Friday, November 28, 2014

Progressive Cognitive Dissonance on Ferguson

By James Ostrowski
The left or progressive reaction to Ferguson is fascinating and illuminating.  Progressives place great faith in government to solve problems and improve society.  The police, courts and prosecutors are each government bureaucracies. The grand jury, although made up of private citizens is, unfortunately, administered and controlled by the above agencies and applies statutes enacted by the state legislature, yet another government agency.  Though progressives are sharply critical of how these government agencies acted in the Ferguson episode, there has been no apparent admission or recognition that, from their point of view, government failed twice in Ferguson, first in killing a man and second by failing to prosecute. Nor is there any move to reduce the power of any of these government agencies they believe failed here.
Typically for progressives, they instead seek
out private sector or societal scapegoats when government fails. The designated scapegoat in this instance, white racism, is problematical for progressives, however.  In the absence of any hard evidence that Darren Wilson was a racist or acted in a racist manner, the case defaults to, in my view, a generalized notion that all or most whites harbor deep-seated hostility towards blacks, whether or not they are aware of it or would admit it. Since Wilson is white, he must be at the very least a deeply closeted racist.  
But isn’t it obvious that those beliefs are themselves just the sort of insidious racism and hate speech that progressives claim to abhor and even attempt to prohibit by legislation to the extent free speech concerns allow them to do so?  Yes! Worse yet is the claim, nonsensical as it may be, that this generalized white racism is so virulent that it leads white people to, on occasion and against their own legal self-interest, kill black people for the sole purpose of satisfying racial hatred.
Obviously, this type of hate speech against whites can have the result, and indeed, has had the result of encouraging violence against whites in retaliation against generalized white racism.  Take note of the ruthless logic of retaliation not only against the alleged perpetrator Wilson but against any white person within reach.  After all, Wilson's real offense is that he is white and thereafter a probable racist and thus a racially-motivated murderer.  Any other carrier of the racist gene is also fair game.
Finally, this episode beautifully illustrates the progressive’s cognitive dissonance about the prospects for a multicultural democracy. Progressives believe that most whites have an intrinsic hostility to, or, at the very least, an inability to understand or sympathize with blacks or other minorities.  They further believe that this cross-cultural ineptitude infects democratic institutions leading to such incidents as murder by cop and the cover-up of said murder by the police, courts, prosecutors and grand juries.
At the same time, progressives endlessly tout the virtues of multiculturalism and they actively support immigration policies that promise to drastically and speedily increase the multicultural nature of the country.  What progressives have yet to explain is, if different groups are intrinsically hostile to each other, or unable to understand each other and they interpret the very same facts in completely opposite ways, how do they expect these groups to live together in peace?  And please do not respond by arguing that democracy will smooth over these differences since the recent Ferguson riots say otherwise.
In my recent book, Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America, I address these issues in detail and conclude:
“Multiculturalism and big government are a toxic mix.  We see this today all over the world with ethnic, racial or religious violence ongoing in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Israel/Palestine, Darfur, Chechnya and other regions. Those who look forward to a peaceful multicultural world should embrace liberalism and the free market.  No other political system can maintain peace and tolerance in a multicultural world.”




 Copyright by James Ostrowski (2014) All rights reserved

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