Why Historical Guilt Is An Invalid Premise

2,153 words

It’s well known to us that distorted historical narratives are a common manipulation tactic. For the masses, though, many still remain spellbound by guilt trips. I’ll go into a deep dive on that at a later date, but for now, I’ll keep it simple. Be sure to share this one with your civnat friends, and any educable liberals in your life. Getting rid of a heap of undeserved guilt should be a tremendous load off of their minds, and with no expensive therapy sessions needed!

Familial Guilt

First, let’s consider the question – can guilt be inherited? It’s time for a thought experiment. Suppose you do some genealogical research and find that one of your ancestors robbed a stagecoach in the 1860s and got away with it. Are you responsible for this? Should you be hanged for the crime? Obviously not. You’re not the guy who did it. You’ve never robbed a stagecoach in your life – or at the very least, not that one.

Can it be argued that somehow your life is better because of the robbery? Perhaps it did go into the family fortune, and part of it made conditions better for you in certain ways. On the other hand, maybe your distant ancestor blew all the swag on booze, gambling, and saloon floozies. Or maybe his grandchildren were rich for a while because of the theft, until the Great Depression wiped out the fortune. How would you know for sure, or quantify the exact figure (if any) that you benefited from the crime?

Well, maybe you feel that you still owe something, even though the statute of limitations ran out long before your grandparents were babies. Then good luck to you with tracking down how much was stolen from the stagecoach, who it belonged to, and who their heirs were, then their heirs, and so forth until the present day. If you also happen to be related to one of the injured parties, then you even “owe” yourself!

Alternatively, maybe you’d rather just compensate them for how much you personally benefited several generations later. Then go ahead, figure out what this exact number is, and start giving away your personal fortune. Don’t worry about becoming impoverished by this. That’s because surely lots of other people are just as afflicted by scrupulosity as you are, and eagerly are waiting to cut you a check to compensate you for something that happened to a long-forgotten distant relative of your own. Surely your fairy godmother will make arrangements for that.

Hopefully that illustrates some of the problems with levying collective claims far in the past. Now let’s bring it closer. What if you found out your father held up a bank and got away with it? Should you go to prison because of that? We’ll leave aside the question of if stealing from banksters is merely the ethical equivalent of robbing thieves.

Although you have no criminal liability, are you personally obligated because of what someone else did? Do you need to hand over years of your labor to my hero Jamie Dimon? (I have a shrine to the CEO of JP Morgan Chase on my fireplace. I never fail to burn incense to His portrait every morning upon sunrise, chanting the Gayatri Mantra until the joss stick is consumed. Then I begin performing obeisance at my Anthony Fauci idol.) If you found out that part of the loot paid for your college education, unbeknownst to you at the time, would it really make a difference as to whether or not you’re on the hook for it? Again, this isn’t on you, because you didn’t commit the crime. Chances are that you personally never so much as shoplifted a pack of gum.

Let’s return to the past for another example. Suppose that in the 1860s, a distant ancestor was a cheapskate who took part in a labor practice which was legal at the time, though exploitative. It may well be possible. A lot of dodgy stuff was happening back in those days, right? However, if you have no liability for the above-going examples, then you’re not on the hook for this either. Now hold that thought. If you’re still not convinced, then note that the statute of limitations on labor claims is usually two years.

Racial Collective Guilt

We’ll continue the example. Let’s suppose this cheapskate from long ago wasn’t someone discernably genealogically related to you, but did look somewhat like you and had similar DNA. Since you belong to the same race, are you responsible for what happened back in the 1860s? Although a race is a biological unit of common kinship, obviously there would be a weaker claim to collective guilt than any of the prior examples which – once again – amount to nothing. If it’s impossible to inherit culpability from a direct ancestor, then neither can it “rub off” from a member of your extended family, your tribe, your ethnic group, or your race.

So let’s say that there were several such cheapskates belonging to your race. Does this strengthen a claim of collective guilt? Let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, that a hundred members of your race were involved in exploitative labor practices as late as the mid-1860s. That strengthens the claim by a hundred times. However, since your “inherited culpability” from one individual is absolutely nothing, then multiplying it by a hundred still results in zero culpability. (If this isn’t obvious, please enroll in a second grade math class.) The same goes, of course, for any higher number of such cheapskates over a century and a half ago. That’s right – you still didn’t do any of that!

Now let’s make things really complicated. Suppose there were multiple cheapskates, yet amounting only to a small fraction of your country – a little over 1%. Still feeling guilty? Suppose that the matter was tremendously controversial, generating lots of opposition. This was a major factor ultimately resulting in a devastating war, one of the effects of which was to end that particular type of exploitation. Once again, we’ve already established that you inherit no guilt even if you’re directly descended from a cheapskate (or a stagecoach robber, for that matter). You owe nothing to anyone for it. Now what about the descendants of the anti-cheapskates who fought and died to liberate this labor force? Trying to push guilt trips on them is brazen effrontery.

Bringing this in from thought experiment to reality, let’s consider what type of exploitation was going on up to the mid-1860s. Again, there was a lot of dodgy stuff happening in the early Industrial Age. So what was it then – unsafe factory conditions, starvation wages, union busting, child labor, fourteen hour shifts, lack of bathroom breaks, or what? More seriously, it should be pretty obvious by now that the matter at hand is antebellum slavery. It’s high time for white Americans to stop being manipulated by guilt about it, whether they’re the descendants of Rebels, Yankees, both, or neither.

