education as religion.

The RQ.

A few weeks ago, I did an interview with Dr. Eric Kaufman. Dr. Kaufman is one of the most intelligent and serious right-wing professors in the world. He has done important work on demography and identity. In White Shift, Dr. Kaufman is correct to state that racial mixing will not destroy white identity, but expand it in surprising or unexpected ways. The one-drop rule will not survive the 21st century.

I respect his work on identity, demographics, and social science, and after spending two hours speaking with him, I want to unfold certain topics that we were only briefly able to touch on. Hopefully in the future I will be able to raise these issues to him directly and see exactly where he agrees and disagrees.

In his interview with Jordan Peterson back in June, Dr. Kaufman defines wokism simply:

The making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups.

This seems accurate, but when put in a larger historical context, it leads to uncomfortable conclusions about religion. When Judaism lauds the trials of the disadvantaged, persecuted, homeless, and enslaved Israelites, is Judaism “woke”? When Christianity praises the humiliation and martyrdom of the saints, is Christianity “woke”?

The logical conclusion is yes, these religions were “woke” in their earliest forms. Judaism is the more ambiguous of the two, since it was ostensibly ethnocentric, and did not vicariously sacralize out-groups. The story of Jesus is clearer in that it rejects high status groups (Pharisees, Romans) and elevates low status groups (prostitutes, tax collectors, slaves).

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)

Wokism did not emerge from the ether or the void; it did not originate in 2014, in 1960, or during the French Revolution. Rather, it is a mere extension of a millennia old leftist tradition of sacralizing the poor, the weak, and the downtrodden. This is the “deep left” hypothesis.

Dr. Kaufman’s worldview isn’t threatened by these conclusions, because he is not opposed to the idea of equality, welfare, or charity in an absolute sense. He recognizes the importance of these virtues, but believes they must be “balanced” or “budgeted” with other virtues, like truth and freedom of speech.

If both Judaism and Christianity began as “woke” slave revolts, but later became conservative and “balanced” with science and hierarchy, then why can’t the modern day “woke” walk the same path? Why can’t history repeat itself? Instead of rejecting wokism, why not embrace it and attempt to reform it from within the institutions of the left?

The response of most conservatives is either “that’s impossible,” or “we don’t have time, because civilization is about to collapse.” The first seems to be a lack of imagination. The second is speculative, and can only be defended probabilistically through empirical arguments.

Is the dollar currently being replaced as the world’s reserve currency? Are China and Russia developing sufficient soft-power to challenge American hegemony? Is the American economy and military shrinking or expanding? Is America’s fertility any worse than its competitors? Honest answers to these questions will reveal that Tim Pool’s hysterics about Civil War are click-bait and appeal to the conservative death-drive and wishful thinking.

I suspect that Dr. Kaufman is more sympathetic to my arguments than the average conservative. Assume, however, that I am totally wrong. Assume it would be easier for conservatives to take over the education system than it would be for the left to reform or limit its most destructive impulses, like open borders. If that is the case, how exactly should conservatives reform education?

relativism and reform.

Dr. Kaufman’s goal is to defeat wokism by reforming the education system to be politically neutral. He believes if conservatives introduce “don’t say America is racist” laws or guidelines, that this will be an effective measure at reducing the political effects of education. Currently, K-12 education has a massive causal impact on the political opinions of young adults.

I first asked Dr. Kaufman if he sincerely believed that banning “porn” from school libraries would have any appreciable effect on the political effects of pedagogy. He seemed to agree with me, that teachers aren’t actually grooming children into becoming gay, and that LGBTQ identification spreads via peer-to-peer interactions or social media. This was surprising to me because he also seemed to uphold Ron DeSantis as the ideal conservative, and yet DeSantis focuses heavily on the supposed “grooming” of teachers.

On the topic of race, it is true that if conservatives banned all discussion of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial inequality in K-12 education, this would have a dramatic effect on the political opinions of the next generation. However, Dr. Kaufman was not willing to go this far. Instead, he suggested that the atrocities of the Mongols and Aztecs be taught simultaneously to Jim Crow, to introduce a kind of “moral relativism” and blunt the sin of American racism.

