Now a Video!
Greg Johnson’s “In Defense of Prejudice”

7 comments

1. Jud Jackson says:

   February 16, 2016 at 8:02 am

   Greg,

   A great video. Just one small objection. There is a difference between inductive reasoning which establishes a law of nature with no exceptions (i.e. all heavy bodies fall when released) and inductive reasoning which is merely probable such as that you are more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke and blacks are more likely to commit violent crimes than whites. My aunt smoked a pack a day and didn’t die till she was 95 and not from lung cancer. Similarly many blacks do not commit violent crimes. However, all heavy bodies fall when released. Maybe I am wrong but it seems to me that in the first part of this video you conflate these two kinds of inductive reasoning.

   But overall the video was great. Of course we avoid blacks and Muslims because we have probable inductive reasoning as to what they are like.

   1. Greg Johnson says:

      February 16, 2016 at 12:21 pm

      Does induction ever establish necessary truth? Or just varying degrees or probability?

      1. Jud Jackson says:

         February 16, 2016 at 12:48 pm

         Great point. Hume’s problem. Given Hume’s problem induction doesn’t matter at all. There is absolutely no reason to leave a tall building by the elevator rather than by jumping out the window. We cannot know that the future will resemble the past or that nature is uniform without begging the question and assuming it does. However, assuming induction works, as we must if we are to live in this world, there is still a difference between probable reasoning and reasoning concerning absolute laws of nature like gravity.

         But I absolutely agree with the overall point of your video. When we reason inductively about matters that are not absolute laws of nature like smoking or dealing with Negroes, we must go on our experience. It is better not to smoke, even if my aunt got away with it for 95 years. It is also better to live as far as possible as you can from large concentrations of Negroes. Many of my parent’s friends from the south side of Chicago learned this all too well in the 1960s and 1970s.

2. Dan O'Connor says:

   February 16, 2016 at 8:13 pm

   A few quotes from other sources I have scribbled down.

   ” A normal ( non damaged ) human society, ( whose group self-preservation reflexes have not been disarmed ) reverts to broadbrush tarring/ generalising / and stereotyping any intruding, hostile and predatory alien collective organism as a survival mechanism.
   It is a natural precautionary reflex , and a way of not taking chances. It is a way of avoiding something that could reach a point of critical mass that could present an existential threat to one’s own group ”

   ” In nature, when you have a population of red squirrels and grey squirrels, eventually you are going to end up with a population consisting of all grey squirrels or all red squirrels. The Left get around this by creating the simplification that there is no such thing as red or grey squirrel –just the squirrel race, as if just because the red squirrel Left believe this that the grey squirrel believes this as well. The grey squirrel is just paying lip service to all the multiculti clap trap because it benefits grey squirrels.
   If all the third world immigrants coming to the West were Republican / Tory voters, it would be the Left that would be clammering hysterically to build a wall and limit mass immigration ”

   ” He who becomes a lamb will be devoured by the first wolf who comes along ”

   ” Definition of a Leftist SJW ; = future victim of tolerance and diversity ”

   ” Hollywood’s continuing attempt to stereotype Blacks as highly intelligent computer experts and rocket scientists with the wisdom of Gandhi, will face an increasingly uphill battle. ”

   ” The problem with the multi-cult/racial society is not that there is discrimination, but that there is no discrimination at all ”

   ” A progressive hug is an embrace of death. Their kindness a cruelty . Their love, hate. Their word is venom. Their charity is a curse. I consider them my mortal enemy. A plague, a wrath, an infectious horde that must be driven off a cliff ”

   ” Liberalism is a form of moral syphilis ” ( Jonathan Bowden )

3. R_Moreland says:

   February 18, 2016 at 3:56 am

   I’ll note that “liberals” have their own prejudices. They routinely stereotype the people for whom they have distaste: rightwingers, National Socialists, Christian fundamentalists, White South Africans, paleo- and neo-Confederates, and etc. Consider how liberals demonize people for whom they have antipathy as racist-sexist-homophobic-xenophobic-eurocentric-and-ad anuseam. This carries over to discrimination against such heretics in employment, in academia and increasingly via criminalization of ungoodspeaking. Just slap a label on the “other,” never mind any of that content of character stuff.

   This works both ways. In liberal hagiography, all blacks are automatically cherubs who have been the victims of slavery-segregation-colonialism-apartheid-redlining-micro-aggressions. Consider the fantasy constructed by liberal media re the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown affairs. Both Martin and Brown were innocent blacks gunned down by white “racists,” thereby fulfilling the liberal narrative. When the truth came out—that Zimmerman was not actually White, that Brown was shot in self-defense by a police officer—the narrative got readjusted. Zimmerman became a “white-hispanic,” Ferguson was labeled a hotbed of “racism.” Needless to say, liberals were not satisfied until a town got torched and BLM violence exploded across the Homeland.

   It’s the sort of thing which is generally attributed to those “prejudiced” Whites back during segregation: mob violence breaking out when white people do not like the outcome of the jury process, leading to lynchings and dustups such as the Tulsa Race Riot. Only now it’s liberals who are working themselves up into mob frenzy and egging on blacks to run amok (and presumably be used as cannon fodder). Control of mass media and academia allows liberal prejudices to be reinforced into a spectacle displacing reality.

   All this ought to make us reconsider the usual party line about “bigotry” back during segregation. Segregation seems to have been imposed by Whites as a defense against black inability to assimilate into modern civilization—a perhaps imperfect response to a difficult situation.

   Could it be that White people in those days were not acting out of prejudice, but instead practicing some realism regarding race? And it is today’s egalitarians who are prejudiced right over the deep end?

4. Graham Lister says:

   February 25, 2016 at 8:48 pm

   Wonderful and insightful Greg. Thank you.

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