When I explain the Josephson Institute’s Six Pillars of Character, I often emphasize a single ethical value under each of the “pillars” as the heart of that category. For the pillar labeled “Trustworthiness,” It’s an easy choice. The core value is integrity. Unless an organization, institution or human being possesses and displays integrity, they should not and cannot be trusted.
When the Nobel Peace Prize committee, already wounded by its ridiculous award of the honor to Palestinian terrorist Yassir Arafat in 1994, gave another to U.S. President Barack Obama, who had been in office less than ten months, it settled any question about its integrity: it had none. The excuse—it certainly wasn’t an explanation–was that he had made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”. This was fantasy, and even Obama, who should have rejected the award, said that the award was a “call to action.” The Nobel Peace Prize is not a political advocacy organization, or wasn’t. This was an unmistakable political endorsement, based on the race of the recipient. It was a rejection of its mission, and institutional integrity. No one should care who the Peace Prize goes to now. It’s a fake honorIt cannot be trusted.
Today, the committee of the Pulitzer Prize , which was established to encourage and recognize excellence in journalism, decided to toss its own integrity away in order to signal its virtue to the ideological clones of its members. Again, the catalyst was race. In the category of commentary, the prize of $15,000 was awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times “for a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.”
There is a problem with this description however. The enslavement of Africans is not at the center of America’s story, and virtually no reputable historians agree that it is. The assertions made by Hannah-Jones were not merely passionate, they were substantially false. Five of the most distinguished American historians protested to the Times, saying in the course of a tough and critical letter,
On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. Some of the other material in the project is distorted, including the claim that “for the most part,” black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “alone.”
After it was made public, Leslie Harris, a Northwestern University historian who helped fact-check the 1619 Project, revealed that when she raised some of the same points as the five historians to Nikole Hannah-Jones, she was ignored. Hannah-Jones, however, is not a historian; she’s a reporter with an agenda: slavery reparations.
As Ethics Alarms reported here, the Times nudged her to make a correction, while the paper itself issued weak apology. The passage in the introduction to the 1619 Project that had read…
Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.
… was changed to,
Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.
Ethics Alarms 
It appears America being bad to its founding is required to perpetuate, politicize and subsequently attack anyone who supports our founders and founding documents in the modern world as the worst kind of people. Worse, it is being used to justify undoing us entirely.
I’m sure many here have disregarded my rants about the intentional undermining of the Constitution and with it the one obstacle to eventual authoritarian rule and totalitarian government. The 1619 Project is an overt and cynical attempt to pry free as many of the ignorant and self-perceived reasonable among as possible while solidifying disdain for the founding and Constitution.
America was not perfectly founded nor have its ideals been perfectly executed, but it has been and continues to be the human race’s best attempt yet at anthropocentric government by the governed and for the governed. And this is what cannot be allowed to stand in the way of those who claim to know better and be better than we are; people like the Pulitzer and Nobel committees.
The warning is clear, do not stand in the way of their distortions and outright lies. They will demonize and destroy lives using those who believe them; being sure to reward the apparatchiks favoring their struggle toward their horribly misguided future.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Our educational systems seem to have been redesigned to give as little or as little factually about our country’s history as possible, painting even our greatest achievements in the worst possible light. One wonders what is taught about American history in predominately black schools.
The undermining of the foundation is essential to bringing down the entire castle. While historically-literate Americans are too busy taking potshots at various random attacks that come our way, the enemy is blasting away at the foundation. Take down Jackson and you eventually take down Jefferson which leads to eventually taking down Washington. If the Declaration of Independence is irrelevant because of its author’s connection to slavery, then the Constitution will not be far behind.
We’re already seeing contempt for Constitutional rights in the course of this pandemic escalate as those who legally petition their government are either shamed as being selfish or labeled as extremists. It’s not like respect for the Bill of Rights was all that high before this started.
There is no question that these are attempts to reframe our history in such a way as to make the Revolution, the Founding Fathers and any founding documents illegitimate and, thus, fit for the garbage heap.
It appears America being bad to its founding is required to perpetuate, politicize and subsequently attack anyone who supports our founders and founding documents in the modern world as the worst kind of people. Worse, it is being used to justify undoing us entirely.
It seems that every day that goes by I believe — I think in any case — that I am gaining more clarity about *what is going on*. It is really an issue for me to oppose you-plural so often. The cost to me is your open contempt, and then your insult (these are ‘inevitablities’) but the advantages are — again, I hope — better understanding and greater clarity. We always suppose that greater clarity and understanding are an advantage. At times I am not sure. Because I notice that with you, with Jack, with Steve (or the Steves) and others here you deliberately choose not to see *reality* but — and I admit this is odd and contradictory — your own projection of reality. A phantasy really and one based in an illusion: a self-deception.
