Louisiana Lawmaker Forced to Clarify There Was No ‘Good’ in Slavery

[Master Debator]

Jared Taylor -- and the school of thought that he is part of -- does not reduce his views absolutely to the race-question. His concerns, and the concerns of his school-of-thought -- involve many other pertinent factors. I am only saying this to clarify what I think is a general misunderstanding.

I don't know... he doesn't seem to be buying it. Maybe try another white? I think this one might be broken.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

that uses the slogan France for the French

has been my sense of the need among Caucasian Europeans for a renewed and empowered sense of identity.

Renew and empower away. I don't care as long as you don't advocate for controlling the movement of people.

I am not at all sure I regard the freedom you try to define as such as really being *freedom*.

I regard freedom maximizing positive and negative freedoms up until the point that it reducing others freedoms. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "your freedom ends where my begins."

 

[Alizia Tyler]

 

[Alizia Tyler]

This just in: I’ve just been offered $20,000.00 to put the above presentation to music!

 

[Master Debator]

This just in: I’ve just been offered $20,000.00 to put the above presentation to music!

Is it being financed by a Nigerian prince who just needs you to Western Union him $5,000 to work out some production issues because he left his wallet in an Uber in Dubai? It sounds like a golden opportunity. You should take it.

 

[vanceen]

This just in: I’ve just been offered $20,000.00 to put the above presentation to music!

I'm hearing a kind of Gilbert & Sullivan treatment.

 

[vanceen]

Bill Maher Fix

 

[Alizia Tyler]

I don't want to be rude, but Taylor's presentation was, in my view, at about the level of flat-earth and faked moon landing arguments.

At the least I am one person that cannot become offended. And I hope that the same is so for you.

I just want to point out that what you are saying is that those who think differently than what you have determined to be right-think and right-action, have been compared to the most ignorant among the most ignorant. So, broken down to the most direct you are saying that if someone does not believe what you believe, they are not just ignorant or silly but total idiots!

True, you say *at about the level* which is not to say *at the exact same level*, but within discourse it amounts to basically the same.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

As I've said before, I'm a big fan of European Enlightenment values and classical liberalism. Recent movements that place huge importance on ethnic identity, such as critical race theory, are the enemies of classical liberalism. This kind of thinking sweeps away the idea that treating people equally is a good idea because it's the right thing to do, and replaces it with a zero-sum power struggle.

It seems more true to say that the zero-sum power struggle is what is manifesting on the horizons of our present. I think that we would need to consider this from a world-level perspective. The nature of the game that is being played, and it seems to have come only that much more into focus, is a zero-sum game.

I think I might agree with you (if indeed you said such a thing) that the race-struggle, the identity politics struggle, is taking shape within a larger game, and that CRT is an aspect of Marxist praxis.

Classical Liberalism is now, more than anything else, a reference-point to something that existed at one time. But it does not exist anymore and not within our own system which, at least it seems so to me, has morphed into something radically different.

Can we say, in truth, that we live in either a republic of a democracy? The answer seems to be no. We live in a system in which the zero-sum game is being played out before our eyes and in which we can become simply more conscious of it.

 

[vanceen]

.... So, broken down to the most direct you are saying that if someone does not believe what you believe, they are not just ignorant or silly but total idiots!

...

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I've got profound respect for many people who disagree with me. I enjoy listening to people with different viewpoints, and I recognize powerful arguments against my positions and enjoy the challenge of them. Taylor's presentation was not in that category, in my evaluation. I don't believe that I failed to understand his positions, as you suggested earlier, and you can either take my word for it or not that my mind was not closed to his position from the outset. I simply found his arguments unpersuasive, for the reasons I've given.

Perhaps he has better arguments than the ones he presented. I can only go by what I heard. If he does have better arguments, though, he ought to have used them.

 

[vanceen]

It seems more true to say that the zero-sum power struggle is what is manifesting on the horizons of our present. I think that we would need to consider this from a world-level perspective. The nature of the game that is being played, and it seems to have come only that much more into focus, is a zero-sum game.

I think I might agree with you (if indeed you said such a thing) that the race-struggle, the identity politics struggle, is taking shape within a larger game, and that CRT is an aspect of Marxist praxis.

