Waiting for Darwin

“We now know that Marxism and Freudianism were elegant intellectual fantasies.”

Waiting for Darwin - Taki's Magazine
by John Derbyshire  November 22, 2012

There has been an outbreak of realism recently.

I noticed it first in the postelection commentary. The normal thing is that following an election, the thumb-sucking commentariat carves up the result by interests: region, class, religion, the economy, liberal-conservative inclination, etc.

You can include me among the thumb-suckers. Here I was ruminating on the elections of 2008 (cultural Marxism, class warfare), 2004 (spending, SCOTUS, groveling to foreigners), 2000 (regulations, taxes, immigration).

This time around the commentary was wall-to-wall demography. The left was crowing about how women and minorities had come into their inheritance while white heterosexual males had been banished to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Much more astonishing was the sight of light bulbs going on over the heads of conservative commentators. Bill O’Reilly announced on prime-time TV that “The white establishment is now the minority.” Mark Steyn said that “demographics is destiny.” Fred Barnes confessed that “the white vote is a Republican stronghold” and urged Republicans not to feel guilty about it. (I swear I won’t, Fred.)

“We now know that Marxism and Freudianism were elegant intellectual fantasies.”

All true: but what then of the notion that any number of persons, of any race or ethnicity, can be persuaded to any political position if the arguments are properly pitched?

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