You seem to nearly completely misunderstand and misinterpret what people who create these historical narratives [like 1619] are up to. You mistakingly believe that they desire to undermine the entire system, but this is false. You quite simply fail to grasp, because you are locked within your own limited perspective, that those who create and present the 1619-type narratives are activists who seek to undermine *you*. Not *them* but you. They are actively dispossessing you and to do so they have to disinvalidate your honored symbols. But don’t take that they must do that personally. Take what they desire to do to you personally. They want you out of the picture.
I have found — am finding since my research is on-going — that I have gained an important perspective by studying Brazil and Brazil’s race-composition and race-identification struggles. Now, America is becoming Brazil-like (as we on the Dissident Right say and with alarm and concern). But it is a long way from full realization simply because the demographics are not proportional. Yet to understand what is now happening in America one needs a model to compare it to, and one more *advanced* in those trends one just begins to notice here.
Black Brazilian’s are forced to confront the *white structures* and the reality that they were wrenched out of Africa and ‘forced to serve in the empire of the white man’s will’. And yet it is white Brazilians who run the show, designed the show, own the show. The notion that Brazil is a ‘racial democracy’, when examined by activists, is quickly proven false. All the structures that define ‘racism’ still exist and the ideas and attitudes that support it are still there, even especially among Blacks themselves. That is (in essence) the idealization of the white physique, the white *eidos*. Note that this is so much more than just admiration of or desire to look like Whites. The notion of eidos indicates a whole range of *forms* and *types* which comprise the very structures — even of civilization itself — that we live in.
So, this turns back on my idea that when a people is brought involuntarily into a radically different social context (Africans brought to Brazil to slave on plantations), and then when molded by that place, by those conditions, and by the *white man’s will* (to state it directly), when they finally realize just what had been done to them and what their *experience* is, they are forced into postures of resistance & rebellion. A way for you visualize this is to imagine if you as a classic Yankee had suffered anything even marginally similar. When you came into your awareness and realization your will would become so focused on reclaiming your own self, your own self-definition, that you would stop at NOTHING to assert your will. (I admit I am kind of thinking of Mel Gibson in The Patriot!) You would slit throats’ you’d topple ALL THE MONUMENTS; you’d burn the administrative buildings to the ground. And what is most important is you would place on the highest rung of value your rebellion and your process of self-recovery.
And here of course I’d mention the fact that as an American you do not allow that reclamation of self to other people: you deny it and your thwart it. Of course you do not know this! But those who have suffered at your hand no it very well indeed. So, you live within elaborate and labyrinthine systems-of-lies.
The *Civil Rights Movement* in the United States has been made to seem as a movement for the establishment of *justice*. To some degree that is true, obviously. But there is another aspect to it. The more real aspect I venture to say. It is to engineer your displacement and dispossession. Note that this is what is happening in fact! So, what it *really is* is different from what it is *said to be*. As this process goes forward any and all conceptual and rhetorical tools will be used to affect your displacement. The frighteningly weird aspect here is that you really seem to believe that it was to be about *justice* or somehow in sharing all things. It is like you cry and whimper that it is not turning out like it was supposed to! And you say “it is being used to justify undoing us entirely”. No Jim. It is being used to undo you. Now get down in your grave and shut your mouth!
Returning to Brazil as a comparative model. The primitive reasserts itself there. The ultra-pagan. When you rip people out of their context, there context still remains but they are disassociated from it. To recover ‘self’ they have to discover all that they disassociated from. This is entirely evident when you examine the cultural and religious forms in Brazil. And rediscovery of that essence or perhaps ‘structure’ from which they were wrenched involves rediscovery, and reestablishment, of a way of being that is totally different from that of the dominant society. That is ‘white culture’. It is less something thought through and more something acted out. Similarly, if you look at, say, black colleges and indeed those areas where ‘black culture’ has maintained itself (though under far more oppressive conditions than in Brazil, for example Louisiana) you will notice similar recovery of ‘pagan forms’. Take for example the black Brazilian ‘Gods’: Oxala, Yemeja, Oxun. These become foci around which a contrary social and cultural will accrete. And they are radically different from the Christian God. They have to gain power and then ‘displace’ other gods by dominating psychic space.
This has to do with a sort of *power* that exists quite outside those conceptual and intellectual orders that we tend to over-emphasize. The *will* that you notice surfacing now is a will that you-plural have no way to understand because you yourselves live within a conceptual order and you believe it is the central order, or even perhaps the only order. You show your selves nearly completely incapable of grasping what is going on because you impose your own categories on it.
