This bizarre opinion piece contradicts his ideas from 2003:

“No group in recent history has more aggressively seized power in the name of its racial superiority than Western whites. This race illustrated for all time–through colonialism, slavery, white racism, Nazism–the extraordinary human evil that follows when great power is joined to an atavistic sense of superiority and destiny. This is why today’s whites, the world over, cannot openly have a racial identity.”

Thursday, November 13, 2003
Yo, Howard!
Why did Dean have to embrace the Confederate flag?

Luke Lea: “The guilt trippers are ignorant of (a) and are also unaware of (b). They therefore use our createst civilizational achievement — our universal moral values — to condemn their own society.”

The West’s most dangerous adversaries are those who seek power in Western nations on the basis of their asserted moral superiority over their fellow citizens. These politically ambitious guilt trippers are not ignorant or unaware, but they do rely on both the functioning moral code and the historical ignorance of the average Western voter. And increasingly on the prestige of the law and the power of the state where guilt alone has come to lack the power to hold voters in thrall. In their pursuit of power, they risk destroying the very communities they seek to lead.

This is exactly why we can’t win wars anymore, because we’re trying to change the concept of war while human nature remains the same. In fact the opposite is what you have to pursue, to leave a much worse situation than you found. John Derbyshire:

“The question is: What action? My answer would be, has always been: Attack them, smash up their assets, kill their leaders if you can, cripple their military. Then leave them in rubble and chaos. They’re not going to be making any nukes in that condition. Mission accomplished. That was what I hoped we would do to Iraq, and why I supported the war. It is what I believe we should now do to Iran. The reduced-to-rubble nation might indeed ‘breed terrorists’; but then … so might New Zealand or Spain. Rubble nations are not a threat to us. Africa has a score of them; none threatens us.”

This may sound terrible to postmodern ears but it has the proof of history.

I think where Steele uses guilt, Wiegel uses self-hatred. The effect on a culture’s sense of worth and value is roughly the same—devastating.

My post Repent Now expands on some thoughts by C S Lewis on this matter.

What is historically unique about the West is not its immaculate conception, therefore, but rather that (b)it found within itself the moral resources to call a halt to these barbaric practices and to pronounce them wrong.

The guilt trippers are ignorant of (a) and are also unaware of (b). They therefore use our createst civilizational achievement — our universal moral values — to condemn their own society.

In other words, they are ignorant fools. In the long-run the only answer to this problem is to teach more world history in our schools and universities, a subject which, at this point, has almost faded away into nothingness.

Those who do not study the past . . .etc.

There is a nice little movie from the post WW2 era starring Cary Grant called “Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House”. Its funny, and revealing. Grant and his wife have two daughters, both of whom attend a very expensive, progressive Manhatten private school.

One of the running gags is the utter contempt that the daughters have for Grant, an advertising exec, and the whole “materialist” culture he represents, based on the “progressive” social theories of the school they attend. Their teenage moral superiority is painful, but very instructive when viewed in the light of subsequent events in the 60′s and 70′s.

The doctrine of Western criminality, and responsibility for all the bad things in the world, has been preached from the pulpits, taught from the podiums, and written about in an endless series of books, plays, movies, and academic theses.

The entire multi-cultural, race-gender-sexuality focus of much of the educational establishment in Western society is based entirely on the idea that European, Christian, individualistic, capitalist society is fundamentally corrupt and exploitive.

It is literally impossible to make a positive remark about Western culture, especially American culture and society, in any forum without being instantly attacked by any number of people who are absolutely indignant that one would dare support such a violent, evil, corrupt entity as Western or American culture. It is unthinkable to these PC types that there is any redeeming feature worth defending.

And that, finally, is the source of so much of the paralysis that afflicts us in the current crisis, as it did in the Cold War previously.

Guilt only works if its victim actually has a functioning moral code in the first place. Many of our adversaries over the centuries have not, and have taken advantage of the fact that we do.

A very pertinent question is: Why does our moral code serve our enemies interests instead of our own? But that is a very large question for another time and place.

I don’t have an answer,….”

I don’t know about the shame vs guilt problem but I’ll take a stab at the general reason some folks get exercised about historical, societal events that cause guilt.

The short answer is that the guilt tripper’s perspective lacks imagination and a reasonable historical context. My favorite example being the abominable way Euro-Americans treated Amer-Indians. The rub is that, had the power situation between the two groups been reversed, it is very likely that the Euros would have been as badly treated and worse. The way that tribes related with one another before the Euros arrived supports this.

Given equal propensity for savagery is it better that the superior Euro culture dominated? The answer is clearly yes. Therefore, no guilt needed.

I don’t have an answer, although from personal experience I can attest that when guilt-culture people start carrying on, I tend to check out. They’re aggressive, it’s melodramatic, I don’t really know what they’re carrying on about or why they’re doing such a lot of moral breastbeating and grandstanding, and I can sense (dimly — I’m dumb!) a moral blackmail taking shape. So I’m outta there. If these conversations are going to take place, they’re going to take place without me. The guilt-people never seem interested in my input anyway.

Maybe that’s an indicator of what’s happened more generally: that the guilt-people are more … aggressive or something, and that the shame people just cut and run, leaving the public-affairs conversation to the guilt people. I dunno, it’s a thought. There was a good book I read years ago about the diffs between guilt and shame cultures that I found helpful — the author’s p-o-v was that part of what the ’60s were was Guilt Culture overwhelming traditional American Shame Culture, and that things have gone too far in that direction. More shame, less guilt. I’ll try to remember what the book was.

Fun posting, tks.