The First Casualty in War is Truth

(February 28, 2022) It is an ancient wisdom that the first casualty in war is truth. Within days of declaring war on Japan in December 1941, for example, American bomber pilot Colin Kelly was credited with crashing his doomed B-17 into a Japanese cruiser and sinking it. His plane crashed, but it never hit an enemy ship. The legend was too good to turn down. President Franklin Roosevelt even committed a future unknown president to a duty to offer Colin’s infant son a spot at West Point when he came of age.

Much the same is happening now during the Ukraine war. A major network broadcast footage of Russians protesting Putin’s invasion being arrested in Moscow. Even though I don’t doubt that it happened, it struck me as no more brutal than the Canadian government’s crackdown on protesting truckers.

Similarly, Critical Race Theory is a lie. Its proponents argue that they merely want Americans to study how blacks were mistreated, but that is not their true motive. Nobody I know can point to a time during their lives when the shame of slavery was not at part of American history classes throughout the United States. In contrast, Critical Race Theory teaches that all of America’s institutions were set up for the purpose of perpetuating white supremacy; the very laws are fabricated from threads of white supremacy. If such interpretations become the default explanation, all memorials to Confederate soldiers will be eradicated. Even Robert E. Lee will be dropped as a namesake for the present Washington and Lee University.

When I was a boy during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, I was told the Russians had their own government-controlled newspaper, *Pravda.* It was not to be trusted. But today the Biden Administration is trying to pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act that will give $1.7 billion of taxpayer money to legacy newspapers, TV stations, and TV networks. It will also exempt them from antitrust laws so that they may collude to force Internet distributors to pay the price they demand in exchange for news.

Finally, Russia’s argument for taking over the Ukraine is similar to that of the Northern states against the South during the Civil War. Like the Ukraine during the Soviet collapse, the South wanted to break free of a distant central government. They failed, just as the Ukraine may also fail to remain independent now that Putin say’s they must return to Russia in order to end invasion of the Ukraine.

Robert E. Lee and Critical Race Theory

(February 25, 2022) Yesterday’s post explained that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and a respectful assessment of Southern and Confederate heritage are incompatible ideas. Even though their letters and diaries in the tens of thousands show that Confederate soldiers went to war because their homeland was invaded, the unchallenged dogma of CRT will lead to the annihilation of all symbols and memorials related to the Confederacy. Beyond that it will likely result in the banning of memorials to any historical figure who was a slaveholder. More general aspects of Southern heritage will suffer like the baby that gets thrown out with the bathwater. Admirers of Robert E. Lee should take note that he will not be exempted.  A narrative that hopes to exempt him from CRT condemnation because of his postbellum leadership in reuniting our country will fail.

As explained in my new book, The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, the chief aim of proponents of such ideologies is to transform American society from a meritocracy to one centered on quotas based upon the skin color, ethnicity, and gender. Their first step is to rewrite American history. CRT interprets it as the result of a perpetual conflict between groups of oppressors and victims. 

The so-called 1619 Project from The New York Times is a prime example. It dates America’s founding to the arrival of the first African slaves on Virginia’s shores in 1619, instead of the previously accepted date of 1776 when representatives of all thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. An earlier example of the oppressor/victim narrative are the works of historian Howard Zinn, especially his 1980 People’s History of the United States. Even forty-two years after it was published it annually remains one of the most popular American history books. Successors have transformed the deceased author’s website into a continuing education site for teachers to learn more recent propaganda along Zinn’s themes. 

While Critical Race Theory is a legitimate study for college students in a setting that permits open debate and includes critical analysis of CRT itself, that’s not what is happening. Often K-12 teachers are lectured about it in continuing education classes and taught how to teach its remedies to their students. The remedies are what get through to the students and they are poisonous. 

White boys are taught they are endemically racist and privileged whether they realize it or not. They are defined as racist because of their skin color, even if their behavior is undeniably not racist. Similarly, black children are taught that they are victims; that they are powerless to advance in American society without so-called antiracist policies such as affirmative action. Such teachings demonize the so-called oppressors and eradicate an incentive among the so-called victims to learn personal responsibility. 

One of the most obvious penalties resulting from America’s focus on CRT and Identity Politics is that our leaders have taken their eyes off far more important matters. Such distractions caused the Afghanistan debacle and our current weakness in the presence of Russian aggression in the Ukraine. If America is to meet its future challenges it must return a meritocracy. The distractions of CRT and Identity Politics must be purged. Americans will correctly ask why they should care about Ukraine’s borders when our CRT and Identity Victimhood obsessed leaders don’t protect our own border with Mexico.