That is (if I may be so bold to say) your central problem. Now, your problem is indeed a problem for you, that is true, but it is really more of a moral and an ethical problem for those you are responsible for. You failing is to *misperceive reality* and to interpret it radically wrongly. This attitude has led to your disempowerment. You are weak and frail. You cannot defend *yourself and yours*. Because you cannot define your self. To the degree that you are weak and frail, is the precise degree that *these others* steam-roll over you. You squeak and you complain, every once in a while you meekly threaten (as Steve Witherspoon meekly threatens) but you show your self unable to coalesce anything resembling a ‘fighting spirit’. [But the odd aspect here is that you can and you will unleash your brutality in other areas — more on that in future essays I am planning!]
America was not perfectly founded nor have its ideals been perfectly executed, but it has been and continues to be the human race’s best attempt yet at anthropocentric government by the governed and for the governed. And this is what cannot be allowed to stand in the way of those who claim to know better and be better than we are; people like the Pulitzer and Nobel committees.
Blah blah blah blah and more blah. This is an example of holding to a false-idealism, or a mis-placed idealism, when the events of the present demand an entirely different attitude. Think of it as if your Nation had been invaded by hordes of people who do not share your values nor your capacities to accomplish. They have their own however, and you and your *fathers* have allowed them to come among you as civil equals. They play by a very different set of rules!
Well, all that in pandering long-winded “I know better than you fools” Alizia speak and after just one cup of coffee!
I enjoy your writing, but this one could have used some proof reading. Disinvalidate is not a word. Invalidate or the unlikely..disvalidate , but even that is being rejected by my spell checker as I type.
I get your response generally, as a primary take away….and it is difficult for me to accept, that in these days, for some, there is an increased contempt for any symbol of Caucasian accomplishments, no matter how many or how great.
. . . there is an increased contempt for any symbol of Caucasian accomplishments, no matter how many or how great.
It must be stated that though there is indeed an offensive attack by *others* on so-called whiteness, the real problem is within Whites. And that is where the counter-movement must begin. It is internal.
How self-hatred and self-contempt came about — a more difficult question. The Great War began a significant unraveling. WW2 has led, through its essential attack on the Right and Traditionalism (all grouped together now under the terms neofascism and proto-fascism, and this includes conservative religious tendencies and ideology) to an Americanopolis: a collusion between business, government, and media in a genuinely perverse creation which I term Hyper-Liberalism. Those in it can hardly *see* it. They regard it as *normal* and *good*.
The entire idea of renewal, recovery, renovation have shocking implications because the work is so large, so demanding. The forces that will attack and try to destroy ‘genuine conservatism’ are violent, empowered and bare-toothed.
Thanks for your comment. ‘Invalidate’ is fine as it is, you are right. Unsure where I got ‘disinvalidate’. A tendency to complexify no doubt! (but that is not a word either, oh dear).
Blockquote>”Today, the committee of the Pulitzer Prize , which was established to encourage and recognize excellence in journalism, decided to toss its own integrity away in order to signal its virtue to the ideological clones of its members.”
These kinds of virtue signaling things seem to be happening at an accelerated rate and by more and more prominent long standing institutions, companies, and individuals.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, progressives and social justice warriors have already won the battle of the minds; either a vast majority of the population is willfully consumed by the social justice movement or they’re in literal fear of it and intentionally make decisions to keep the social justice warriors at bay; therefore, our society is screwed. Progressives’ social justice intimidation tactics have won the day. Be completely honest with yourself, how far do you think these totalitarian social justice warriors will push their social justice agenda and power to gain complete control of our society?
Future social justice reeducation chambers…
You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.
The choice is yours, be a Progressive social justice drone or think independently.
You really have to get out of this futility mindset, Steve. I get that you’re pessimistic, but Americans don’t fold under pressure like that, fights can be won, even against overwhelming odds, and your adversaries aren’t as smart or as powerful as they think they are. If things are really futile, than I’m wasting my time. When I decide that, I’ll devote all of my efforts to survival, or theater, or commerce, not ethics. I chose this field, and not because it would make me rich, famous, or powerful.
Jack wrote, “You really have to get out of this futility mindset, Steve.”
Yup, I get it but I actually do have hope in mankind, unfortunately right now it’s dwindling hope but hope still exists.
Jack wrote, “I get that you’re pessimistic, but Americans don’t fold under pressure like that”
I agree to a point, the big “however” is that I see that far too many Americans are actually folding under the pressure. The more prominent long standing institutions, companies, and individuals start to fold under the pressure the more rapidly this will spread. This social justice movement is a societal cancer and it’s clear to me that it’s spreading.