As it happens, the case for racial guilt about slavery is even more tenuous than the examples I’ve put forth. About three hundred thousand saltwater negroes (to use the old term) had been brought in from Africa by 1807, after which the importation of slaves became illegal under president Thomas Jefferson. Approximately equal numbers of white indentured servants came to colonial America in chains, but they almost entirely have been dropped into the memory hole – funny thing, that. Moreover, some American Indian tribes owned slaves, but nobody expects them to wallow in self-guilt. There are even examples of free blacks owning fellow blacks for purposes of profit, and weren’t always the most enlightened of the cheapskates.

Also, slavery was legal back then, so any claims for compensation would be ex post facto and thereby illegitimate. I should add that whites didn’t enslave them; that was done by their fellow Africans. The captains of the négriers merely were buying from a market that had existed since antiquity. However, eventually whites freed them, thereby granting them a remarkable leap in status, and with nothing demanded of them in return. Also, counting both sides, the Civil War resulted in 624,000 KIAs. Wasn’t all that enough? Besides that, whatever surplus labor was acquired from slavery has long since been repaid – and vastly overpaid, at that – by largesse heaped onto the black community.

Really, one needn’t even bring up all that. The fact is that you weren’t involved in slavery, and neither are you responsible in a collective sense. Is anyone still feeling guilty now?

Corollaries and Objections

By extension, the same thing can be said for other guilt narratives, of course. Colonialism is a big one lately. Just as with slavery, every race has practiced territorial aggrandizement. In any society more advanced than primitive tribes, eventually this impulse becomes outright imperialism. Funny thing, though – nobody tries to make Asians feel guilty about their vast empires in the past. The difference is that a country would be a lot better off getting taken over by the British or French than the Seljuk, Ottoman, Mongol, or Japanese empires. Really, the things that whites are encouraged to feel guilty about are hardly unique. All other races did the same things too, but nobody froths at the mouth about it.

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One might ask, though – if racial guilt is invalid, is racial pride also invalid? This is a different matter entirely. Again, all races are capable of ethically questionable stuff, so that’s nothing unique. On the upper end of the achievement scale, though, a race’s cultural accomplishments are distinctively its own. They were created by exceptional people whose genes made it possible. This genetic inheritance is shared by their racial brethren, who may legitimately take pride in them. Asia’s spellbinding cultural treasures are a product of their unique creative genius. Likewise, only we could’ve created the glory of Western civilization. Finally, I doubt that any of the usual suspects who make the “you didn’t build that” argument would tell a black kid “You can’t be proud of Muhammad Ali because you’re not even a boxer.”

Note well, although individuals aren’t responsible for what others like them are doing or have done, this doesn’t change the fact that some populations are mutually incompatible. When two populations interact, this includes all members and not just the high-functioning ones who can coexist the easiest. After a certain point, a repeated pattern of misbehavior means that it’s time to separate in entirety. Dwelling in someone else’s society is not a human right.

For example, I don’t hold every single black responsible for their collective sky-high crime rate, or their other social dysfunctions that conservatives tepidly call “urban problems.” However, I do recognize that we have irreconcilable differences with them. We’ve catered to blacks since the 1960s, showered them with trillions in tax money, and tried pretty much everything to make multiracialism work, but it’s all been for nothing. In that case, separation will be the best for everyone.

Likewise, I don’t think of Jews as Christ-killers. I won’t even hold them collectively responsible for that lazy crank Karl Marx. Really, I don’t mind the ones who don’t cause problems. Unfortunately, the cost-benefit analysis of having Jews around looks pretty unfavorable, because of their contemporary crooks, screwy radicals, and sneaky Zionists. It’s nothing personal; they simply need to stop doing that, or move to their favorite country.

Next up, there’s the Robin DiAngelo shtick about “white privilege.” Even if you’ve never exploited any precious minorities, you still have an unfair advantage because of structural this and institutionalized that. It’s supposedly true even if you’re poor as dirt and living under a bridge. Thus, although you’re expected to engage in everlasting atonement for your whiteness, there’s still no redemption for you no matter how much you comply.

OK then, sure, our forefathers built us a fine country for “ourselves and our posterity.” Now let’s pretend for argument’s sake that America’s government still put its founding population first rather than last. (The types who’d object don’t have much to say about Korea being run for the benefit of Koreans, for example, but yanno. . .) Nonetheless, blacks gain tremendously from living in an advanced First World country, even if they didn’t contribute much to overall progress and orderliness. For one thing, their income is about ten times that of blacks in Africa. This tells you everything you need to know right there! Remember that, next time someone moans about the lingering effects of slavery.

Finally, Third World populations are pouring across the borders by the millions, legally or otherwise. Why are they doing that – so they can be oppressed? This is not to say that I particularly want them here. Rather, it’s to demonstrate that minoritist pouting is only a guilt trip tactic. They’re not downtrodden; they’re coddled. If not for that, they’d stay where they belong. Finally, always remember that bellyaching is manipulation.