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It may be that even 'Scotsman' is such a word, where a cloud of
ethical desiderata cluster around a geographical or lineage core.
Suppose Hamish tires of sitting around reading the newspaper and
enlists in the military. Suppose he is sent to the Battle of the
Somme in the Great War. Suppose all around him men are fleeing,
though retreat has not been sounded, and he would very much like to
join them. But a thought roots him to the ground: 'No true Scotsman
would run away from danger.' Hamish dies thinking this thought and
hearing the mournful wail of the bag-pipes and his name is recorded
in the Scottish War Memorial.
What then did Hamish die for? A fallacy? Or a higher meaning of
'Scotsman' that was first advanced? It is very important that we not
'mix-and-match:' if a 'low' meaning of Scotsman is first offered,
i.e. that a Scotsman is someone who resides in certain localities,
then we cannot promote this meaning within the same syllogism to the
'high' meaning, i.e. a Scotsman is someone who resides in certain
localities and does not run from danger. This does not mean,
however, that the higher meaning is totally illegitimate or has been
proven to be such.
As an example, take the Lord's use of the term 'Israelite.' Many
readers point out that John the evangelist uses 'Jew' as a negative
term. They object that no member of this group could possibly use
the group name in such an objectionable manner. A better question
might be, if they did not like the term 'Jew,' what term did they
prefer to employ? As noted, it looks like 'Israelite' is it: “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him,
'Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!'”
(John 1:47).
This sounds like irony, because Jacob (Israel) was a deceiver if he
was anything. But he did learn from experience; Philo Judaeus
attributes to him, "that virtue which is devoted to and derived from
practice." (Philo Judaeus, On Abraham, Chapter XI). Since his crafty
dodges were always blowing up in his face, he may have learned not
to act like that. Why the title 'Israelite' would imply that a
person is without guile, might be explained if Jesus shared Philo's
opinion about the word's etymology, ". . .for the name Israel
being interpreted, means 'seeing God.'" (Philo Judaeus, A Treatise
on the Meeting for the Sake of Seeking Instruction, Chapter X).
'Judah,' from whence comes 'Jew,' is one of the twelve tribes of
Israel; 'Jacob,' or 'Israel,' is the patriarch from whence sprang
all the tribes. It may be that a northerner like Nathanael liked the
older designation better; he was from Cana in Galilee: ". .
.Nathanael of Cana in Galilee. . ." (John 21:1). Jesus' use of the term
'Israelite' implies that one might be, 'in truth,' an Israelite, or
perhaps not really, if someone belonging to that ethic
classification were low down and deceitful after all. The term does refer to
descent, but not only to descent.
That such 'double-duty' clan identifiers ought to be suspect is
obvious; all tribes, hordes and gatherings of
people are subject to the tendency, inherited from the old Adam, to
say, 'My group is good, the others evil.' If we see people attaching
all virtue to their own group and ascribing all vice to others, as
we see today's atheists doing, this should send up a red flag,
because people always do that. When I was a child, my Polish
grand-mother, upon hearing that a suspect with a Polish surname had
been arrested for a lurid crime, insisted that the wrong man had
been arrested, knowing no more about him than his surname. Even as a
child this struck me as improbable; after all, who commits the
crimes which fill up Polish prisons other than persons with Polish
surnames? Surely not all the crimes in Poland are committed by
gypsies and foreigners! No one she knew committed crimes; she was
generalizing from too small a sample.
The 'No True Scotsman' fallacy seems to be pointing towards this
near-universal bias in favor of one's own kind; but ideals such as the
'True Scotsman' are not always entirely fiction. To be sure the leap from ideals set forth as worthy
components of a proposed national character to the assertion that all
members of the group actually possess these characteristics soars over a
chasm. Paradoxically, the solution is to say, with the Hopi, 'He's not a Hopi.' If the Hopi cherish a set of
ethical desiderata and attach that set to a certain word, their lexical
freedom is not to be taken from them; it's their word, after all. As will be
seen, the word 'Christian' is not one of these composite words like
'Israelite' or 'Hopi' or even 'Scotsman;' the geographical component
is missing. If there were a geographical or ethnic component, it
certainly would not be 'white' or 'European' or 'Nordic;' Jesus
never set foot on the continent of Europe.
The idea of national character sounds antique, though at one time
it was widely accepted: ". . .it is, however, certain that every
nation has its own specific character, which is derived by induction
from the study, not of one, but many of its members."
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, Book V, Kindle
location 20610). Note the idea claims to be empirically
based: we notice, we do not posit, that the different nations
display differing constellations of habits and traits. If culture
impacts human behavior, and it certainly does, and if the differing
nations embrace varied cultures, and they do, then it does not seem
wildly implausible that some noticeable consequences might follow.
