Over at Quillette our friend Heather Mac Donald is having fun with academic David W. Blight of Yale and his piece in the New York Times:
Academia must grapple with its blind spots, he argues, in order to understand why blue-collar workers voted for an “authoritarian in a red tie” in the recent US presidential election.
But Blight, “a scholar of American race relations and the Civil War,” believes “that MAGA enthusiasts are the ‘equivalent of the 1850s Slave Power who seek to spread a ‘deadly poison’ of authoritarianism throughout the body politic.”
He should know. Blight is the author of a 350-page report on “Yale and Slavery.” Blight is shocked that Yale’s 1915 Civil War memorial honored students on both sides of the war.
But why should academics care about the moral turpitude of Yalies a century ago? Mac Donald does not tell us. But I will. It arises out of the peculiar institution of modern government and the ruling class that runs it.
Back in the day, Frederick the Great of Prussia conquered Silesia, a fruitful valley that straddles the Oder River. The victors of World War I gave it back to Poland.
Why did Frederick conquer Silesia? Because he could.
We are no longer ruled by feudal monarchs, but by the educated class that rose to power after the invention of the printing press by goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg. Really, Gutenberg ought to be the patron saint of the educated class, because his technology enabled educated people to write books and have them published all over the world. Pretty soon experts agreed that literate, educated people ought to rule instead of uneducated, semi-literate feudal lords.
Now, I will tell you a mystery. Back in the day, feudal lords ruled because they had the swords and the plate armor and an army to defend their domain, and the peasants didn’t. But what about the Society of the Sons of Gutenberg? It took a while, but pretty soon, rising educated philosophers started writing manifestos. In 1776 our glorious Founders declared that “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitled them to declare their independence from mad King George. In 1789 the French got in on the act and declared against Louis XVI that “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression” are the rights of man.
Allyship. Here’s how David W. Blight of Yale and fellow wokey congregants probably recite the Creed at faculty meetings today:
We Yalies are the Allies of the Oppressed Peoples in their fight against the White Oppressors.
Of course, it was not possible for the white settler-colonialists of olden time to develop immediately today’s sophisticated Allyship definition, corrupted as they were by sexism and racism and colonialism. So Allyship developed in stages.
Allyship Stage One: Intellectuals fight for the Rights of Man against King George and King Louis
Allyship Stage Two: Socialists and communists fight with the workers against the capitalists.
Allyship Stage Three: Feminist allies fight with suffragettes for the right to vote against the patriarchs.
Allyship Stage Four: Civil rights activists fight with blacks against white Southern racists.
Allyship Stage Five: Straight allies fight with LGBTs against the homophobes.
Allship Universalized: Allies fight with the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors.
Do you see the point? If you are an Ally — for instance a Yale scholar of race relations and the Civil War — you are the good guy, because you are fighting for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. You vote Democrat and it stands to reason that “far-right” MAGA insurrectionists that vote Republican are the Enemy and the dupes of an “authoritarian in a red tie.” Case closed.
But I say the opposite is true. I say that chaps like Frederick the Great — did you know he was gay? — were rather modest in the use of power. A few more rich acres were all that they fought for.
But with the rise of the educated class things got nasty.
They made us fight the Civil War because slavery is evil. About 800,000 died.
They made us fight World War I “to make the world safe for democracy.” About 40 million died.
They made us fight World War II because Nazis were evil. About 70 million died.
They made us fight the Cold War because communism was evil. About 100 million communists died.
And now politics has exploded into a thousand moral crusades, to make us fight racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, climate deniers.
Against this, the “authoritarian in a red tie” just wants an America where people can afford to get married, buy houses, raise children, and maybe live to spoil their grandchildren.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Image: Library of Congress
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