Africans will not prosper in a system that is not of their own design. They will only prosper in a system that considers their history, heritage, and culture. That is the reason many black Americans cannot and possibly never will succeed by Anglo-American standards. Until powerful countries and individiuals learn that conquest and subjugation of other peoples only lead to their disorientation and maladjustment to the conquerors ways we will always have the problem of judging other peoples by our standards. For more insight on this matter please read Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”.

“It was interesting to read [James Howard Kunstler’s] take on Jo’burg and Soweto. My husband and I are Americans who lived in Cape Town for nearly 8 years. Other than [his] studious avoidance of the word ‘Colored’ and squeamish substitution of ‘Asian’ (coward), I thought it was pretty good.

“Ultimately, although we owned a fantastic house in the (mostly) charming village of Hout Bay, enjoyed a fantastic lifestyle and had even wrangled permanent resident visas, we left too. The endless 24/7 strain of just existing got to be too much. By that I mean that this is a place where you simply never feel safe. Not in your car, certainly, not in your house, not on the street, not ever anywhere. Arguably there are more dangerous places to live in the US. However at least in the US, crimes make a certain sense. Robberies are about financial gain. Gang violence is about drugs or territory. Serial murders are about psychosis. But in South Africa, the crimes, despite what one would intuitively think, are not about any of these things. Who knows what it is about. Elderly people are killed in their homes by thugs who break in the door, beat the inhabitants to death with rocks, drink the beer in the fridge an d leave.”

You don’t think that sort of casual violence has anything to do with race or resentment over colonization, do you? And of course, there is the growing xenophobia. As I’ve said before in these pages, when times get really tough, people eat each other and they do their butchering along ethnic and racial lines. Whites have always been the easy targets of choice in South Africa, but now job-stealing immigrants are just as likely to wind up macheted.

There’s a reason there’s a different flavor to urban violence stateside. Most of the whites were smart enough to flee the cities when the feds and local governments started using redistribution to encourage bad habits in the formerly minority population. So a lot of the crime here is black on black. In fact, statistically speaking, if you’re not black, male, between the ages of 16 and 25, and involved in the drug trade, you’re not nearly as likely to wind up dead in Baltimore.

“I was born and brought up in S. Africa around the mines in Joburg, Kimberley, etc. James Howard Kunstler’s picture of S. Africa is an accurate one. So is NPR’s. It’s a complicated place. The ‘shooter’ who writes that no nation ruled by a black has ever succeeded is right, too, if he means only post-colonial Africa. But the European nation state is an unnatural entity in Africa, an import imposed on tribal societies. Imagine trying to make Americans live under Chinese rule with Chinese ideas. How well would we adapt? African chaos has a similar source. Political systems (as we are discovering in Iraq) are not easily transported. African dictators lord it over phony ‘states’ that lack all cultural unity and coherence. No African nation has borders drawn by Africans. Trying to make out that Africans are inherently incompet ent to rule is mere racism.”

Very good points. African states all over the world — including the de facto ones in this nation’s urban reservations — are a mess born of the colonial experience. You may now send me your hate mail for blaming your ancestors for colonization and plunder. If it helps: thanks for antibiotics, the personal computer and Chopin.

The Shooter in question wrote me back:

“I was simply stating facts, as I understand them and I am not even an amateur historian. I have to comment here that I do NOT look upon all blacks as all failures — persons or governments — just as I don’t regard all non-blacks as better — persons or governments. Wars, either between countries or tribes have occurred throughout history and not unique to any continent or race. And I recognized long ago (I’m 85) that we (the U.S.) were destined to fail and that our government was well along on its plunge into socialism, that one of the most tragic events in our history was the creation of the Federal Reserve, and that second only to Nixon’s severance of the dollar from gold. The third most tragic: the adoption of the income tax. We are one of only two countries in the civilized world that tax income without regard for whe re it was earned. The others with an income tax collect it only on earnings within that country.

“I knew of your race long before yesterday and it mattered not one bit. I admire, respect and look forward to reading your truly conservative views in their entirety whenever they appear.”

Thank you. And tomorrow we’ll be getting back to railing against the Fed, fiat and that damned income tax.

Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder

P.S.: Just an FYI: by tomorrow our special discount offer on our option service will be over. You have until midnight tonight…so if you’ve been thinking about it, you may want to click here before then.

See you tomorrow.