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November
25
2022

The Irony of All Ironies
Paul Craig Roberts

The state of Florida recently enacted legislation against teaching “critical race theory” in Florida public schools and universities.  Critical race theory amounts to indoctrinating white kids into the belief that they are racist, because being a racist is what it means to be white.  The white population in Florida who foot the tax bill for public education don’t like paying for brainwashing their kids with the belief that the kids and their parents are racists.

A couple of leftwing freaks, Adriana Novoa, a professor at the University of South Florida, and a student, Sam Rechek, sued the state of Florida in federal court claiming that the law is government censorship. US federal district judge Mark Walker, a highly partisan Democrat and Obama appointee, has blocked enforcement of the law.

In ordering an injunction blocking enforcement of the law, Judge Walker said that the law struck “at the heart of open-mindedness and critical inquiry.”  He accused the government of Florida  of “taking over the marketplace of ideas to suppress disfavored viewpoints,” thereby limiting what professors could teach.

Think for a moment about the utter absurdity of what this highly partisan Democrat “judge” has said.  Do universities have speech codes?  Yes.  Do these speech codes “suppress disfavored viewpoints,” thereby limiting what professors can teach and students can say?  Yes.  Are these speech codes that “strike at the heart of open-mindedness and critical inquiry” enforced by the universities?  Yes. Are the speech codes discriminatory in their application?  Yes.  Whose speech is limited?  Whites.  What speech is limited?  Truthful statements that “aversive racism”–the doctrine that whites are racist regardless of intention–is false, and that gender is biologically determined and not self-selected.  

There are many other false arguments that cannot be challenged–such as the Civil War was fought over slavery.  Indeed, no one dares ask, if the liberal account of the Civil War is correct and it was fought over slavery, how whites could possibly be aversive racists when hundreds of thousands of them died died fighting to free the black slaves?  If white Americans are racists, how did Obama get elected? Was it another stolen election?

But, of course, nothing today makes any sense, least of all anything coming out of Judge Walker’s mouth.

Does anyone believe that it would be possible to teach critical race theory if the target was blacks or Jews and not whites?  It would be hate speech, a hate crime.  Professors would be fired and students ejected from the university.  They would be unemployable.  

But it is permissible to offend white Americans. They can be called racists and worse all day long and no one is fired and no federal judge intercedes.  When democracy intercedes, Democrat judges like Walker overrule the people.  

To be clear, what has been established in America, allegedly a democracy, is an evil program that occupies the moral high ground and is dedicated to demonizing white people, to destroy their confidence in themselves, their history, literature, culture, to reduce them to second class, if not criminal, citizenship.  

We see it everywhere. Merit is demonized as racist, as a tool of white supremacy.  Merit has allegedly been used to suppress people of color.  The “solution” chosen is to establish a system of rights based on race.  Restitution requires more rights for people of color than whites are permitted to have.  Blacks and Jews can claim to be offended, but whites cannot.  Anything can be said against whites, and if a white challenges it, his challenge is proof that he is a racist and in denial.

This is the state of American democracy today.  America is in ruins. What does America stand for?  There is no obvious answer. 

One hundred years ago Novoa, Rechek, and Judge Walker would have been hung off the nearest tree limb by enraged citizens.  But the erosion of white confidence has taken a toll. Today the white majority accepts what is happening to them, hoping that they will be the last sent to the camps.

Dear White American, your future is here in The Camp of the Sainthttps://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Camp_of_the_Saints_2col%20.pdf 

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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