Surely you would be a fool to insist your Scotsman was thrifty when
evidence shows him a spendthrift. If these tales about national
character have any validity at all, it is only as generalizations;
'Scots are thrifty,' if it is true at all, is not true in the sense
that 'Each and every Scot is thrifty, there can be no exceptions.'
It can only be advanced as a general tendency, showing many
exceptions.
Some people flat-out deny that there can be any identifiable
differences between human groups: "There are lazy and unwise and
harmful individuals of African ancestry. There are lazy and unwise
and harmful individuals of European ancestry. There are industrious
and wise and harmless individuals of European ancestry. There are
industrious and wise and harmless individuals of African ancestry.
. .When you truly believe that the racial groups are equal, then you
also believe that racial disparities must be the result of racial
discrimination." (Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from
the Beginning, Prologue, pp. 40-41 of 43). But this is to
deny common human experience as well as common sense. For 'race,'
substitute 'affinity group:' let us say, people who have taken a vow
of poverty. Other things being equal, we would expect our cohort who
have taken a vow of poverty to have lower incomes than those who did
not. They are inferior to none, but living up to their stated goals
would result in lower incomes. Human communities, even those with
ties of blood and land, are always a little more like affinity
groups and a little less like a random assemblage of disconnected
individuals, than these theories require. People talk; we are social
beings. Shared ideals may result.
Using Kendi's principle, one concludes that all nations have
brave men, as well as cowards. That is certainly true. But military
history does not reveal a panorama of equally war-like nations
having at each other, with equal outcomes. Italian troops served on the Eastern Front in the German invasion
of Soviet Russia. But according to this Belgian volunteer, they were
lovers, not fighters:
"In 1941 the Italians were the largest foreign unit on
all the Eastern Front. Sixty-thousand of them had come, divided into
three divisions and into numerous detachments of specialists. One
saw them everywhere. . .Often their gregarious sentries left their
posts to bask in the warmth of an isba, where they chattered, jested,
mooched, and studied very closely the attributes of the local
beauties. . .One night, in the southern part of the sector, strong
detachments of Cossacks glided on their high-strung horses across
the deep snow. At dawn, they were easily able to encircle three
villages occuped by the Italians, but unprotected by the guards, who
were busy sleeping or making love. They were taken completely by
surprise. . . .In the twinkling of an eye they seized the three
villages. No one had the time to react. The Italians were then
dragged to the coal pits, where they were completely stripped of
their clothes. .The Cossacks brought large
buckets of icy water. Roaring with laughter, they emptied them on
the bodies of their victims in cold which hovered -30 degrees to
-35 degrees. The poor wretches in the three villages all died,
frozen alive. . .From that time on, the Italian troops of the Donets
were reinforced by German armor." (The Eastern
Front, Leon Degrelle, Kindle location 765).
According to this observer, the Italians disliked "Prussian
stiffness:" "By contrast, the Italians bridled whenever they
saw a German snap to attention or cry out orders."
(The Eastern Front, Leon Degrelle, Kindle
location 738). Is it really true that nothing but a long
history of racial discrimination could have produced the perception
of a culture clash, of an unbridgable gap between fanatical Prussian military discipline and
attention to detail, with the more laid-back approach of the Italian
troops, which however turned out deadly? Why must this contrast immediately
devolve into a claim that one group is superior and the other
inferior? If the Italian troops had lower morale than the Germans,
is this to their credit or discredit? When Hitler invaded Soviet
Russia, some people, perhaps including this volunteer Nazi author,
imagined that his intent was to liberate the Russians from
Bolshevism. But those who were familiar with Nazi ideology were
aware that was not the ultimate goal. Hitler wanted lebensraum, living
room, for the German people. The Slavic people living to the east of
Germany were, in his mind, racially inferior, and thus in the
struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest required them to
be pushed to the east, into Siberia, their place taken by German
colonists. So why would soldiers weakly committed to this
unrighteous and immoral goal, be deemed "inferior" to those strongly
committed to it? Why is it unacceptable to notice that not all those
serving were equally committed to the goal? Ibram Kendi's principles
collapse into dust the moment they are applied, not to the cultural
chasm between rap music and the Protestant work ethic, a yawning one
indeed, but to any other of the many uncomprehending stand-offs
between different people-groups that world history records.
For an inverted, distorted fun-house mirror version of the
monster Breivik, see the Nation of Islam's Malcolm X. Some people,
erroneously I think, perceive black supremacy as if it were the
corrective and antidote for white supremacy. It is not the antidote,
it is the same poison:
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