The White Man's Burden Still Lives

John Derbyshire writes for National Review and is one of those conservatives I kind of admire because he could care less that he sounds racist most of the time. And its not an ignorant kind of racism, its a "British-Empire-Civilizing-the-Heathens" kind of racism. The kind that went out of fashion about a century ago, but still lingers in the ids of conservatives today.

Here's Derbyshire on Israel-Palestine. Also note that this particular passage was quoted by another National Review-ian who said "its hard to argue with":

North of five million people have been slaughtered in the Congo this past twelve years, and nobody much (no, not me—how about you?) has lost a wink of sleep over it.

. . . [But] the Congo is nothing to me. Israel is something to me. It’s an outpost of my civilization, organized on principles I agree with, inhabited by people I could live at ease with. They defend themselves, their borders, their interests, with the kind of vigor and thick-skinned determination I’d like to see my nation display. (If only!) I admire them and wish them well.

There’s an affinity. In some tenuous sense, they are me, and I am them. The Gazans? I’ll care about them right after I start caring about the Congo.

Its hard for me to believe that people still think this way in the 21st Century. Even harder to believe that they will come right out and admit it. And its probably hardest for me to believe that Republicans think they will ever get many votes from minorities with degenerates like this leading their movement.