| | Hi, folks:
The main problem, and the reason racism is becoming popular again (well, other than state-sanctioned racism such as "affirmative action"), is that people tend to confuse values with ethnicity, just like Mark VendelBosch said.
Here's a few examples:
The National alliance (and their radio show "american dissident voices). Dr. William L. Pierce used to run this organization, which champions something called "White values". Now, they respect stuff like: technological progress, civilized living, equality under the law (for Europeans), etc. But the mistake they (and all other Racists of all types) make is in confusing these VALUES, with the "race" which created them:
This is where we, as Objectivists, run into problems: it gets assumed (by every Postmodernist nutjob out there) that defense of "Western Civilization" is automatically racist, because it's "eurocentric". In other words, we're viewed as not respecting other cultures, or non-Whites, which is patently untrue. The fact is that European HAPPENED to make certain cultural breakthroughs, and stumble on some pivotal ideas: Reason, rule of law, limited government, etc.
So when we Objectivists come out in defense of these "Western" institutions (as opposed to, say, female genital mutilation, Environmentalism, or what have you), we sometimes get looked at like we're Racists or Ethnocentric, which we manifestly are not.
This is why some of mr. Smolynov's (Is that his name?)ideas really don't gibe with what I know about Objectivism. The fact that he explicitly subtitles his website "a journal for Western Man" should pretty much tip you off). He doesn't seem to actually be an Objectivist. Rather, he seems to be a traditionalist MASQUERADING as an Objectivist.
This is not to imply that I'm trying to drive anybody out of "the Movement" or anything, but we really DO need to be clear on whether we stand for our values because they are TRUE, or because they are cultural.
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