I am skeptical that this kind of moral relativism would be effective at changing the political effects of education. First of all, the crimes of the Aztecs and Mongols have no appreciable relevance to any present-day issues. No one is claiming that the Aztec or Mongol Empire is currently a threat. By contrast, racial disparities are alive and well. I am not sure that digging up deeds of the past will diminish the moral weight of current inequalities.

In order to prove the efficacy of the Kaufman plan, conservative K-12 educational programs would need to track the political opinions of their students over time, to see if they differ from those in public school. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find examples of existing conservative schools that track this kind of data. Even Catholic schools are woke, apparently.

Without empirical evidence, I will speculate on how such a “morally relativistic” curriculum might be interpreted by students. Racial disparities exist in the here and now, and not in the ancient past. Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Compton, Detroit and Atlanta are besieged by violent crime. Four years ago, Black Lives Matter mobilized 26 million people into the street. No one is rioting in the street over the Aztecs and Mongols.

When confronted with the reality of racial disparities, Dr. Kaufman suggested that Thomas Sowell had the solution. Rather than blaming structural racism, or embracing Nathan Cofnas, Dr. Kaufman offered the explanation that racial disparities are due to a culture of fatherlessness.

genealogical turtles.

How did racial disparities arise? If they arose due to slavery and Jim Crow, and continue due to structural racism, then egalitarianism demands that structural racism be dismantled. Such an approach would favor affirmative action, sensitivity training, Critical Race Theory, or reparations.

Conservatives have three answers to this approach:

1. Affirmative action and reparations violate property rights, which is more important than equality.

2. Racial disparities arose from some other source than slavery and Jim Crow.

The first position sidesteps the question of genealogy (where do disparities originate?) and challenges the weight of egalitarianism on purely moral grounds. Even if black people are oppressed, and even if that is evil, restricting private property rights is even more evil. This is a position generally held by libertarians.

Since Dr. Kaufman is not a libertarian, he takes a different approach. He attempts, via Sowell, to suggest that racial disparities persist for reasons other than slavery and Jim Crow. For example, black people have a higher rate of fatherlessness, and fatherlessness is correlated with worse outcomes in education, crime, and income.

Are racial disparities due to structural racism? Or are they due to group-level genetic differences? These are two honest positions which attempt to understand racial disparities at the root of the problem. “Fatherlessness” and “culture” are a “third shell” which only confuses the issue, but cannot help us understand the ultimate origins of racial disparity.

Blacks and whites have always had different levels of fatherlessness. If we blame disparities in crime, education, and income on fatherlessness, this leads to another question: how did disparities in fatherlessness arise?

If disparities in fatherlessness were originally a consequence of the legacy of slavery, we have returned to the “woke” position. If disparities in fatherlessness are a consequence of inherited traits, then “fatherlessness” isn’t a cause, but a comorbidity. There is no such thing as the “fatherlessness” gene. Rather, the tendency of women to have children out of wedlock is determined by a number of complex psychological factors, including intelligence, impulse control, mental stability, and conscientiousness. Each of those traits must either have its origin in environment or in heredity. “Culture” is not a third option, because “culture” is either environmentally or genetically determined.

Kaufman’s heroes.

In Dr. Kaufman’s debate with Cofnas, he claims that “it is almost as unacceptable to the woke left to make the culturalist argument as it is to make the genetic argument.” (10:30) If this is the case, then I am not sure why the cultural argument would be preferable to the genetic argument. It may confuse people who cannot think in terms of multiple layers of causation, but it won’t ultimately change the views of the cognitive elite. Hence why Elon Musk promotes hereditarians on Twitter like Hanania, Cremieux, i/o, and Inquisitive Bird, rather than Glenn Loury and Coleman Hughes. Ironically, those black conservatives openly talk about race and IQ.

Name dropping black conservatives who make genetic arguments themselves, rather than making those arguments yourself, seems like “passing the buck” and a game of optics. That might fool people who are already inclined to be conservative, but I don’t see it convincing young people who are predisposed to be liberals. While the causes of racial disparities may be complex, categorizing those causes as socially or biologically induced is not.

Haidt’s rationalization mechanism.

