Standards

     First up today, courtesy of Mike Miles at 90 Miles From Tyranny, an indispensable quote from the indispensable Thomas Sowell:

     Now, a few words from Ksenya Aleksandrova at Chicks on the Right:

     I see that the ugly lies that math, timeliness, and successful life habits are systems of racism and whiteness are circulating again, so I just want to clear some things up…If you think your black neighbors and friends are incapable of doing math, being on time, or being successful in life, YOU are racist. Moreover, if you don’t actually know any black people, and you think you’re helping the hypothetical black teen by working to rid their lives of standards, you’re dumb as hell and your bigotry is showing.

     And third (and probably surprisingly for this subject), a snippet from John Ringo’s novel of Mankind at war, The Hot Gate:

     “We both know the agendas here are so much show,” Tyler Vernon said mildly. “You’re not here about the faults in the One Forty-Three because you know damned well it’s a maintenance issue.”
     “That is—” Dr. Barreiro said angrily.
     “SHUT YOUR STUPID MOUTH!” Tyler shouted. “Just shut your idiotic pie hole!”
     “This has gone far enough,,” Dr. Werden said, standing up.
     “Oh, has it?” Tyler said mildly. He opened up the folder and started tossing thick chunks of paper to the various other attendees. “This is not the agenda for the meeting either. This is the reason the agendas for all the rest of the meetings have been cancelled.”
     Dr. Barreiro looked at the title of the stack of the paper and blanched.
     “Simply because you have a personal relationship—” Dr. Werden said.
     “It’s not about Comet Parker, either, gentlemen,” Tyler said furiously. “This is the agenda for the meeting. Your countries have impugned my company. You have repeatedly cast aspersions upon our products and you have accused us of deliberately killing your people. You have accused me of killing your sons! And when I found these and started reading them, what became obvious was that the reason your sons were dead was that your governments, you gentlemen, personally, had deliberately interfered in normal and necessary processes related to ensuring the maintenance of ships and the training of their crews!”
     “Our culture is not one in which—”
     “I SAID SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!” Tyler screamed. He suddenly stood up, picked up the station chair and threw it against the bulkhead. Then he picked it up and banged it on the table until it broke.
     “You want something from me!” Tyler said, squaring his hands on the table and sticking his face into Dr. Barreiro’s. That is why you are here! And now I find out that you have been deliberately sabotaging my equipment? You want to talk about honor? That is MY honor you have been raking in the mud! And you want me to do something for you?”
     He grabbed another chair and sat down, leaning forward.
     “Everyone wants to talk about culture,” Tyler said coldly. “How we have to understand your culture. Nobody ever seems to wonder if I have a culture. What my culture is about.”

     [Boldface emphasis added by FWP.]

     Tyler Vernon, the space-age entrepreneur who has almost singlehandedly created the defenses that have allowed Earth to withstand repeated subjugation attempts by conquest-minded alien races, is “having a moment.” Barreiro and Werden, two South American “diplomats,” have been “playing the culture card” in an attempt to exculpate their sons, and the sons of other South American elites, from failing to perform the duties required of them in maintaining highly advanced spacecraft. As you can see from the snippet, Vernon has had enough.

     The South Americans want the prestige of having representation in Earth’s all-important space defense forces – which are dominated, of course, by Americans. Moreover, they want that representation to be the progeny of their elites: their nations’ wealthy, propertied, ruling classes. But when asked to do actual work? Performed under the supervision of a gringa? Impossible! Unthinkable! “Our culture is not one in which such things are done!” To require those selfsame sons of privilege to meet the standards the norteamericanos are required to meet would be a grotesque insult. “You may not disrespect our culture that way!”

     Is there a word for the fear of logic? If so, it probably has six or seven syllables and a mixture of Greek, Latin, and Elvish roots. But what of that?

     Standards don’t spring from the brow of Zeus. They arise from the need for something to be done a certain way to achieve a particular, well-defined effect. To form a comprehensible sentence, an absolute requirement for communication in a commercial environment, one must meet the standards of the language in use. To balance a checkbook, one must meet the standards of simple arithmetic. There is no cultural component to these things; there are only necessities and the standards they dictate.

     The South Americans in the segment from The Hot Gate want the prestige of participation in Earth’s space defenses without meeting the standards those defenses impose upon those who labor in them. This is plainly impossible. It gets people killed. Worse, it subjects all of Mankind to a heightened possibility of conquest. But elites will behave as elites have always behaved: i.e., as if the standards the hoi polloi must meet are irrelevant to them. So they wield their “culture” as a shield behind which to hide an assumption of privileges to which no one else is entitled.

     The same thing is going on in present-day, real-world America…but the shield isn’t “culture” but race. Black racialist hucksters demand that American black youths not be held to the standards whites and Asians must meet, civically and educationally. A lot of whites are aiding them. There is no possible way this could work out to anyone’s benefit, but to say so immediately provokes castigation as a “racist.”

     If there are standards for attaining a particular reward – e.g., a diploma, a degree, or a salary – then all must meet them. Contrapositively, if some need not meet them but are granted the reward anyway, then there are no standards. It cannot be made simpler than that.

     The undiscussed possibility – except among us “racists,” of course – is that a hefty percentage of black youths cannot meet the standards observed by the dominant American culture. That’s the white, European-derived, Christian Enlightenment culture. Suggest that to any of the racialist hucksters and he’ll probably attack you on the spot. Yet it is difficult to dismiss the possibility that some of them, at least, suspect it themselves…and fear that it might become generally known.

     I can say only one thing with certainty: No matter what the context, you cannot have both a standard and a privileged group absolved from meeting it. It will litter the American landscape with corpses. Indeed, it has already begun to do so. Protests from the bien-pensants that “we couldn’t have known it would turn out this way” will be to no avail.

     Have a little Ayn Rand to close:

     “Senor d’Anconia,” declared the woman with the earrings, “I don’t agree with you!”
     “If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully.”
     “Oh, I can’t answer you. I don’t have any answers, my mind doesn’t work that way, but I don’t feel that you’re right, so I know that you’re wrong.”
     “How do you know it?”
     “I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you’re heartless.”
     “Madame, when we’ll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won’t be of any earthly use to save them. And I’m heartless enough to say that when you’ll scream, ‘But I didn’t know it!’—you will not be forgiven.”

     The rest is silence.