EDITOR’S FOREWORD (Daniel):
This week we have featured many high achievers from Tom Tugendhat MP to Canada’s Chris Alexander. We have been honoured by their articles and we thank them for their contributions. Unfortunately though, not everyone in this world who merits recognition and financial success has been so lucky.
DC-based Ashok Panikkar is an exceptional mind with incredible insights on the failings of democracy. He has always been genuine truth seeker, rebelling against Indian tradition and American Washington groupthink where Truth tells him that he must. He has paid for his choices. Like a modern day Prophet Jeremiah, he has been condemned to unemployment due to his breach with progressive shibboleths in the name of Truth. He is currently struggling to find even menial employment.
If Truth means anything to us, we must financially support those who are condemned to the pit by vainglorious Judean Kings and the modern Washington self-righteous. We must support Truth in a world of hollowed-out words so that the glory of the Anglo-West (which includes India) may be regained. That means supporting Ashok. There is no point crying for Vincent Van Gogh and then letting his modern descendants suffer in vain. There is no point complaining about lies and then ignoring those at the coal face. It is for this reason that I ask you subscribe today. All earnings from this chapter will be divided between Ashok and myself, a fellow unemployee (so do select the “Patron” rate if you can).
Finally, Ashok’s brilliance is recognised by so many. In a coincidence which defies the laws of probability, fellow Guerre and Shalom guest writer Vaishnav Sunil was Ashok’s neighbour in India (a country of 1.5 billion people!). Imagine the odds. Vaishnav told me:
“Excited to see you and Ashok collaborating. He was our neighbor when I was 15 and my first job was doing data entry at his conflict resolution firm, while being in awe of his ability to think and articulate.”
SO PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
It’s the 2 year anniversary of Guerre and Shalom! As a special birthday present, subscriptions are set at a ridiculous £35/$47. This offer is until TOMORROW ONLY. Don’t miss out. If you wish to contribute more, please select the Patron / Founder Member status.
PREVIOUSLY FROM “TEN LIES THAT KILLED DEMOCRACY”:
TODAY WE DISCOVER THE SEVENTH LIE:
Chapter Summary: In today’s chapter Ashok takes on one of the most powerful shibboleths of the modern era —that of Equality. While admitting its value as an aspiration for any humane society, he worries that perhaps we have carried it too far. An unhealthy obsession with equality and equity, he writes, has shifted us away from our unique civilizational attributes (coming out of the Transformational Triad) of intellectual and creative excellence. Without this emphasis on excellence we would not have been able to create the modern, liberal, diverse and meritocratic West. He warns that the more we tolerate bad ideas and encourage poor thinking (in the service of equality), the more we will destroy natural talents, diminish honest striving, and eventually destroy our civilization.
THE SEVENTH LIE THAT KILLED DEMOCRACY: Equality
by Ashok Panikkar
The Sixth Lie: In a real democracy everybody is equal.
Devora Blum taught sociology at a small liberal arts college and often talked about her important work with at-risk youth in cities. “Kids that hang around at street corners are not necessarily gang members,” she would inform her attentive audiences. “Everyone who deals in drugs is not violent,” her voice getting more excited. “And most importantly, we shouldn’t be criminalizing possession of soft drugs. After all it is society that has denied these young people a childhood.” She combated the dangerous stereotypes about what the rest of us called “inner-city” kids (she hated the term).
“We cannot call ourselves a developed democracy, or a civilized people, unless every child is given an equal share of our prosperity. Given what these kids have suffered, they are entitled to our empathy and the same opportunities that others have—we owe them this.” We were in awe of her. She was working with the most vulnerable people in the most troubled parts of American cities. She was not just a professor- she was an activist- which in the Boston of the mid-nineties put her in the same category as “Goddess”.
Then, one day, she ran into Justin Wong at a friend’s house. Justin was a pale, nerdish fellow who looked as though he had been locked up in a cellar with his computers and was let out only on rare occasions just to irritate the rest of us. “So, tell me,” Justin started mildly enough, “why aren’t these kids in school, and where are their parents?” Devora, sensing an opportunity to educate, explained how systemic injustice kept generations of Black folk in poverty, and how the daily trauma of being Black in America prevented their parents from being present in the lives of their young. Justin listened, “Hmm… Hmm… but then, how do you explain that other people like, for instance, Chinese Americans, have been able to push themselves up economically?” he asked. Devora was a cat toying with a mouse, “Ah, Justin, you can’t really compare African Americans with ‘Asian’ immigrants, can you now?” She smiled indulgently, “Because, after all, you didn’t come here as slaves. You have no idea of the trauma that generations of African Americans have experienced, even after emancipation, since your family had no such history.”
Justin looked like a mouse cornered, hesitantly replying that his family wasn’t privileged. His ancestors were recruited to build the transcontinental railroad on the West Coast when few others were willing to do this dangerous work. They died in droves, were treated like slaves, paid lower wages, and lived in the very underground tunnels that they were constructing, because only the white workers got tents. Sensing another opening, Devra said triumphantly, “But let’s face it, you are light skinned- almost white. How can you even know what it’s to be black. Property values don’t come down when your family moves into the neighborhood.”.
Justin Wong sighing, apologized to her and everyone else in the room. “I am sorry if I have offended you, or African Americans. You are quite right, I don’t know what it means to be Black. But I also know it’s not fair to compare relative victimhood.” With great deference, he now faced her, “All I’m trying to say is that my people never, really, had it easy. Like African Americans, our schoolchildren were also subject to segregation. Moreover, while African Americans were emancipated after the Civil War, in 1882 the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented us from becoming citizens. This act also banned my people from even entering the United States and was repealed only in 1943.”. Then looking straight at her, he said, “If we could overcome all of that, why can’t African Americans?”