Dr. Kaufman says that, according to Jonathan Haidt, "people aren't rational, they rationalize... that emotion structure is what we need to address." (54:00) I agree with this sentiment, and I will take it even further:

Jonathan Haidt’s research suggests that the personality differences underlying liberal and conservative beliefs inform the structure and form of the types of arguments that each side is inclined to believe. In other words, conservatives are inclined to believe arguments which are moderate, compromising, and which obscure or avoid uncomfortable topics. By contrast, liberals prefer arguments which are confrontational, bold, utopian, and idealistic. This is true even for children.

In the past, the “liberal” impulse was consubstantial with the “Christian” impulse. Christianity has entered a terminal decline, and Dr. Kaufman hasn’t endorsed a Christian revival. My point here is that offering idealistic children moral relativism as a substitute for Christianity is like substituting vegetables for ice cream. If you want to displace wokism, you have to invent something more compelling, not more nihilistic.

watch out for left-hereditarians!

It is possible that both structural racism and heredity play a role. Sasha Gusev has estimated the “population-level heritability” of educational attainment and IQ at somewhere between 13% and 31%. In other words, genetics cannot be 0% of the story. On the other hand, biology cannot account for 100% of the disparities either. This interpretation of Gusev would conclude that structural racism and genetic explanations are both necessary for painting a complete picture of group-level differences. By ignoring one or the other, the puzzle is incomplete.

This explanation, while true, is upsetting to conservatives and liberals. First of all, it suggests that the legacy of white supremacy continues to harm black Americans, which means that America is indeed a “racist country.” Second of all, it suggests that 13% to 31% of the disparities between blacks and whites are genetic in origin, and cannot be eliminated through redistributive policy. Even if we could reduce gaps by 70% (a fantastic achievement), we could never reduce them to 0% without total genetic assimilation, which is not easy or necessarily desirable.

No politician or public figure can hold this position, but it is an intellectually honest position. When Dr. Kaufman suggests that we should look at fatherlessness instead of racism or genes, he is pointing to a turtle on a turtle, without ever answering the question, “what is underneath all these turtles?”

Explanations which do not take symptoms like “fatherlessness” to their logical conclusions may be politically advantageous, but they cannot satisfy thinking people.

It is true that most people are not “thinking people.” However, I question whether an idealistic and intelligent priest class can ever be motivated by such arguments, especially when they come from a standpoint of relativism rather than the force of objective good-vs-evil.

the religious impulse.

Humans have a deep need to understand our origins. Where do men and women come from? Who or what process created human intelligence? From what continent do we originate? What is our heritage, our ancestry, and our genealogy?

The book of Genesis is full of genealogies, and both the Gospel of Matthew and Luke provide a genealogy for Jesus. Every Greek king could trace his genealogy back to the Gods; every Roman Republican senator could trace his lineage back to the founding families of Rome.

Our need or desire to understand the origins of distinctions between the aristocracy and the underclass is not new, and it’s not going away. The primary function of religion is to enumerate historical genealogies which legitimize the state. The left seeks to do this through Critical Race Theory, while the right says, “It's not racism that's responsible for black poverty. It's fatherlessness.”

The right hasn’t answered the question. They haven't answered the question because they haven't told me where fatherlessness comes from.

“It's a cultural issue.” How did that culture develop? Where did that culture come from? Is that culture an expression of a history of oppression? Are conservatives afraid to answer this question?

The left is willing to confront logical conclusions, and conservatives are not. Conservatives claim to stand for truth against the lies of the left, but it seems that on this issue there is genuine apprehension. Where there is fear, there can be no honesty.

zombies on the roof.

There’s a man on my roof. I ask him, “why are you on my roof?”

“Well, you know, there's a staircase to the roof.”

You haven't answered my question. You’re explaining one specific method by which you ascended to the roof, but you haven’t explained the original cause of your ascent. Why are you up on this roof?

“Oh, well, there's a ladder too.”

What was the initial cause? These are mechanisms of how you got from point A to point B, but they don’t explain the initial motive force that propelled you upwards.

“Don’t worry about it.”

This is my house and I need to know why you’re on my roof!

“I didn’t have a father.”

Many people don’t have fathers, but they’re not on my roof.

“It’s my culture.”

At this point, the conservative calls the police and forgets about the whole incident. The question of why the man was on the roof is irrelevant to him. However, if this becomes a continuous problem, of hundreds of roof visitations, leading to conflict and damage, then it is the job of the state to investigate the causes behind these roof climbings.

Ant infected with cordyceps.