Get a copy of The Dreadful Frauds if you want to understand how Southern heritage will be eradicated unless CRT and Identity politics is successfully combated. 

The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics

(February 24, 2022) CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND IDENTITY POLITICS are two of the most dreadful frauds ever. They are based on the false premise that America is in perpetual conflict between oppressor and victim classes. Moreover, your status as an oppressor is determined by immutable personal features such as skin color or gender. Regardless of your character or behavior you are deemed to be a racist oppressor if you are white and a sexist oppressor if you are male. The two dogmas conversely teach that if you are black or female you are a victim and can never control your destiny through personal industry and foresight. Neither, consequently, can you be held accountable for any lack of industry and foresight.

They teach that it is impossible to be either race-neutral or gender-neutral. Instead, one must become “antiracist” or “antisexist.” To be “antiracist” or “antisexist” is to promote policies that improve racial or gender “equity”— meaning equality of outcomes collectively as opposed to equality of opportunity individually. The focus on the collective means that blacks and females cannot be individually held responsible for subpar performance until such time as blacks and females as a group perform as well as the so-called oppressor class collectively. The remedial actions invariably take the form of mandatory quotas in favor of the so-called victim classes. Even when state courts have ruled gender or race affirmative actions to be illegal, educational institutions circumvent the rules by jiggering the admissions policies through such actions as abandoning college board exams and accepting a fixed percentage of each high school senior class regardless of the school’s academic standing.

Ultimately Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics aim to destroy America’s traditional meritocracy. They have infected government, military, media, and business organizations with indoctrination cessions that demonize white males and teach that they must step aside to make way for racial and gender equity. Such teachings even extend into K-12 Public Education. A 2021 Yale University survey revealed that 35% of students first learned about Critical Race Theory in high school.

Behind the Scenes at Washington and Lee

(February 23, 2022) Even though the university voted last year to keep Lee’s name in its title, the administration has been doing everything it can to vilify the general’s reputation and those of any of the former students who fought for the Confederacy. In a recent example, sophomore Kamron Spivey wrote an article for the student newspaper about the Liberty Hall Volunteers.

Officially known as Company I of the 4th Virginia infantry regiment, the Volunteers were composed of 54 students and 18 residents of Rockbridge County. In 1910 the school placed a bronze plaque honoring the Volunteers in the vestibule of Lee Chapel. It had no connection to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or any other outside organization. It was strictly a WNL initiative.

Last year WNL’s current administration dropped Lee’s name from the Chapel. They also removed all artifacts relating to Lee and the Confederacy including the Liberty Hall Volunteers plaque. When Kamron asked about administrative plans to relocate the plaque, he got no concrete answers, just obfuscation. He was not even told where the plaque is currently located other than supposedly being in a non-disclosed location. He felt doubtful that the plaque would ever again see the light of day.

You can read Kamron’s article here.

Statues and Critical Race Theory

(February 22, 2022) The reason Critical Race Theory (CRT) proponents tear down statues is because they believe that history must be re-written around their belief that it is almost entirely the result of a perpetual conflict between the ruling and worker classes. CRT is a second derivative of Marxism and a first derivative of Critical Theory. The latter was taught at Germany’s Frankfurt School in the 1920s and 30s.

Although Marx anticipated that Communism appeal most to the workers of the industrialized countries, it really first took root in relatively backward Russia. Frankfurt School leaders ultimately concluded the reason Russian isolation was that industrial countries were too prosperous. It would, therefore, be necessary to teach the workers that they are victims whether they realized it or not. That meant Critical Theorists had to rewrite history to make capitalists the villains. Since the workers rejected the explanation, capitalism remained Europe’s economic foundation.

The advent of Nazism shattered the Frankfurt School, causing many of its leaders to leave, including some for the United States. They were no more successful in selling class conflict in America than they were in Europe. America’s Post World War II prosperity made it hard to convince workers that they had a perpetual class war with capitalists.

By the 1970s Critical Race Theory became a branch of Critical Theory by drawing the cleavage lines along race instead of economic class. Instead of rewriting history to make demons out of capitalists per se, it became necessary to rewrite history to make villains out of whites. Once feminists joined the victimology bandwagon the villains were narrowed down to white males.

Washington and Lee’s student newspaper (The Spectator) has a good article about this by senior Iain MacLeod. Sophomore Kamron Spivey contributed an article about a company of Washington College (W&L’s predecessor name) students who fought together during the Civil War. Finally, MacLeod also wrote an article questioning whether the student Executive Committee can become increasingly outspoken proponents of political correctness and remain objective judges of the Honor Code. Objective truths appear to be eroding to be replaced by subjective truths.