I agree with all that. It is more precise to say that what appears to be shaping up is on the horizons at the present.

Classical Liberalism is now, more than anything else, a reference-point to something that existed at one time. But it does not exist anymore and not within our own system which, at least it seems so to me, has morphed into something radically different.

Can we say, in truth, that we live in either a republic of a democracy? The answer seems to be no. We live in a system in which the zero-sum game is being played out before our eyes and in which we can become simply more conscious of it.

If you mean that people usually mean something different from classical liberalism when they identify themselves as liberals, I agree completely. The word has been ruined. For a while I thought the term "libertarian" would more accurately convey what I mean by classical liberalism, but that word has been ruined too, both by anarcho-capitalist libertarians and those who think that all libertarians are anarcho-capitalists.

I think we still live in a republic and a representative democracy. However, for any kind of democracy to survive, there needs to be a prevailing assumption that there is a significant common ground for all citizens, and that government can act in ways that benefit (practically) everybody. There has to be a general confidence that a pluralistic society will benefit people in general, as opposed to benefitting this group or that one. This is of course inconceivable in a zero-sum power game. The game is what's left when most people stop believing in anything like the common good.

 

[Master Debator]

Taylor's presentation was not in that category, in my evaluation. I don't believe that I failed to understand his positions, as you suggested earlier, and you can either take my word for it or not that my mind was not closed to his position from the outset. I simply found his arguments unpersuasive, for the reasons I've given.

Really? You didn't find his picture presentation as convincing as @Alizia Tyler did? Weird...

 

[Ouroboros]

Good thing I apply my values consistently I guess then?

Can’t speak to that.

 

[Ouroboros]

But what if CRT and also what Fight the Power is up to, essentially, is just about exactly what FTP says that he is about?

The difficulty here is that it is not at all easy to define, concretely, just what FTP is really advocating.

On the one hand his platform is anti-racialist. That no one should see nor pay any attention to race-differences. He also says that he believes that whiteness as a category, as a race-category, means nothing and should mean nothing. So, no white person (I try to define this better as Caucasian-European) should have or hold to that identity as something necessary to protect.

FTP’s object is to be part of a demographic wave that succeeds, over time, in modifying the previous *white culture* of America into one that is essentially non-white. Because it follows that if no white person ‘valued’ their ‘whiteness’ enough to choose to protect it by marrying and raising children exclusively with another white person, that eventually all the races will blend together.

Strangely, it is an ideological position that pretends to establish itself outside of ideology and yet, when examined closely, is pretty ideology-laden. (There are many other aspects of FTPs belief that attend his views on social and political issues, and while not irrelevant are not immediately related to demographics).

The difficulty in opposing it is that to do so requires establishing some level of identity within the category of *whiteness*. Meaning, the stand and the declaration “I am white” and “I seek to define this and to defend it as such” (though of course this would take shape within a whole arena of other, less controversial, concerns).

Is CRT therefore, in its way, a branch or an arm of ‘demographic assault’? It definitely involves an awareness of new and rising political power through overwhelming numbers (I mean *overwhelming* neutrally and I could also simply say rising or increasing).

I am not at all sure that he or *they* should abandon critical race theorizing. That is to say if it is seen as what, in fact, it really does seem to be: a tool used in the demographic transformation of the nation.

I have the impression — correct me please if I am wrong in this — that both you and Vanceen choose not to see things in these demographic terms.

The position that “my ideology is really just proper thinking” was articulated by Marxists like Barthes and Zisek. Barthes in particular attributed the position to the bourgeoisie, but Zisek appropriated the attitude for his side, using “ideology” to apply only to whatever his opponents believed.

The closest I’ve come to commenting on the supposed “Demographic Wave” is that it overestimates the solidarity of all persons who identify as “not white.” Some brown people may not share the cultural imperatives of other brown people, much less favoring the imperatives of Black people. None of us are going to live to see all Americans blend into a mocha sameness, and even if that happens, so what? Deprived of phenotypic differences, who would believe that humans will not still find other alliances over which to wrangle? It would have to be someone who knows nothing of the histories of whites fighting whites, blacks fighting blacks and so on.

