Why Farrakhan repels The elevation of Louis Farrakhan is a disaster for all Americans
Jr, David R Carlin
OF SEVERAL MINDS DAVID R. CARLIH, JR. WHY FARRAKHAN REPELS The pathology of anti-Semitism I don't know if you can bear reading yet one more commentary on the O. J. Simp-son verdict's public...
...One of these is that anti-Semitism is wrong...
...Black America was badly enough off yesterday...
...His case is small potatoes, I suppose, when compared with Hitler and Stalin...
...Matthew Arnold used certain lines of poetry as "touchstones...
...Besides, you have to separate the message from the messenger...
...Don't nit-pick about details...
...And so are we all...
...Now in a morally skeptical age, such as ours is, we badly need moral touchstones-a few absolutes-we can be sure of, guides for our murky journey through morally questionable terrain...
...but there is no question that it has done wonders to ease the conscience of those inclined to lying, cheating, stealing, and philandering...
...After three decades of "integration" we saw the depressing truth: we were still two nations...
...They are absolute gems, the gold standard...
...In other words, the inconvenience of a certain amount of anti-Semitism is a small price to pay for the good effect Farrakhan's sermons are likely to have...
...The appalling state in which vast numbers of lower-class blacks have been living for years now-rife with almost every imaginable social pathology-has hurt all Americans...
...The quality of other poetry might be debatable, but there are some lines, he said, whose merit is beyond doubt...
...It is doubtful this rule of morality has in fact produced many beneficial results...
...This means that otherwise wicked conduct becomes virtuous if it promises to produce a large enough harvest of beneficial results...
...WHY FARRAKHAN REPELS The pathology of anti-Semitism I don't know if you can bear reading yet one more commentary on the O. J. Simp-son verdict's public reception and the Million Man March...
...The conferring of respectability on Louis Farrakhan, his elevation to the status of respectable leadership, is yet another disaster for African-Americans...
...Oh, sure," they tell us, "Farrakhan may have a few controversial ideas, and we certainly don't agree with everything he says...
...Keep focused on his predominant message...
...This being so, anti-Semites must be kept out of the circle of respectability...
...You shouldn't confer legitimacy on them, nor should you disgrace yourself by becoming apologists for them...
...that is, they have held that actions are to be evaluated purely in terms of consequences...
...Thus it is permissible to lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, etc., provided these actions are likely to produce an abundance of good results...
...Whites in general deplored the verdict while blacks generally applauded it...
...How far downhill we have slid since Martin Luther King, Jr., who reminded Americans of their common humanity, reminded us that we are equally children of God...
...I know I can hardly bear writing it, so tragic are the realities symbolized by these events...
...Mid-October's Million Man March was more discouraging still...
...It also eased the conscience of Stalin and his associates, who, though they murdered and enslaved millions, did so with the benign intention of producing an eventual heaven on earth...
...Moral flexibility becomes the golden rule...
...When I say we have slid downhill since the days of King, this "we" includes Americans generally...
...The twentieth century, which has been the most homicidal century in human history, has taught a number of lessons that all but moral imbeciles should have learned by now...
...and not just a little wrong, but terribly wrong...
...today, having Farrakhan among its leaders, it is even worse off...
...In resolute hands, utilitarianism is a kind of moral alchemy, turning base actions into gold...
...Here was the consecration of an anti-Semite as part of the mainstream leadership of black America...
...You shouldn't go to dinner with them, and you certainly shouldn't participate in their political rallies...
...But he has a far larger number of excellent ideas, for example, his endorsement of such values as clean living, crime avoidance, spousal fidelity, parental responsibility, hard work, self-discipline, and self-reliance...
...but from small potatoes (if I may mix vegetable metaphors) mighty oaks have grown...
...This univer-salistic viewpoint is foreign to Minister Farrakhan, who teaches that Jews are "bloodsuckers...
...Compounding this are the apologetics of those, both black and white, who deny that any disaster has taken place...
...The same goes for Hitler and company, who were convinced that humanity would be far happier living in a Judenrein world...
...Anti-Semitism is pernicious...
...You mustn't poison the guide dog of a blind person" is one example of a moral rule that all of us, even the most lunatic of multiculturalists, still subscribe to...
...The reaction to the Simpson verdict was a flash of lightning in the night, illuminating a terrible landscape...
...It is not, nor can it come to, good...
...A disease in one area of the body politic is an illness in the body as a whole...
...As such, they can serve as measures for all other poetry...
...Once call these touchstones into doubt, and we are lost completely...
...Period...
...Until the other day, "You mustn't be an anti-Semite" was another...
...hence a disaster for all Americans...
...Our civilization used to be well endowed with moral absolutes, but we are now reduced to a relative handful...
...The utilitarian mentality is at work when we justify Farrakhan on the grounds that, despite his anti-Semitism, he will produce good results...
...Modernists, as part of their program of liquidating what they see as the archaic and overly conservative morality of the Stoic-Christian tradition, have often adopted a utilitarian morality...
...Metaphorically speaking, black and white America may be two nations, but in literal fact we belong to a single nation...
Vol. 122 • November 1995 • No. 20