Jack wrote, “fights can be won, even against overwhelming odds, and your adversaries aren’t as smart or as powerful as they think they are.”
This too I agree with but it’s looking like the eventual fight is being pushed further and further down the road as more of the population either succumb to the nonsense or are blindly apathetic.
Jack wrote, “If things are really futile, then I’m wasting my time.”
My “you will be assimilated, resistance is futile” statement is really not meant as a throwing up of the arms and giving up it’s intentional fear mongering propaganda meant as a kind of a call to arms. When sanity get’s backed into a real corner by these irrational social justice warriors the viscous teeth of the rational will surely come to bare. The question is when?
It’s harsh but I truly do mean it when I say that people need to make a choice to either be a “progressive social justice drone or think independently”.
When sanity get’s backed into a real corner by these irrational social justice warriors the viscous teeth of the rational will surely come to bare. The question is when?
Tuesday July 7th 2020. The date has been set!
Avante a toda máquina!
Jack wrote, “You really have to get out of this futility mindset, Steve.”
Yup, I get it but I actually do have hope in mankind, unfortunately right now it’s dwindling hope but hope still exists.
No no no no. You have to start from a more humble realization that you are part-and-parcel of that which renders progress futile. The key word here is *progress*. It is utterly futile to believe one is involved in progress of some sort unless that notion of progress is defined through a solid set of principles. We need to begin to state, openly and honestly, that we have stepped so far away from a defined set of (what necessarily must be) conservative principles — solid and unchanging principles that would necessarily be the bedrock of life-lived — that no matter what we do we are serving futility, not progress. Both of you, and many who write here, deceive your selves in the erroneous belief that you serve conservative principles. You do not, you absolutely do not. You are entirely involved in the same ‘progressive’ trends which arise when people have stepped away from the solid definition of rigorous principles to which I refer.
Steve plays a sort of game — with himself principally but with those he communicates with (to the degree that vain barking can be called ‘communication’). A dog barks at *contingent* images that pass in front of him but without any level of understanding. The average American, today, is so fully ensconced in such uncomprehending contingency that — I think this is a truth — they cannot be relied on at any level to provide direction for moving out of a descending cycle. So, the dog just barks ad nauseam. You eventually get so sick of it that you sort of want to beat it.
Hope in mankind? Is this some sort of joke?!? You would have to become, yourself, that sort of human, the sort of man, that you falsely imagine that you are! You would have to embody, fundamentally, the rigorous principles upon which *true conservatism* is based. You would have to understand, define and speak about those very principles. But you never do. Because you are not that man. Humility requires humility.
It is true — still it is true — that America leads in the world. But it does not lead because it is grounded in principles. The Nation has, substantially, veered away from genuine principles. I am speaking of those levels that pertain to the inner being, the inner man & woman. You do not get to be, nor to be seen as, noble pure and good without actually being so, not a sort of sold-out whore. Do you understand why I say this? You as people, in a general sense, in a wide sense, have deviated from these principles into perversion. As a people. What defines you is your perversion. What you bring to the world are examples of perversion. The *products you sell* are perverse. Your influence has become perverse. This is what you have become. Why? Because of the destruction of a solid base within conservative principles. You do not even know what they are!
You wonder: Why such adamancy? It is because I RECOIL AGAINST THE HYPOCRISY that I receive from those who falsely present themselves. You are not a *hope for humanity* but rather you show what happens to people when they fall. Your nation is fallen. This is not personal. This is not *ad hominem*. I have been asked to engage with ETHICS and to understand and define ethical principles. And ethics (and morality) only exist in an individual who is grounded in them. All that I am saying here connects to my sense that here I am dealing (largely) with false-conservatism. You are not part of a solution but are rather part of the problem.
Should I apologize for expressing myself so directly?
Alizia wrote, “Should I apologize for expressing myself so directly?”
Certainly not!
Clearly creative writing is a passion of yours. Reading the multitude of tangents that you concoct from thin air and then extrapolate to absurdity are, at some level, entertaining but certainly not worth feeding.
Well, at least we’ve got that settled!
If things are really futile, than I’m wasting my time.
The so-called ‘tragic viewpoint’ offers some compensation when all good efforts are destined to fail.
It is still noble to fight on as if victory could be achieved.
That said, I have lately been re-visualizing Steve’s Idiot Hippy Girl poster.
She now looks like a cross between Hope Mirrlees and Lana Loktev and has a resolved, not a bovine gaze on her face.
This is an insidious poisoning the well and a serious dilution of the honor that used to be inherent to the award.