 

[Ouroboros]

Renew and empower away. I don't care as long as you don't advocate for controlling the movement of people.

I regard freedom maximizing positive and negative freedoms up until the point that it reducing others freedoms. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "your freedom ends where my begins."

What do you deem examples of “positive and negative freedoms?” Would a person affiliated to any given group consider any of his purported freedoms to be “negative?” And if you’re speaking only from your own perspective, what criteria can you feasibly use to suss out the difference between positive and negative?

 

[Ouroboros]

Really? You didn't find his picture presentation as convincing as @Alizia Tyler did? Weird...

You know, when you present an incomplete theory of any social phenomena, such as the evolution of the theory of Individual Rights, you really haven’t presented anything but a sketch— which is in essence a “picture presentation.”

 

[Ouroboros]

I should also note that even this American Mocha-ization ever takes place, the descendants of current race hustlers will still be around. So they’ll need victims to excoriate. Maybe they’ll institute a new version of the New Orleans “paper bag test.” “If you are lighter than this bag, you are still the incarnation of White Privilege.”

 

[Nomad4Ever]

What do you deem examples of “positive and negative freedoms?” Would a person affiliated to any given group consider any of his purported freedoms to be “negative?” And if you’re speaking only from your own perspective, what criteria can you feasibly use to suss out the difference between positive and negative?

Well, I don't have to suss out the difference because they are well defined terms. Positive freedoms is the ability to actually go and do something. To act on a desire. Negative freedom is the absence of forces restricting your free. These are often contrasted as free TO (to do an act) and freedom FROM (the absence of forces restricting your freedom). For example, if wake up naked in the middle of a desert, you have complete negative freedom. Nobody is restricting what you can do. However, what are you free to actually do, but wander the desert until you die? That's the difference.

To use a more real world example, if there are no laws "restricting the freedom" of murders to go act out their plans, then you are less free because you are not free FROM roaming street gangs.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

He pointed out a lot of small difference that people from different regions have between them, some of which are broadly conflated with the traditional notion of race, and used those small differences to argue that "race" is therefore a meaningful way to categorize humans. As I've pointed out before, these difference Taylor points out are due to very small genetic changes. Skin color is down to one or two genes. A characteristic as complex as intelligence involves a multitude of genes. It does not follow that differences in susceptibilty to certain diseases or oral fauna/flora implies a plausible possibility of genetic racial differences in intelligence. IQ test comparisons between different groups do indeed show average differences, but when controlled for socio-economic status and culture, those difference disappear.

but I'm able to differentiate between arguments that are following rules of evidence, logic, and statistics and those that aren't. I don't want to be rude, but Taylor's presentation was, in my view, at about the level of flat-earth and faked moon landing arguments.

The question asked and debated was: Is Race An Important Reality or A Fiction?

If one sticks closely to that question and does not venture too much, or at all, into subjective sociological issues which are laden with ideological assertions, I think the fair answer is simply that yes, race exists. And if that is so then far more than half of the question has been answered affirmatively. Race does exist; race is real; and race-differences do matter.

Therefore I am inclined to read your assessment — and to note the way you expressed it which is not irrelevant — as unfairly biased against the factual points that Taylor offered to support his assertion. I will note the various points that Taylor did bring up. And remember that the only issue that is to be proved here is if it can be fairly said that *races* exist. All the other dimensions of the sociological aspects of the question are off the board.

1) By presenting a single image the appeal is to common sense. Common observation. What we all see and notice with our eyes. Note that this image (Pygmies in comparison to a European man) was offered solely to point out that visual observation is important and relevant. It is a starting-point And not a final determinant.

2) Human groups show characteristics of difference, and race is generally defined by describing the outward manifestation of those characteristics.

3) While it is true that race differences appear to exist — they appear to us as real and considerable — Taylor emphasises that this should not lead to exaggerations. So a note of caution is introduced.

4) He then uses another common-sense/visual argument as a buttress to his initial assertions: When Japanese first confronted white men they were shocked and amazed by the visual differences.

