My son attends a Californian elementary public school and is receiving daily his dose of White Guilt. ‘Social Studies’ is the main vehicle for his racial inferiority indoctrination but White Guilt seeps into every subject. His music program includes concerts that either cast early White Americans in a bad light and/or present early minorities in an especially – and untruthful – favorable light. His science program avoids mentioning scientific progress as overwhelmingly attributable to White Europeans. This racial bias is having a noticeable effect on his classmates. Recently they were asked each to select a hero and give a presentation to the class. My son, after discussion with me, chose Marie Curie for her discovery of radiation and her willingness to sacrifice her life by self-testing. He understood that her work, her sacrifice, her intellectual curiosity and her dedication has saved countless lives across the world – a true heroine and a European. Many pupils in his overwhelmingly White and Asian class, chose an African-American from the American civil rights era or South African Communist Nelson Mandela. Quite a few chose American Pro-Sports stars, none of whom had exhibited any kind of heroism or unselfishly given benefit to mankind. Clearly, many American kids, indoctrinated by TV as well as by school, confuse fame with heroism.
I asked my son if the teacher-led classroom discussion had brought up the heroism of fire-fighters at the 9/11 terrorism site, or US military personnel in war zones. The answer, “No!” At the time of his class project, the great American hero Admiral Jeremiah Denton had just died but I am sure that Denton is, and always will be, unknown to America’s school children. I pointed out to my boy that almost any soldier serving in Iraq or Afghanistan is an unknown hero, as are countless American firemen and police officers, and that pro-Sports ‘stars’ are not fit to lick the boots of such men. Indeed almost any plumber, carpenter, car mechanic, sailor or pest control operative is more useful to society than the most famous baseball player, net-ball player, pop warbler, guitar strummer or mincing Hollywood personality. Still, I digress, so back to White Guilt.
Last week, on a trip to Death Valley, the road took us past the site of the Owens Valley war-time Japanese/American internment camp which is now called the Manzanar National Historic Site. It is administered by the US National Parks Service. In the half hour we were there the site had a steady flow of visitors, quite a number of whom are obviously of Japanese ancestry but there were White Americans also. Many, like me, brought children. The ‘museum’ is attractively and effectively laid out but the sole message is that (White) America was guilty of a great crime when it rounded up some 110,000 residents of the West Coast who were Japanese citizens or of Japanese ancestry, and interned them in camps like Owens. Some 11,000 passed through Owens during the war.
Hindsight is a (wonderful) useful tool, especially when combined with a propaganda message and selective facts. As I explained to my son when we had finished the tour, this ‘museum’ deliberately ignores context, as well as crucial facts that do not advance the propaganda message. So I reminded him of the devastating Pearl Harbor attack, when many American servicemen died and the Pacific Fleet was decimated, leaving the West coast extremely vulnerable to invasion by Japanese forces. I reminded him that Japan did not declare war before attacking Pearl Harbor. I reminded him of the bloodthirsty Japanese invasion and occupation of China that had taken place in the preceding decade and the rape of Nanking. I also informed him of the Japanese fanaticism of that era and the view of most Japanese that all other races were inferior and not worthy of humane treatment.
I told my son about two men I worked with in the 1950’s, both of whom were survivors of ‘internment’ at the hands of the Japanese, one on the Burma railroad, and how both were permanent invalids as a result of their captivity. I suggested he compare their conditions as prisoners of the Japanese with the conditions at Owens, as shown in the records and photos on display. The narrative at Owens is that the conditions were inhumane and the whole internment totally unnecessary because the Japanese on the West Coast were harmless, indeed, loyal Americans.