You can’t count on individuals who don’t deserve the awards to refuse them. The only remedy is for the distinguished individuals who have previously been awarded to reject their association among the new awardees by returning their awards en masse.
It’s too bad those awarded who have now passed can’t spin fast enough to fling the award from around their necks.
While the SJW and oh-so-clever are indulging in mutual … back-patting over this “achievement”, this is what a real achievement looks like.
A senior Administration official addressing a vital issue…in flawless Mandarin…no punches pulled…in a rhetorical style that relies on examples and images that will resonate with and are perfectly attuned to the intended audience (AMHIK) – the people of China:
Watch and be amazed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNMmRwOrOKg
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you send a message and is an ethical statement for all time. And no pallets of cash were involved.
“We will illuminate dark places and, with a deep sense of responsibility, interpret these troubled times.” — Joseph Pulitzer III (1913-1993)
The Pulitzer Center has a range of educational material designed for use in the classroom. I just spent a while examining the material presented. I am not in the slightest bit shocked nor *offended*.
All historical work is, always, interpretive. The histories of the Civil War, for example, have shifted & morphed as the times have changed. A given ‘historical school’ has the function of translating past events — interpreting past events — to those alive in the present. Obviously, an interpretation has two functions (to put it in simplified & polarized terms): one function is to reveal truth, but the other function is to conceal truth. One aspect is to open a window to *clear seeing* while the other is to control or modify, or perhaps ‘direct’ is the better word, one’s understanding so as to serve particular functions in the present. The interpretation of America, like America itself, is a fraught and contested affair.
In historiography new historical interpretations are brought out in regular cycles. In a ‘market economy’ such as ours, and perhaps especially now more than in the past, people will in a sense *demand* that new interpretive histories be brought out. New products have to be produced. So in this sense historical interpretation has a novelistic dimension. The recent ‘noverlization’ (in films mostly) of American historical events are false in many ways, and yet they have a function and channel intentionality.
It should be clear from these brief allusions that we are in a time — a troubled time to quote Pulitzer himself — that requires different interpretations. I place emphasis on *requirement* and also on *function*. So, the 1619 Project is, literally, a historical revisionism project which is required in this present, and it serves various functions for the New American Demographic as they come on the scene to replace (or perhaps supersede) the Old American Demographic.
You plural are that Old American Demographic.
For this reason I have referred to the notion of ‘the dispossession of the majority’ by an activist minority. These processes did not start yesterday and they have been in motion for many years now. But somewhat recently, at least for *your class* (older white men of some social standing and members of the American managerial class), your displacement and dispossession has suddenly become apparent to you. The implications are in a process of becoming clear. And yet, and yet, you often seem frozen, like a startled deer in the headlights. You rail, you complain, you shout, you whimper: yet you do nothing. That is to say that you do not *get to the core of the matter*. As I have said dozens & dozens of times (in pandering long-winded “I know better than you fools” Alizia speak as was recently stated by an admired commentator) you examine surface and have no interest in gaining an understanding of the *inner dimensions* of these impending realities.
So, the New Interpretation of American history is in developing momentum. It is being presented and taught to youths who will absorb it through interpretive processes that turn against your preferred interpretive assertions, and in just a few short years your *complaints* will fade away as you pass away into civic irrelevance. Not only is there a New Demographic clamouring for new and better functioning interpretations (interpretations that serve their purposes in life) but the larger structures — government, business, industry, and academia — are better served through these new interpretations. And this is, I suppose I could say, why a ‘totalitarian’ system is now asserting itself (though ‘totalitarian’ is not the right word for reasons I could explain). The statement *America sold itself out* is a bold one, and a complex one, and yet to understand what that means and how it came about is a crucial endeavor here. Though on the whole *you-plural* have no interest and seem to dedicate no energy to concretizing the interpretation (or counter-interpretation) that must come out of understanding. Who will do that work? Though I could make suggestions suffice to say “Certainly not you”. You don’t really interpret. You come right up to the edge and then . . . you lose your nerve.
Ah well, there you have it. A critical posture to your-plural apathetic stance is what is needed. Focusing on *them* is not needed. I agree that complaining can be an emotive and perhaps slightly cathartic activity so I cannot say *you-plural* are completely apathetic. But you do not have a sufficient interpretive structure to oppose the one being brought out against you. That’s what I think in any case.
This is nicely rebutted by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s best quote,
“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
That is particularly true of historians and journalists.
Pulitzer would be projectile vomiting at this selection.
―
Except that those who propel culture & historical interpretation are now contesting one group of facts by emphasizing others. It is classic revisionism.
Two cultural camps are locked in battle with different intentions & purposes.
And they are poised to *win* or prevail.