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Thursday, June 30, 2011 11:16:14 AM
Enlightenment Quote of the Day: David Hume as Tea Party Precursor
David Hume, Eighteenth-Century Teabagger
By Brendan Beery
Posted on May 25, 2011
While most Americans celebrate the lives and minds of Eigteenth-Century thinkers like Jefferson, Adams, Paine and Madison, the study of those men’s writings tends to dig up the kind of free thinking and audacity that makes dogmatic traditionalists piddle. So conservatives have picked through Eighteenth-Century thinkers in search of more soothing ideas. I doubt any “philosophers” from that Enlightenment have been more cited by conservatives than Edmund Burke or David Hume. As many of us endeavor to understand the link between racism and the Tea Party, consider this passage from conservative hero David Hume, penned in 1742:
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers among them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valor, their form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symproms of ingenuity, tho’ low [white] people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negro as a man of parts and learning; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.
Hume’s ignorance is self-evident. But I noted with particular interest the last sentence in this passage; that sentence, more than any other I have recently read, illustrates the kind of thinking that undergirds the Tea Party movement that, not coincidentally, emerged contemporaneously with the ascendance of Barack Obama.
Having declared the self-serving supremacy of white people in sweeping terms that admitted of not one single exception to his principle of whites-only ingenuity, how was Hume to deal with the spreading word of a great thinker from . . . Jamaica? Naturally, Hume’s instinct was to forcefully resist evidence tending to undercut his own ideas.
Hume’s reference to an emerging thinker in Jamaica was likely a reference to Francis Williams [ http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/francis-williams-a-portrait-of-an-early-black-writer/ ], a Jamaican poet and scholar who lived from 1702-1770. It is telling how dismissive Hume was of Williams’ accomplishments; since only whites were supposed to meaningfully excel at anything to do with learning and arts, Williams must have been “admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”
It’s hardly much of a leap to see Tea Partiers’ fondness for Trumpian theories about Barack Obama’s being a “poor student” as a corollary to Hume’s rant. The success of Barack Obama is deeply threatening to the tribalistic whites who make up so much of the Tea Party’s ranks. It stands in unmistakable opposition to all their assumptions about race and Americanism. Like Hume, Tea Partiers resist evidence that shakes the foundations of their own small ideas. The idea of a black man in the White House is now a reality that cannot be undone, so Tea Partiers have trained their labors on tearing down Obama’s accomplishments before and since his ascendency to the White House. His degrees from Columbia and Harvard are debased with suggestions of special favors; his American citizenship is endlessly scrutinized; all that he has accomplished is attributed to abiding the policies of George W. Bush; and he is saddled with blame for every species of disaster he inherited from the dolt he succeeded.
That so many Teabaggers cannot articulate what it is they are angry about is strong evidence they are angry about something unseemly: something they would explain more clearly if only they were more adept with words and learning.
Copyright 2011 Brendan Beery (emphasis in original)
http://beeryblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/enlightenment-quote-of-the-day-david-hume-as-tea-party-precursor/ [with comments]
---
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64639014 (and any future following)
David Hume, Eighteenth-Century Teabagger
By Brendan Beery
Posted on May 25, 2011
While most Americans celebrate the lives and minds of Eigteenth-Century thinkers like Jefferson, Adams, Paine and Madison, the study of those men’s writings tends to dig up the kind of free thinking and audacity that makes dogmatic traditionalists piddle. So conservatives have picked through Eighteenth-Century thinkers in search of more soothing ideas. I doubt any “philosophers” from that Enlightenment have been more cited by conservatives than Edmund Burke or David Hume. As many of us endeavor to understand the link between racism and the Tea Party, consider this passage from conservative hero David Hume, penned in 1742:
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers among them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valor, their form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symproms of ingenuity, tho’ low [white] people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negro as a man of parts and learning; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.
Hume’s ignorance is self-evident. But I noted with particular interest the last sentence in this passage; that sentence, more than any other I have recently read, illustrates the kind of thinking that undergirds the Tea Party movement that, not coincidentally, emerged contemporaneously with the ascendance of Barack Obama.
Having declared the self-serving supremacy of white people in sweeping terms that admitted of not one single exception to his principle of whites-only ingenuity, how was Hume to deal with the spreading word of a great thinker from . . . Jamaica? Naturally, Hume’s instinct was to forcefully resist evidence tending to undercut his own ideas.
Hume’s reference to an emerging thinker in Jamaica was likely a reference to Francis Williams [ http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/francis-williams-a-portrait-of-an-early-black-writer/ ], a Jamaican poet and scholar who lived from 1702-1770. It is telling how dismissive Hume was of Williams’ accomplishments; since only whites were supposed to meaningfully excel at anything to do with learning and arts, Williams must have been “admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”
It’s hardly much of a leap to see Tea Partiers’ fondness for Trumpian theories about Barack Obama’s being a “poor student” as a corollary to Hume’s rant. The success of Barack Obama is deeply threatening to the tribalistic whites who make up so much of the Tea Party’s ranks. It stands in unmistakable opposition to all their assumptions about race and Americanism. Like Hume, Tea Partiers resist evidence that shakes the foundations of their own small ideas. The idea of a black man in the White House is now a reality that cannot be undone, so Tea Partiers have trained their labors on tearing down Obama’s accomplishments before and since his ascendency to the White House. His degrees from Columbia and Harvard are debased with suggestions of special favors; his American citizenship is endlessly scrutinized; all that he has accomplished is attributed to abiding the policies of George W. Bush; and he is saddled with blame for every species of disaster he inherited from the dolt he succeeded.
That so many Teabaggers cannot articulate what it is they are angry about is strong evidence they are angry about something unseemly: something they would explain more clearly if only they were more adept with words and learning.
Copyright 2011 Brendan Beery (emphasis in original)
http://beeryblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/enlightenment-quote-of-the-day-david-hume-as-tea-party-precursor/ [with comments]
---
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64639014 (and any future following)
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