5) At this point Taylor begins to answer the initial question, the sole question, “Is Race An Important Reality Or a Fiction” by turning to the world of science. His first reference is to “Principle Component Analysis”. He presents graphs where the genetic markers of each race is presented as noticeably distinct. That is, distinct enough that races, often by geographic location, are distinguised enough to be presented on such a graph.

6) Therefore he moves to present an argument that the races are distinguishable at a genetic level.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

[cont. from previous]

7) He then refers to the entire area of genetic analysis and how such analysis, without any question or doubt, can distinguish not only what race one is but what blending of the different races one is composed of. People refer to such analysis (23/Me for example) as trustworthy and informative. That is to say that *science supports racial differences at a genetic level*. Thus it is strongly suggested that race is not a fiction, but is a real thing. If it were not a fiction genetic analysis would not prove anything.

8) He then points out that genetic composition — the determination of what race one is — is vital to medical practice. One reference is to cystic fibrosis more common to Whites (Europeans) and the other is to prostrate cancer more common to Blacks. He notices that were a doctor not to pay attention to the race of the patient being examined that that doctor would be remiss in his or her duties to the patient. That is to say the doctor cannot disregard (or be ‘color blind’) to the race of the patient.

9) He then presents a NYTs article that emphasizes How genetics is changing our understanding of race. Wait — race does not exist, so the common idea runs, and if it does not exist (is a fiction) then how can it be changing our understanding of it?

10) He then delves into the notion of *subspecies* by referring to zoological examples. Not an ultimate proof (since science already recognizes race-difference and race-category) but one that appeals to common sense.

11) His final example involves forensic anthropology. If race and race-difference is a *fiction* then a forensic anthropologist examining human remains would not be able to distinguish any differences at all. Yet they can and they do and for this reason it is used as evidence. Fictions cannot be turned into evidence.

12) Artificial intelligence when programmed to read X-rays (according to Taylor, I have no knowledge of this) is able to distinguish race-difference even when it was not programmed to do so. If so, what does this say about race-differences as a *fiction*?

13) Science itself turns against our own ideological biases and preconceptions in ways that are disturbing to people who examine the *evidence*. This is presented as a fact. That is, people are dismayed when scientific, genetic and biological evidence (facts) contradicts ideological or ‘social science’ assumptions and beliefs. He makes a reference to a work that appeared in Germany (Die Dekonstruction Der Rasse) that upset many people with these ideologically-biased assertions which assert that ‘race is a fiction’. The *facts* point strongly in a different direction.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

I'm not a biologist, but I'm a physical scientist (chemist). I'm not competent to speak as a specialist in genetics, but I'm able to differentiate between arguments that are following rules of evidence, logic, and statistics and those that aren't. I don't want to be rude, but Taylor's presentation was, in my view, at about the level of flat-earth and faked moon landing arguments.

This is why I focused on your assertion that to consider the range of facts and observations that Taylor did present, describing those as comparable to people who seriously believe the Earth is a flat disk and that the moon landing was a staged event in a film studio, are comparable. (You actually do mean idiots and non-intelligent or deluded people.)

So you said that you do not wish to offend me because 1) I might believe Jared Taylor, or 2) that I might actually consider, independently of Taylor that there is a factual basis of recognizing race differences — and that therefore I too :: sob! :: am similarly an idiot (Please don’t tell my parents who still have great faith in me!)

How would I be offended otherwise?

I broke down Taylor’s arguments to the salient elements and wrote them out in a reduced form. To the best of my capability to determine ‘truth’ and distinguish it from ‘fiction’, I would have to conclude that a) his arguments were fair, b) factual, c) scientific (as opposed to determined by whimsy, projection, fantasy, willful assertion, and of course to fantasy) and d) therefore reasonable.

Race is real, not a fiction. Race could be further clarified however. And it may be less determinative than some assume, but that is really another issue and question.

I do not think therefore that Taylor could be compared to someone doubting the roundness of the planet. The moon-landing is really in a different category. When I have some time I will write him and ask him his thoughts!

Yet what I take away from your counter-argument against Taylor is that you did not substantially engage with it. You did engage with the surface of it though. It seems to me that ideological factors entered in. Essentially, you say that Taylor is mentally deficient because he thinks and believes as he does.