For example, if there was a brain parasite in the water which caused men to become crazy zombies and seek the high ground, this would explain why they are on the roof. It would then be the job of the state to sanitize the water supply, not only to prevent harm to people’s private property, but also to save these poor victims of the brain parasite. On the other hand, if these men all had congenital schizophrenia, then the job of the state would be to invest in early detection mechanisms and mental health facilities that could treat these conditions.

What would not be sufficient would be for the state to say, “oh, roof climbers? Well, that’s not too bad. Have you heard of the Aztecs and Mongols?”

a mythic crisis.

Racial disparities strike at the very foundations of liberal democracy. The crisis of racial disparities is not just material or economic, but spiritual and mythological. It is the greatest source of conflict, tension, and moral guilt in our society. Kicking the can down the road with “fatherlessness” is not helpful and will not lead to an ultimate resolution. The left takes the problem seriously, while conservatives seek to ignore it.

Racial disparities are a deep religious question. People are crying out for meaning, understanding, and identity. They want grand sweeping narratives about what it means to be an American, or a citizen of global liberal hegemony. People want to understand who we are and where we come from.

Dr. Kaufman says he wants to “draw the emotional power” (19:45) “suck the emotional power” from leftist narratives about white supremacy. He wants to flood public school with atrocity propaganda about Mongols and Aztecs. To be fair, not all propaganda is factually untrue, but the moral effect is the same either way. This won’t have the effect of building up Americans to have a positive mythology about themselves, but will only engender a sort of “we’re all evil” nihilism. In such a moral vacuum, the left still wins, because only it is willing to affirm something, while the conservatives only deny.

What is an American? In the past, an American was white, Christian, or both. But since conservatives have relaxed racial and religious exclusivity, the new answer seems to be “shopping mall customer.” This is empty, hollow, and bankrupt. No expansive superpower can be sustained on shallowness. No one is willing to fight and die for a paycheck besides mercenaries, and a hegemon which relies on mercenaries is doomed to decline.

I try to engage with conservatives politely and hear what they have to say. I am open to the idea that I’ve gotten something wrong or there’s something missing from my analysis. I genuinely want to hear a positive vision for American identity or Western identity.

If America is superior to the Aztecs and Mongols, how is it superior? If we are superior because of our human rights, then this means that to become more superior, we must expand human rights. Convincing liberals that the Mongols and Aztecs were bad is not going to stop them from claiming that “America is racist.” Moral relativism has a very poor track record of dissuading radicals. I call this the “Switzerland effect.”

The left has a positive vision:

• Cure racism;

• Usher in a utopia;

• Eliminate evil from the earth;

• Make everybody equal.¹

All of that may sound horrifying to conservatives, but a positive vision cannot be defeated with moral relativism. Rather, it must be met with an alternative and more compelling vision.

There is an extreme fringe of the right which endorses violence, criminality, destruction, and collapse. I hesitate to call that a “positive vision,” but it is certainly a powerful vision. This is true even if many of its believers are impotent and powerless themselves.

Consider the early Christians, many of whom were slaves, and yet they believed that Rome would collapse within decades and all of the pagans of the earth would burn eternally in hell. That vision seemed ridiculous in the early years, but eventually, the Christians did seize the state and burn and torture their enemies at the stake. They willed hellfire into existence.

This isn’t my vision, but it is a vision. Conservatives who reject this prefer agnosticism and neutrality. In a world of dominant and dedicated minorities, the neutrals are swept along in the storm.

You can ban a phrase from Twitter, like “to the river, to the sea,” but that won’t end antisemitism. You can ban a phrase from K-12, like “America is racist,” but that won’t end wokeness.

The left is grounded in the heroic ideal of sacrificing yourself for the good of humanity. It's a very Christian message. What the conservative right is offering is saying, “yeah, that sounds extreme. But did you know that black people are sexist too?” This doesn’t address the fundamental need for religion.

People want to sacrifice their lives for a worthy moral goal. This is why “collapsitarianism” on the right is becoming more popular, because it promises the opportunity for heroism.

where did wokeness come from?

In Dr. Kaufman’s debate with Nathan Cofnas, he mentions four positions about the origins of wokism. I will briefly expand on them, and append my own:

1. The Cofnas Theory

Wokeness is a product of egalitarianism. The only thing which can defeat wokeness is hereditarianism. If hereditarians can redpill more billionaires like Elon Musk, they can gain the funding necessary to fund research, which will achieve a “critical mass” of hereditarian elites that will stop wokism.

