population of ex-slaves from Africa? What did they mean by that?

See, it's easy to understand our liberal friends today who want to change the world for climate change and beat up racist whites because systemic racism. That's easy. Every ruling class needs to be heroically battling against some existential peril, or against some frightful and hateful enemy, otherwise who needs the bloody ruling class?

But why bother about slavery? Why bother about civil rights? That is the mystery.