THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Shari and Joe have different loyalties from mine. In our day, it is generally accepted that my job is to make them think like I do. Shari and Joe and I cling to a distinction here that is alien to accepted ideas today. I think I have some intellectual exercises that Shari and Joe can use. They agree.

But what I have to offer them is not to turn them into tape recording of what I believe. They use me as an unfortunately unique opportunity to hone their OWN thought. This, as Shari and Joe would be the first to tell you, is called education. They consider me a qualified teacher. They can learn something from me; I can learn something from them. That's why they like the blog. That's why they consider it worthwhile to trade thoughts with Bob and his commenters.

LibAnon considers Bob's Blog, written by a Reagan appointee, to be a godsend. I have a very useful WAY OF THINKING. Joe and LibAnon and Shari want to make use of that way of thinking. In an age that seems alien today, that is what education MEANT. Education is NOT indoctrination. On the one hand, to a rational person this is obvious. But in today's society, it involves a kind of thinking on the part of LibAnon and Joe and Shari that is as alien as visitors from Mars. They are not here to become Bob clones.

If you read the comments nobody here comes close to being a Bob clone, though I feel that would be the height of brilliance. Naturally I consider that you are wrong and I am right. But just as naturally it never occurs to me that YOU need to take it for granted that you are wrong and I am right. This is so obvious that I feel a little crazy just SAYING it. But underlying this is the simple fact that we live in a society that is nuts.

In the present world it is the mark of an "educated" person that he BELIEVES all the things an "educated person" is supposed to believe. Today you judge whether a person is educated by whether he can recite the beliefs that "educated people" are supposed to have.

To me, a person who recites Political Correctness is a RE-educated person; a human robot.

During the Korean War, the group that calls itself the Greatest Generation was still a bunch of youngsters and most Americans had a pre-WWII mentality. At that time, we kept hearing about our POWs being sent to "reeducation camps." Back then the average American's hackles went up the moment RE education was mentioned. Today, no one ever hears the term "re-education." The Greatest Generation simply cannot see any difference between education and reeducation. So when any social problem comes up, everybody agrees that the solution to it is "education."

So when it was discovered recently that babies discriminate racially, everybody, especially respectable conservatives, instantly agreed that "education" was the "solution" to this "problem." Note the words in quotes. Is this a problem or a natural phenomenon?

Communists agree that what they call Greed and what others call self-interest is a PROBLEM. In the early 1950s every Intellectual had to agree that greed was unique to human beings. It was absolutely agreed that no animal desired more food than it could eat, more females than any other male. No animal held territory and kept others off of it. No animal tried to lord it over any other member of his own species. In fact, it was taken for granted that a person who believed that races or men and women were different was a product of his training, of his education. It was taken for granted that he needed RE-education.

When there were the Americans who had not yet become a product of The Greatest Generation. The objected to the concept of Reeducation because they felt that THEIR training was NOT warped. As "The Greatest Generation" took over, this idea was denounced as prejudiced. By the 1960s "everybody who counted" accepted the idea that our prejudices were warped. Those who did not admitted they were "just old fashioned." So today we accept the idea that when an animal sees some things as natural and other things as unnatural, that is a statement that comes from the soul of said animal - or aborigine - that we must listen to.

But when a white baby prefers its own kind that is something that needs correction.

The American population that passed the GI Bill of Rights, which gave money to veterans to go to college, was the same group of people who reacted violently to the very word Reeducation in Korea. They were happy to pay for education but the very concept of Reeducation turned their stomachs.

I defy you today to find one American who understands the difference between education and reeducation.

Mark and Shari are fighting it out over faith, and that is welcome. As I said, I don't agree with Shari, but she made some good points. But Shari has made it clear, up front, that her loyalty is not to her race, but to a book.

But we need these allies, and Shari spoke for a very large group of them. She did it eloquently. It is a regrettable fact that if we limit ourselves today to those who are driven by loyalty to their race alone, we would indeed be preaching to the choir.

Now I happen to know that Christianity succeeded by insisting on preaching to the choir every single Sunday. It is essential. But you can't succeed by preaching ONLY to the choir. Shari and Joe give us needed input from other points of view. In time, as race becomes more and more obviously central in America, when the illusion that we are the ruling majority which should be "objective" disappear, the Old Testament is going to be less and less a convenient excuse for avoiding this loyalty.

This is what happened in the Deep South. We were also the Bible Belt, but race never ceased to be central. Whites were never a comfortable majority, so it is only recently that we have had the comfortable illusion that we live as part of a country where whites dominate. We are simply behind the times.

At the moment when the rest of the country is gradually coming to grips with the central nature of race, Southern suburbanites are absorbing the outdated idea that race is NOT important. I see all this movement, and when someone says, "But it's all HOPELESS!" "Everything is moving in ONE direction!"

It makes me tired. Things that will make our future are happening all over the place.

So Joe, the Tough Old Guy Let's Surrender approach and Shari, the Old Testament loyalist, are part and parcel of the people we have to deal with. The crew is always telling each other Deep Wisdom and superstition, but they would be appalled if the Captain paid attention to anything but the charts and his sextant. That's the ONLY reason he is the Captain.