2. The Rufo/Lindsey Theory

A small group of elite intellectuals (the Frankfurt School) pushed wokeness in order to achieve communism. James Lindsey calls these people “Gnostics” instead of communists, but the structure of the theory is similar. In order to defeat wokeness, the communist Gnostic conspiracy must be exposed to the public, at which point they will reject wokeness as un-American.

Rufo/Lindsey redpilling normies, removing the communist-gnostic mind-virus.

3. The Hanania Theory

Wokeness can only exist within the confines of Civil Rights law, otherwise it falls apart. Civil Rights created a legal infrastructure which then incentivized the moral attitudes of “wokeness” by creating a multi-billion dollar incentive for “woke” ideas to grow. By appointing conservative judges who can rule affirmative action as unconstitutional, the legal framework will fall apart and the ideology will follow.

4. The Kaufman Theory

The Kaufman Theory: Inter-ethnic competition between Ellis Islanders and Mayflower Americans created the underlying moral structure for Civil Rights — non-discrimination, protection of minorities, equal rights and opportunities. The effects on blacks were an afterthought or extension of conflict between elites.

Wokism is not a product of communism, Gnosticism, or Civil Rights. Egalitarianism is necessary for wokism, but not sufficient, since blank slatists like Thomas Sowell reject wokism.

In order to defeat wokism, conservatives need to seize control of the education system and inject it with anti-Mongol and anti-Aztec atrocity propaganda. This will result in moral relativism (or nihilism?) and the moral panic of wokism will decline.

5. The Deep Left Theory

Dr. Kaufman is correct to say that wokism originally has to do with Cuddihy’s ordeal of civility between Protestants, Jews, and Catholics. However, no educational system can operate without a religious basis as its radical foundation. That was true for all of history, and it remains true today. Without a religious alternative to wokism, conservatives are dead on arrival.

Conservatives can attempt a brief form of localist Francoism, where they halt the progress of wokism on the surface for three or four decades, only for it to re-emerge with a vengeance. From a grand civilization standpoint, it would be much more meaningful to reform the left to be more aligned with truth and less superstitious than it would be to attempt a conservative “wrench throwing” maneuver.

Conclusion.

Man is a religious creature. Religion is a grand narrative about who we are and where we come from. Race is going to be a part of that. Being a colorblind conservative doesn't cut it.

History is what it is. You have to integrate it and assimilate it into your worldview. You can't relativize it away and say, “well, the Mongols, the Aztecs…” The moral and religious crisis of the West requires the boldness to confront race and take ideas to their logical conclusions.

I want to make it clear that I have written several articles opposing race realism. As a result, I oppose the viewpoint of Nathan Cofnas, that a hereditarian revolution is possible or desirable. I do not think Cofnas, as a secularist, takes religion seriously enough. On this count, I entirely agree with Dr. Kaufman when he says that signs and symbols beat facts and figures.

In this sense, I am taking a more extreme form of Dr. Kaufman’s position, all the way to a leftist conclusion. This is a symbolic war, not an empirical one. The left will win — but what kind of left? Communist? Liberal? Transhumanist? Or something else? That answer will only be determined from within the left. Conservatives will ultimately be excluded from the conversation, because they fail to take the crisis of religion seriously.

In Cofnas v. Kaufman, I agree more with the Kaufman Theory, that people begin with a mythological and symbolic regime which forms moral axioms, and then rationalize these axioms. There is a moral firewall which is preventing HBD from winning the argument at the scale of real power. Making more sophisticated arguments won’t bring down the moral firewall. Dr. Kaufman is directionally correct in this matter, but he doesn’t go far enough.

It is not enough to “suck the energy out” of the moral firewall with moral relativism. Instead, religious fanaticism can only be opposed with religious fanaticism. All states are dominated by oligarchies, theocracies, or military dictatorships, and sometimes combinations of all three. Moral relativism is a non-answer.

I hope that in the future I have an opportunity to speak to Dr. Kaufman again, and many other conservative intellectuals. These are important moral questions, but I believe in the Socratic method of debate.

Thanks for reading.

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1. CUEM, for short.