Earlier by Mike Scruggs: Happy 200th Birthday, Robert E. Lee!

If you Google “Black Confederates,” you will know a lot about Google’s politics. It is also obvious that there is a tremendous effort to dismiss the idea that blacks would implicitly resist and even explicitly take up arms against the 1861-1865 Northern invasion of the South. Of course, the demonization of the South and anything remotely tied to the Confederacy, not least the destruction of Confederate monuments, is just part of currently surging anti-white politics and the drive to rewrite all of American history.  Yet the existence of Black Confederates is actually not surprising: they were typically teamsters—the forerunners of the black truck drivers of the Red Ball Express in the still-segregated U.S. Army during World War II—and other parts of the logistical tail that all armies depend upon. Still, it’s unquestionably a Politically Incorrect embarrassment that the Confederate armies were apparently able to rely upon these slaves until the very end of the war—just as throughout the war there were no slave insurrections (as distinct from runaways) anywhere in the South.

Thus, for example, Allen Guelzo in his account of Robert E. Lee’s retreat from defeat at Gettysburg in The Last Invasion:

[The Confederates] temper was darkened still further by the miseries of having “to stand & wait for an hour or more” on roads “blocked up with troops,” and by the unearthly screaming, shrieking, weeping, moaning, “oaths, and execrations” which arose from the army’s ambulances as the “wagons kept the road” and the uninjured survivors “marched through the fields & woods on each side.” Occasionally, there would be “a brass band on the side of the road … playing ‘Dixie’ & ‘Maryland,’ ” but this did not do much to drown out the cries heard by John Imboden from thousands of voices in the backs of jolting wagons and ambulances: O God! Why can’t I die? … My God! Will no one have mercy and kill me and end my misery? … Oh! stop one minute and take me out and leave me to die on the roadside … I am dying! I am dying! My poor wife, my dear children! What will become of you? [Union commander George] Meade’s hesitation gave both parts of Lee’s army a full day’s grace, but since the wagon trains alone occupied anywhere from fifteen to twenty miles of road, the likelihood of Lee putting any great distance between himself and pursuit was dim. [Emphasis added].

But the Army of Northern Virginia did escape this desperate situation–with the help of its black teamsters, who apparently went back to the South with it.

Earlier: Trump Bans Federal Diversity Training on White Privilege

Is there any clearer sign of how privileged a society is than the disproportionate amount of time that society spends guilting citizens over how privileged they are?

I'll never forget the first time I encountered "critical race theory" and its overbearing adherents at my alma mater, Oberlin College, in the 1990s. Multicultural studies were all the rage. Higher education officials had torpedoed Western civilization curriculum requirements at prestigious universities nationwide. The ululations of the aggrieved reached a fever pitch as anti-white extremists demanded separate academic departments, dorms, graduation ceremonies and deans in the name of justice and equality.

The entire spectacle was as self-indulgent as it was comical. Spoiled white limousine liberals' children lectured me—a child of Filipino immigrants who came from a Third World country colonized by the Spanish, overtaken by Americans and occupied by the Japanese—for thinking and acting "white" because I opposed race-based affirmative action policies. A miserable feminist student castigated me for using the patriarchal term "exploit" (as in "exploiting an opportunity.") Wealthy minority progressives—cloistered in their intolerant "safe spaces" on a campus full of entitled brats whose parents forked over $40,000 a year in tuition—whined about being systemically oppressed.

The whiners whined all their way through their senior theses to secure their worthless degrees. A large portion of the whiners went on to graduate schools in advanced griping and grousing—and are now ensconced in the ivory tower of critical race theory babble, subsidized by tax dollars at public colleges and universities, venting from on high about how hopelessly downtrodden they are at the hands of the oppressors paying their cushy salaries.

This toxic resentment has metastasized in academia and spread to the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Last month, after Discovery Institute scholar Christopher Rufo sounded the alarm with a series of whistleblower reports in the Treasury and Justice Departments, the Trump administration belatedly moved to crack down on "diversity" training sessions that perpetuate the idea that America is an inherently racist and white supremacist nation. But far more troubling is the trickledown of racist anti-racism into K-12 education across the heartland.

A new French-language book on European and American nationalism has been making waves, with reviews already appearing at American Renaissance and Counter-Currents.VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow asked me to take a look at it.

The title, Suprémacistes, by   Philippe-Joseph Salazar, left me skeptical. But the slur “white supremacist” never occurs in the text of the book itself. The author, a French academic residing in South Africa, interviewed numerous thinkers and writers associated with the new white nationalism (more commonly known as identitarianism in Europe), and mostly allows them to speak for themselves.