Let me state here that I have Japanese American neighbors and friends and I consider them to be little different to me. My observations here in California in the year 2014 are that Japanese Americans, like most Americans of Oriental origin, are among our best citizens – intelligent, hardworking, law-abiding and mostly genuinely Christian. They prosper as a result of Faith, family cohesiveness, commitment to education and industriousness. They have nothing in common with some Leftist-favored minorities and are not welfare-dependent. They also have little in common with the Japanese who slaughtered the residents of Nanking, tortured Europeans and others across the Pacific Asian countries, and intended to invade and rape the USA. The 1930’s and 1940’s are a long time ago and things were very different then. I know a Japanese American who was interned and who subsequently resumed life in California and became a Republican – and very conservative – lawmaker. I don’t believe that Japanese Americans are looking to be a victim group, though the Owens museum is surely intended to awaken and nurture a sense of minority victimization.
Most of all Owens is intended to make White Americans feel guilty and it does so by employing dishonesty, as do the several history books by Leftist academics and quoted around the museum. We cannot possibly know how many Japanese sympathizers there were among those interned, nor can we know if there were some who would have carried out spying duties and sabotage if at liberty. As it turned out, the Japanese Imperial Army was never in a position to mount an invasion of the Pacific coast, but that could not have been foreseen in the first years of the war. If an invasion had been mounted perhaps many Japanese residents would have provided the invaders with information, aid and comfort. Blood is thicker than water and changed circumstances can produce changed loyalties. Maybe many Japanese residents of the West Coast would not have sided with an invasion force, but who can be sure? The US Government’s job was to take no chances. What is relevant here and needs to be considered is the history of German Americans and German residents of the USA during World War 1. It so happens that last Saturday’s WSJ book page throws light on this. Howard Blum reviews 5 books about German spies and terrorism in America during World War 1 and they show how old loyalties arise in wartime.
German and Italian residents of America also sided with America’s foes during World War 2. Some Jewish Americans have worked for Israel and betrayed the USA (e.g. Pollard) and we can anticipate that even now there are Muslim Americans of Middle Eastern origin working against the American people who live as their neighbors.
Much is made of the primitive conditions at Owens and other concentration camps but the conditions must be put in the context of an understandable lack of preparation. The USA had not planned ahead for war with Japan. American troops no doubt also endured much privation in the early days of the war before effective organization and material support could be provided. The internment camps were hard on the people and children uprooted from their daily lives and overcrowded into huts in the desert, but war negatively affects many innocent people. The detainees were relatively safe, which was more than could be said for many American soldiers, sailors and airmen who were quickly thrown into battle, largely unprepared. Military conscripts, mostly White, were also ’rounded up’ and placed in temporary camps far from home.
This was war! My own parents in the UK had their home destroyed by German bombers and my father was sent away for almost 6 years. My home town was blitzed and then bombed repeatedly and we spent our nights in primitive shelters, sleeping in trucks in the countryside and under railway arches. I hold no resentment towards Germans, Italians or Japanese for this and I do not expect them to be burdened with guilt about the war. The White Guilt that is being nurtured at Owens and other sites is without foundation and worse than mischievous. The US Government and its White citizens of the war years acted from a rational fear. The treatment meted out to the detainees was initially neglectful but neither cruel nor motivated by hatred.
I have no doubt that the National Parks Service is now an arm of the Leftist Obama Government and that its employees are indoctrinated, just as are the teachers at my son’s school.
The fostering of White Guilt is a deliberate Leftist strategy and it has no historical basis. I recently received some old photos of White farmers and their children, taken in Tennessee in the 1930’s and in Oklahoma in the 1940’s. They reveal desperately poor people who suffered greatly! The hardships of the detainees in Owens should be placed in the context of poor White citizens of the same period. The great majority of White people who trekked West across the American continent in the 1800’s were driven, not by a sense of adventure, but by hardship and hunger. They were as much economic refugees as any other racial group before or since, and many died on the way. When the survivors arrived they were not greeted with refugee centers and welfare but had to work or starve. They and their descendants need carry no guilt.