 

[Master Debator]

I know you don't understand @Alizia Tyler and I love that you don't, but Taylor's argument was just biologically and scientifically wrong. It would be like a flat earther holding up a picture of the earth and saying look this picture is flat so the earth must be flat and you're nodding your head along like it's a brilliant point. It's ****ing hilarious. I'm enjoying all of this.

What Vanceen is trying to explain to you politely is that Taylor's notion of race is stupid. If you want to separate humans by genetic differences then you'd need millions of different classifications of races, not just black and white for the simple fact that there are as many if not more genetic variations between groups of white people, who visually look quite similar than between blacks and Whites themselves.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

I know you don't understand @Alizia Tyler and I love that you don't, but Taylor's argument was just biologically and scientifically wrong. It would be like a flat earther holding up a picture of the earth and saying look this picture is flat so the earth must be flat and you're nodding your head along like it's a brilliant point. It's ****ing hilarious. I'm enjoying all of this.

I am quite sure that Vanceen has the capability of sniffing out your essentially bad-faith and underhanded methods of creating division.

You have no means to know if he understand me, or does not understand me. He definitely does not regard the arguments in favor of the existence of race as being sound, that much we do know! And we also do know that his orientation is both derived from Enlightenment values and Liberal social and political philosophy.

What more could you possibly conclude?

Essentially you do not understand me! You have very little idea what I am on about because, and this is important, you live and think out of a reaction-position.

You look at me and what you see is clouded by a range of categories and sentiments that exist in your own mind and emotional body.

It is also a lie on your part to say you *love* anyone at all. What you try to do is poison conversations through various forms of manipulation.

What if he or anyone who had, at one time, one idea, became convinced of another idea? Would your *love* still hold? (Obviously not!)

I personally think that I understand why you do this and even grasp the internal reasons. So I have what is called *empathy*. I can project myself into your feelings.

You have not engaged at any level at all with Taylor or Taylor’s arguments. Twenty minutes of a talk is not sufficient to fully comprehend not only the so-called *scientific basis of race-difference*, but a glossary review of the social, cultural and indeed civilizational elements requires months and more realistically years of study and thought.

You have done none of this and I do not think you ever will.

And finally when you say *I am enjoying all of this* you hint at both bad-faith and also lack of seriousness.

What Vanceen is trying to explain to you politely is that Taylor's notion of race is stupid. If you want to separate humans by genetic differences then you'd need millions of different classifications of races, not just black and white for the simple fact that there are as many if not more genetic variations between groups of white people, who visually look quite similar than between blacks and Whites themselves.

But this is not the question. The question was whether race exists or is a *fIction*. That is the first order of intellectual business, making that determination.

The second order of business would, fairly, involve questions about Taylor’s motives and analysis of how, and why, his own social or other biases enter into the question for him personally, and as one with a good deal of influence within a dissident community.

Taylor presented understandings that derive from and have been established by science, biology and medicine itself. So, Taylor is in fact detached from all of those assertions, hypotheses and, potentially, conclusions. So those assertions of his, in his presentation, would need to be examined carefully and judiciously.

I seriously do not think that you are the one to undertake such an effort!

What has been settled here? That is the only question as it pertains to the debate and its core question. What seems to have been settled is exactly what I said, neither more nor less.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

The closest I’ve come to commenting on the supposed “Demographic Wave” is that it overestimates the solidarity of all persons who identify as “not white.” Some brown people may not share the cultural imperatives of other brown people, much less favoring the imperatives of Black people.

None of us are going to live to see all Americans blend into a mocha sameness, and even if that happens, so what? Deprived of phenotypic differences, who would believe that humans will not still find other alliances over which to wrangle? It would have to be someone who knows nothing of the histories of whites fighting whites, blacks fighting blacks and so on.

Throughout all that I write from the first day I came into this forum I have tried to clarify my *range of concerns*. My core area of concern does not have a great deal to do with race considerations. It does to a degree though. It is important to present that degree fairly.

For this reason I have referred to an historical instance: the policy-change which has led to the situation we now are living in (1965 immigration reform). That is, the creation of the multi-cultural nation as a social ideal. This has now become a core American ideal. And America is the most influential and powerful nation.

