Dear Friends,
It seems to me, bigotry is alive and well today, and the very same people are responsible. They claim we need institutionalized prejudice to fight former institutionalized prejudice. Those people are the heirs of progressives of old, like Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson and their ilk, who created the institutions of prejudice that are active today. The victims of their bigotry are different but their bigotry is obvious to anyone with their eyes open. Moreover, they use the term racist to quell debate and have bandied the terms, bigot, prejudice and racist so much, the despicable nature of the words and their negative connotation has lost most of their value. The reason progressives use bigotry is several fold, they get power from it, they get wealth from it, it allows them to own the debate, and most of all, they get a feeling of superiority from it. Humanity needs to move beyond such childish tactics before our philosophy can rise to the heights it needs to, to support our scientific and technological advancements, because unless our philosophy keeps up with our technology and science, those two legs will become unstable and fall, bringing our whole society down with them.
Science and technology require as a prerequisite, a philosophical underpinning to support them, else they falls over due to ignorance and bias. Civilization has three legs, philosophy, (which includes religion), Science and technology. Unless they grow together the civilization becomes unstable. If one shrinks as the others grow a fall becomes inevitable and most human civilizations throughout history have become unstable this way. They grow in science and technology as their philosophy becomes more human hearted, but once they have reached a new pinnacle of prosperity, the people are led away from their human hearted philosophy, by the elite who have become arrogant and egoistic. The leg of the philosophy supporting the civilization and society shrinks and the collapse becomes inevitable. In hind sight all civilizational collapses are obvious but the people within that civilization are blind to it, even attacking those who point out the obvious as crazy, like the Romans did Titus Livius.
Bigotry is any time people are lumped into groups by a characteristic. It is most foul when that characteristic is considered negative. Whenever someone says, “All of these people are…” they are demonstrating bigotry. It doesn’t matter who the group consists of nor the characteristic described, whenever someone groups people by a characteristic, it is bigotry. We can also deduce that group politics is based on bigotry. To factionalize the people and pit each group against the others is to use prejudice as a political weapon. Such scheming has been the progressive playbook from the beginning. There is no difference between Jim Crow and vilifying gun owners. Both pile dispirit people into a group, assign that group certain negative characteristics, and then pits society against that group for the negative qualities they have been assigned.
Progressivism cut it’s teeth on bigotry and racism, today progressives use it their fall back position, prejudice as a bulwark against debate. There is not a debate today where progressive don’t use their ace in the hole. They play the race card at every opportunity, sometimes to claim preferential treatment for this or that group, sometimes to vilify a group or to simply stop a debate that is skirting the truth about a subject. Progressivism is all about group politics. Without lumping people into some artificial group and either claiming that group is put upon or evil, progressivism would have no place. It is all about groups, like all socialism, the very term, socialism, means politics for the benefit of a certain group. Just listen to them deny the sovereignty of the individual for the group, “People need to start thinking about what is best for the greater good instead of themselves…” Such utterances put the group ahead of the individual and thereby are bigoted in the most general sense of the term.
The most pernicious form prejudice takes is when the bigot gets a feeling of superiority from his or her prejudice. This is perhaps the greatest sin of progressivism. Progressives get a feeling of moral superiority from their prejudice and bigotry. While denying moral authority that comes from the divine they find moral superiority in the banal. That is possibly the main reason progressives and all socialists, are so attached to prejudice, is that feeling of superiority it gives them.
At their very core, bigotry, racism and prejudice are comparative. “I am better than them because…” It is foolish to compare yourself to others, because there will always be those who are greater and lesser, and that leads to arrogance and anger. Bigotry, racism and prejudice have no place in modern society, especially as a political weapon. When you see it point it out, not as a means to stop debate, but to protect open debate and nullify the power bigotry has over us. In order to continue expanding in science and technology our civilization must advance philosophically. True philosophy is not bigoted, no matter the group protected or harassed, true philosophy is human hearted, inclusive and includes the divine, never the banal.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