One of the earlier chapters is devoted to VDARE.com’s own John Derbyshire, whom Professor Salazar visited at his Long Island home. He describes for his French readership his impressions as the train passes through the “vibrant” parts of Brooklyn and Queens, made famous by various racial murders, and on into the more-English-than-England suburbs Mr. Derbyshire calls home.

A prolific essayist with the polemical kick of a kung-fu fighter [yes, the author recounts Derb’s appearance in Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon, below right (Derb is the one in the center)], he is a decisive intellectual influence on the young alt-right probably because of his rapidity of execution. John Derbyshire writes scathing articles which cut to the heart of the subject: a talented polemicist, but one steeped in science and literature, and who knows how to argue. [Links in quotes are added]

Mr. Derbyshire meets the professor at the station. The author does not fail to mention that this “white racist” fired by National Review is married to a Chinese lady and is the father of two mixed-race children. The two men proceed to Derbyshire’s office under the eaves where they chat beneath a picture of George Orwell and surrounded by Mr. Derbyshire’s “modest but powerful” personal library. Prof. Salazar realizes he is “literally at the intellectual sources of white ‘dissidence,’ upstream from what the young people of the movement believe,” and asks his interviewee whether he sees himself as a precursor of the Alt Right.

Amy Coney Barrett will almost certainly replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few days. “We have the votes," GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said of the imminent confirmation vote [Judiciary Committee sets vote on Barrett's nomination for next week, by Jordan Cairney, The Hill, October 15, 2020]. Of course, Conservatism Inc.’s chattering class thinks Barrett will champion their causes. But the Dissident Right has less reason for enthusiasm. Granted, her record on immigration is fairly good and raises few eyebrows. But what lifts more than a few eyebrows is the substantial influence on her thinking she attributes to her adopted Haitian children. That could affect myriad decisions: not only on immigration, of course, but also on criminal justice relative to the “systemic racism” hoax, and free speech/Big Tech Censorship relative to “racism” and “Hate Speech.” Worst case scenario: Barrett might turn out to be an element in the further dispossession of the Historic American Nation.

On the positive side: the 48-year-old was solid on immigration when she sat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Most legal analysts say she will uphold Trump’s immigration priorities and will follow legal precedent. “She seems to have the more traditional perspective about judicial review in immigration cases, which is that review ought to be limited," said law professor Angela Banks [Amy Coney Barrett likely would uphold Trump immigration policies, analysts say, by Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic, October 5, 2020].

“Judge Barrett leaves policy questions where they belong: with the political branches,” Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies writes. “[I]f conservatives, or those who favor a more restrictive immigration regime, believe that she would use her position as a Supreme Court justice to advance specific immigration policies, they will likely be disappointed—unless those policies are grounded in statute and precedent.” Liberals who think Barrett will read open borders into the Constitution will be disappointed, too [Those Favoring Judicial Activism on Immigration Will Likely Be Disappointed With a Justice Barrett, Center for Immigration Studies, October 5, 2020].

Three cases in which Barrett sided with the Trump administration put Barrett in a favorable light. She ruled against aliens who filed dubious asylum claims and against foreigners try to smuggle their children into the country, Arthur observed. In an outstanding dissent, she affirmed the legality of the Trump administration’s public-charge rule that would bar permanent residency to immigrants on welfare.

The one case where she ruled against Trump involved immigration judges. Trump’s Justice Department limited judges from halting deportation cases through “administrative closure.” Barrett authored the opinion overturning that policy. “Immigration judges have broad authority to administratively close cases where 'appropriate and necessary for disposition' of cases,” she wrote.

So, though it wasn’t exactly a major blow to Trump’s immigration agenda, she is not a 100-percenter on Trump’s immigration priorities. But three of four ain’t bad.

The only time Barrett neared voicing an opinion on immigration in the hearings: answering Sen. Cory Booker’s question about “family separation” at the border, an Obama-era policy.

Is it “wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants from coming to the U.S.?” the “fiercely heterosexual” Booker asked.

Answered Barrett:

That’s been a matter of policy debate and obviously that’s a matter of hot political debate in which I can’t express a view or be drawn into as a judge.

That’s reasonable, and likely much better than what other jurists would say [Amy Coney Barrett Declines To Comment On Separation Of Children At The U.S. Border, by Matt Perez. Forbes, October 14, 2020].