Following The Blind

Over at White America, Ian Jobling has written an ode to John Rawls, a famous liberal philosopher who rationalized almost everything racialists despise. Jobling finds Rawls significant because he was the most articulate champion of what he has taken to calling “consensus Western political principles” — or liberal capitalist democracy, the socioeconomic system imposed on “liberated” Western Europe following the Anglo-American triumph in the Second World War. This ties into his current project of searching for a political philosophy to justify (post hoc) his pro-White beliefs.

Apparently, Jobling isn’t all that interested in empirical results. LCD positively correlates everywhere with racial degeneracy in White countries. From a pro-White perspective, this would seem to discredit the status quo and indicate that we should search for constructive alternatives, but ironically Jobling takes the current system as his essential starting point. Presumably, this is because he fears treading too far outside the political mainstream, which naturally raises the question why he bothers searching at all (when he already has the answer).

But let us consider Rawls on his own merits. Does his political philosophy offer anything of use to pro-Whites? By Jobling’s own admission, Rawls considers “explicit racial doctrines” to be “unjust” and “irrational”; they are not “moral conceptions” but “means of suppression.” Rawls’ so-called “Original Position” completely strips Whites of every aspect of their identity. In the name of “justice,” at least as he conceives it, Rawls would have us enact social arrangements (i.e. affirmative action and welfare) which would “bring the greatest benefit to the least advantaged” members of society. There isn’t even a morsel of red meat here to provide succor for racialists, but Jobling speaks of Rawls in only the most glowing and uncritical of terms.

The communitarian critique of Rawls is powerful and well known. It collapses the pretense to neutrality which A Theory of Justice is based on. Jobling never bothers to engage it, but it is worth revisiting here.

1.) Rawls is guilty of writing from the narrow perspective of his own social class. In short, he sounds exactly like a dry, deracinated, mid-twentieth century American liberal intellectual. His prejudices were not derived at all from abstract reasoning, but instead were drawn from his professional milieu. He was writing within the confines of a well established tradition; the history of which is hardly irrelevant.

2.) Real communities are organic. The individual is born into a community and socialized into its mores. Social identities are at the heart of every community that has ever existed. Rawls was only affirming and prescribing the values of his own community for everyone else. His attempt to dispense with identity was a complete failure.

3.) Rawls’ endorsement of welfare liberalism was an affirmation of the status quo of his times. History is again hardly irrelevant here. It is central to understanding how Rawls spun his entire conception of justice.

There is nothing to poach from Rawls’ theories whether on their merits or for practical reasons. Aside from their popularity, they have nothing going for them. There are far richer veins of political theory out there for racialists to mine.