It determines that thus-and-such (equity, gay rights, transgenderism, feminist values and ideology, abortion rights, the right of *women and girls* to determine their own life and future, and also American-style democracy, and American-style capitalist society) are *right & proper* and that to be just and good all other people must accept those predicates and those Values.

I have used the term (it is a poignant one) the Americanopolis to refer to this assertion of Americanism as a norm. It was established 200 years ago as such because of the genuine and important novelty of what America meant in world history. (It meant a great deal). Everyone understood that it was a new thing, and an important thing. And it really was (and is) on so many different levels).

But to understand the critique of this Americanism and the Americanopolis one has to resolve to encounter those who are thinking in contrary terms. That is why I referred to Pierre Krebs and also to Alain de Benoist. These are European critical thinkers who write extensively within a category of political theory that is critical of aspects degenerate of liberalism. Not so much in ideology but in practice and tangible manifestation.

So it has to be established that the core territory in which concern is manifest is not America but Europe. These dissident ideas are European and they are ideas that involve critique of and reaction against what they see as perverse and degenerate notions bound up in Americanism and the Americanopolis.

This is why it is sound on my part to refer to France (and by extension Germany, England, Italy, The Netherlands, etc.) There, different people with different societies, with different values, with different desires for different outcomes, examine the question of *race* within a larger, social, cultural and civilizational context.

So there they might not say “and even if that happens, so what?” I suggest that when your statement is examined it can be seen as a very specific statement about what should be valued and what should not be valued.

Apparently, to Renaud Camus and 25-40% of France today (I don’t think specific numbers exist, just general estimates) the people who comprise France are not saying, and may not ever say, “and so what?” They are exclaiming concern.

So the issue becomes the right to hold to a value, the right to define a value. The whole issue of valuation (what to value and why?) enters in.

 

[Master Debator]

I am quite sure that Vanceen has the capability of sniffing out your essentially bad-faith and underhanded methods of creating division.

Is it bad faith if I'm upfront about my disdain for you and your culture? And does my bias and lack of total respect for you invalidate any of my arguments? Absolutely not.

You have no means to know if he understand me, or does not understand me. He definitely does not regard the arguments in favor of the existence of race as being sound, that much we do know!

I know. I think it's good for you to hear this from other people.

Essentially you do not understand me!

You look at me and what you see is clouded by a range of categories and sentiments that exist in your own mind and emotional body.

All I have to go by are your arguments and I know those to be grounded in ignorant racism.

You have not engaged at any level at all with Taylor or Taylor’s arguments. Twenty minutes of a talk is not sufficient to fully comprehend not only the so-called *scientific basis of race-difference*, but a glossary review of the social, cultural and indeed civilizational elements requires months and more realistically years of study and thought.

It was pretty obvious from the start Taylor was a racist piece of shit. I don't need years of study to figure the animal with the curly tail oinking and rolling around in the mud in front of me is a pig. Maybe you do. In fact I'm sure you do. If it took you years to decipher Taylor's arguments I'm guessing you figure out both you and he are racists some time by the turn of the next century.

And finally when you say *I am enjoying all of this* you hint at both bad-faith and also lack of seriousness.

Why in the world would I take you or anything on this website seriously?

But this is not the question. The question was whether race exists or is a *fIction*. That is the first order of intellectual business, making that determination.

The second order of business would, fairly, involve questions about Taylor’s motives and analysis of how, and why, his own social or other biases enter into the question for him personally, and as one with a good deal of influence within a dissident community.

Taylor presented understandings that derive from and have been established by science, biology and medicine itself. So, Taylor is in fact detached from all of those assertions, hypotheses and, potentially, conclusions. So those assertions of his, in his presentation, would need to be examined carefully and judiciously.

I seriously do not think that you are the one to undertake such an effort!

You did not ever once address the point that both I and vanceen pointed out, which is the multitude of genetic variation that occurs in group before you even get to examining variations between separate groups of people. Meaning that a White man and black woman both with brown hair and brown eyes and a predisposition to sickle cell and whole host of other genetic similarities could be closer genetically to each other than you and he despite you both having light skin and being classified as "white". That's what actual science says. Maybe put down Taylor's picture books and give those a peruse for a couple years.