House of Eratosthenes

Trounced by race-based protesters, a college president found out that all lives don’t matter and only some lives matter when she accidentally sent out a message that said “All Lives Matter” instead of saying “Black Lives Matter.”

Smith College President Kathleen McCartney sent out an email to students and administrators in which she inadvertently said “all lives matter.” Her message provoked the ire of racebaiters who don’t want the phrase “black lives matter” to become a message of inclusion.

McCartney was told in no uncertain terms that she isn’t allowed to say “all lives matter,” because only black lives matter to these activists.

In the original email, obtained by Campus Reform, Kathleen McCartney used “all lives matter” in the email detailing the “struggle” and “hurt” the Smith community was experiencing following the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We gather in vigil, we raise our voices in protest; yet we wake again to news of violence that reminds us, painfully, of the stark reality of racial injustice,” McCartney wrote.

McCartney also announced the college’s plan to institute a new Chief Diversity Officer to support programs and conversations to advance social justice.

However, it was the subject line that had Smith students up in arms. Students took to social media to chastise McCartney, blaming her skin color for her lack of understanding.

“No, Kathy. Please do not send out an email saying ‘All lives matter.’ This isn’t about everyone, this is about black lives,” Sophia Buchanan, a Smith student, said on Twitter.

McCartney soon sent out a second email apologizing for daring to think that everyone’s life is important.

McCartney is not an opponent of the protests. As Allahpundit pointed out at Hot Air:

Some critics of the protests had been answering the “black lives matter” slogan with the phrase “all lives matter.” McCartney, who was palpably not being critical — she announced a vigil for Garner and Brown in her first e-mail and refers to herself in the second as a “white ally” — unwittingly used the same phrase to make the protesters’ point, i.e. that Garner’s and Brown’s lives shouldn’t matter less because they’re black. Her sympathy couldn’t have been clearer. She got flamed anyway.

On the one hand, she “got flamed” by just one or two special snowflakes on the campus; is this really that important? On the other hand though, she was compelled to apologize, which suggests that if the one or two snowflakes had been ignored, there would be more and more special snowflakes taking the college president to task; and, it isn’t just them, nor is it just here. There’s been a hubbub about this for at least a few weeks now:

Race brings on individual issues for each minority group. Saying “all lives matter” causes erasure of the differing disparities each group faces. Saying “all lives matter” is nothing more than you centering and inserting yourself within a very emotional and personal situation without any empathy or respect. Saying “all lives matter” is unnecessary…

That last one is a fascinating and telling remark. How can it be unnecessary to say something, and simultaneously, necessary to stir up a controversy about someone saying it?

What sort of a victory has been won when that person is forced to walk it back? Obviously, there is one.

What we have here is an apt illustration of the true difference between conservatives and liberals in the United States, of a difference that has endured across centuries when not too many other identified differences have. On these pages, we have occasionally grappled with this idea that “liberals” must have changed party labels sometime in the ten decades following the end of the Civil War, since at the beginning of it they were called “Republicans” and trying to abolish slavery and ratify the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments; in the 1960’s, it must have been the same people trying to pass “Civil Rights,” with affirmative action, with quotas, and so forth. The logic, as I have noted, falls apart when one considers other things, including other issues. Abortion, for example. It is our liberals who say “I would respect the rights of the person who is not yet born, if indeed that were a person, but I do not acknowledge such a thing, and because I do not acknowledge it, your ‘person’ remains nothing more than ’tissue.'” Replace the world “tissue” with “property” and you have the white Southern slaveowner’s answer to the abolitionist movement, in a nutshell. So it is logically implausible to argue the same position is “right” in one century and “left” in another one.

We’re seeing the answer to the quandary now. The “left” does not — never did — smile upon the proposition that “all lives matter.” And this has been consistent throughout the generations.

I would further submit that this explains why some among them hate Christianity so much. It holds that we are all descended from Noah, each and every single one of us, therefore we’re all worth saving. All lives. If you have a pulse, you have value; all that remains is for you to acknowledge it. Also, we’re all descended from Adam. We’re all flawed.

These thoughts are just too big for them. But some of them do have very big brains, and aren’t afraid to talk about them. So maybe there is something else going on: Ironically, such thoughts are way too liberating. Either way, they can’t hack it. Over on Planet Lefty, there never is anything happening to “everyone,” there never is any status, up or down, enjoyed by or encumbering “all.” Humanity is always on a seesaw, with some of it up, some of it down. It’s always some coveted sub-group’s turn to enjoy the time in the limelight.

They’re usually afraid to admit it. So this is an occasion worthy of notice, when they’re willing to come out and say they have a beef with the notion that everyone is worthy and that “all lives matter.” It’s a refreshing outburst of honesty, that they shun the value inherent to all human life, and will always heap scorn on anyone who points this out, chastise & deride until they get the apology they want.

Now if we could just get them to stop using that word “equality.” They don’t believe in it. When they do support it, what they’re supporting turns out to be something else entirely, masquerading under the label.

At the risk of once again being the tiresome “It all comes back to Marx!” guy, it all comes back to Marx.

The central “argument” of all socialism is Marx’s assertion that

The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Lefties rarely make this “argument” anymore — and I imagine they squirm if you bring it up to the very, very, very few who actually know their movement’s intellectual history — because it’s so obviously a Gem. This is philosopher David Stove’s characterization of arguments that start with a tautology and end with either Idealism (in academic philosophy) or some “social justice” blather (in the real world). In Marx’s quote, above,

The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general

is the tautology. Boil it down, and he’s just saying that “we can only live the lives we live.” Which is true but meaningless. Since nothing follows from a tautology but other tautologies, (A = A; A; therefore, A) all that stuff about “social being determining consciousness” is just blather. And it’s Ishmael Effect blather, too — if Karl Marx’s social being had determined his consciousness, how could he know that social being in general determines consciousness?

But because leftists have accepted this as their master argument, they’re certain that “social classes” are completely real and utterly distinct. If I am of a higher social class than you, we can’t relate to each other by definition — our consciousnesses are incompatible because our social beings are incompatible. And because I got where I am by exploiting you — again, by definition — then that exploitation is all that matters. It’s the only way we can relate to each other. I can only see you as A Proletarian to be Exploited, just as you can only see me as An Oppressor to be Resisted.

And so, the only way to achieve “equality” of consciousnesses is to reduce everyone to the same level of social being. Which — since I am incapable of understanding your consciousness by definition — means, in practice, that all other consciousnesses must be extinguished.

So, yeah: Only some lives matter. It’s science.
- Severian | 12/11/2014 @ 09:16

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“All Lives Matter” is Controversial NowThursday, December 11th, 2014

“All Lives Matter” is Controversial Now
Thursday, December 11th, 2014