Before we left Owens, and for the benefit of my son, I politely engaged one of the two Rangers at the desk in a discussion about the lack of context in the exhibits and commentary. I referred to the threat of invasion, the brutality of Japanese troops in China and the poverty that was the lot of many Americans at that time. The Ranger was uncomfortable and clearly unused to the museum’s message being challenged. She quoted the subsequent unequalled heroism of an all-Japanese American Army Company. I am always skeptical of such claims as we know that Leftist academics are happy to twist facts in order to advance the bigger agenda – climate change being just the latest example. No doubt many Japanese Americans fought bravely, as did enemy Japanese soldiers, but this does not refute my charge.
Recently, a website visitor emailed us with a depressing conclusion in response to an article. He wrote that the situation in the USA had become so bad that only an economic collapse and an ensuing civil war could reverse the damage. It is hard to challenge such a conclusion for the Ruling Media Class and its Leftist allies are advancing on all fronts. Obama lies with impunity and he and the lawless Holder ignore the Constitution as they promote nothing less than a revolution. The Republican Party in Congress, by its very presence, confers legitimacy on the regime. All Republican Congressmen should long ago have walked out and laid bare this one-Party rule, denouncing the Media Class as the real enemy. Yes, things look bleak, indeed! Waiting for an economic collapse however is not a strategy but surrender. I remember the Trotskyite and Stalinist movements in the UK predicting imminent economic collapse and a revolutionary uprising. That was back in the 1950’s. They are still waiting! Nick Griffin of the Nationalist BNP was, not so long ago, predicting that an imminent peak oil crisis would soon propel his Party to power. Now there is a surplus of oil! Many Christians are foolishly and passively waiting for God to intervene, as the homosexual core of the Media Class sets the scene for the criminalization and obliteration of their Faith.
It is time for Conservatives, Christians and Nationalists to become fearless, not resigned. When I challenged the Rangers at the Manzanar National Historic Site (and in front of my son), I was resisting. I openly challenge White Guilt in any conversation I have. I loudly ridicule Al Gore’s climate change at the check-out counter of Safeway and anywhere else when the opportunity is offered. On my vehicle I have (NOM) bumper-stickers that support real marriage, denounce the lying Media and call for cuts in public spending. I write for this website in the hope that it will do its small bit, for this is definitely not the time to quit. My belief is that we must be fearless and persistent in exercising free speech. I have a young son and I do not want him growing up in an America controlled by perverts. I refuse to use the word ‘gay’ when referring to homosexuality and I insist on describing sodomy and sado/masochism. I never use the word ‘fetus’.
White Guilt is one of the weapons that our new Ruling Media Class and its Leftist allies employ to silence good people and suppress truth. Their use of the words ‘bigot’ and ‘discrimination’ are used in the same way to silence those who see moral decadence where it exists. Now is the time we must each become more outspoken and plainspoken for otherwise we are walking down one of the two roads to serfdom. This is the back road but it leads to exactly the same place as the economic road that von Hayek warned against.
Weather – Here in middle California, it is finally warming up with a few days of low 80’s temperatures. Contrary to Media statements this past winter has been a cold one, lacking only adequate rainfall for the ever-increasing population. The UK’s Spring season has got off to the usual wet start.
Music Choice – Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton was a native of New Orleans who played piano and led small bands in the early days of jazz. Like most professional musicians, when NO experienced a decline in prosperity, he migrated up the Mississippi to Chicago. Here he recorded a number of discs before disappearing into oblivion along with the economic good times of the 1920’s. In 1940 he was re-discovered by White jazz enthusiasts eager to track down the original masters of America’s own music and give them their dues. Morton was boastful and a flamboyant character but he was one of the true innovators and also a pioneer of the new music. His Chicago 1926 recording of “Dr. Jazz” (a Joe Oliver composition) is a good example of his joyous music.
The clarinet of Omer Simeon is featured throughout this 3-minute track but there is a good contribution from cornetist George Mitchell and Edward ‘Kid’ Ory plays trombone. Morton’s arranging style was to have lots of ‘breaks’ in the rhythm and to keep switching the voice instrument but the pace and drive are never lost. Morton’s raucous and uninhibited vocal leaves no doubt about his enjoyment of the music. At first hearing this music may sound dated and primitive but it has everything that modern music lacks, including humor and happiness