Despite the multiple eruptions of scandal threatening to engulf the Obama administration (a dazzling constellation of embarrassments that I would normally be commenting on with gusto), it’s the Jason Richwine affair that has my attention. It is the best and most public example, so far, of the pathological cognitive dissonance required to sustain mainstream multiculturalist liberalism.
Richwine’s heresy is particularly dangerous because it sprang from the very heart of the Cathedral itself, and was built on solid rock: a patient, rational examination of quantifiable attributes of the real world, by a Harvard-trained expert in the analysis of empirical data. It was not religious or superstitious. It was, in short, everything the secular Left prides itself on: to paraphrase President Obama’s inaugural address, it was Science restored to its rightful place. Veritas!
Yet the result it brought forth was a hideous, damnable thing: a reanimated, tottering corpse, long thought dead for all time; the enemy and anathema of all that the Cathedral has made holy. In its animal truth it reeked of corruption, of worldly filth. Its sweet, rotten stench, filling the nostrils of the faithful, had the power to reawaken forbidden, pagan memories, ancient and dark and seductive.
So: it had to go. Being nothing more than a creation of rational inquiry, though, it couldn’t be fought on its own terms, and so no one has tried. What was needed was a witch-burning. And so Jason Richwine was dragged to the stake.
Not a witch-burning, you say? Sorry, but I’m afraid that’s exactly what it was. For the details, I urge you all to read this excellent post by hbd* chick.