Cultural Appropriation

Recently the creative minds of some on the left have given us a new sin. It is called cultural appropriation and occurs when someone   does, wears, or says something which is usually or historically associated with people of another racial, national, or ethnic group – as when Boy Scouts do Indian dances or white girls wear hoop earrings or white college boys copy “black” slang.  I just laugh all this off as more nonsense from politically motivated fools and scoundrels first  because  race, nationality, and ethnicity really don’t matter much.  Only individuals really exist, and it is their character, ability, intelligence, behavior, and personality that matter, not what color they are or where they came from.  Beyond that if people want to do or enjoy or copy or modify something first done by others, it is their business and harms no one. So I’m okay with green beer for anyone who wants it on March 17, parties by any interested revelers  on May 5, Christmas trees for non-Teutons,  taco flavored pizzas,  sushi in grocery stores, bagpipes at any funeral they are wanted, and even New Yorkers being able to enjoy  collards and Texas smoked brisket.   (Of course copying can be done in ways which are mocking, stupid, or rude, but the difficulty there would be with the mocking, stupidity, and rudeness, not “appropriation” as such.)

Still it is amusing to imagine what an easily rankled, historically minded, non-PC white guy, named say Vic, who took this stuff seriously and literally might say.  It could go something like this:

“Okay, I understand you are saying people in one culture should not take on things from another. Well we European and American whites and our culture gave the world the scientific, technological, and industrial revolutions  which produced modern medicine, drugs which actually cure diseases, clean running water, sanitation, electronic communication, cars, trains, and airplanes, electric power, self-powered ships, adequate and cheap supplies of food and clothing, printed books, comfortable and affordable houses,  computers, movies, radio, and TV, mass production, space travel and satellites, modern agriculture,  and a general prosperity and increased lifespans never seen before.  We created the liberal principles of the Enlightenment and individual rights and then applied them in the 19^th Century to eliminate slavery – which had existed among almost all cultures and races for thousands of years – throughout every place in the world we controlled or influenced.  In the 20^th Century we applied them again to recognize women as full and equal citizens with men, the first time this was done anywhere in history on a large scale.  So I guess you will have to give up all that and return to your own cultural roots and historic lifestyles and standards of living. Well,  good luck with that.”

One might accuse Vic of being a little rough, but it would be hard for believers in the sinfulness of cultural appropriation  to argue he was wrong without contradicting their own premise.         

Rereading Locke's Second Essay

A couple of weeks ago I reread Locke’s Second Essay on Civil Government.  I had not read it since I was a teenager. It is still the greatest work on political philosophy I have ever found.  Its principles and insights provide a generally sound basis for a free society. Something I noticed this time (and probably didn’t when I was 17) is  how few of his arguments and conclusions  depend on his hypothesis of the  origination of most governments in contracts by their subjects.  His critics are right to question the hypothesis but wrong to think it matters very much.  His ideas on such things as  the limits of government, the reasons governments are useful, the dangers of tyranny, and the right under certain conditions to rebel are  valid and compelling. (He even warns against legislators delegating the power to make  rules to others,  a danger we in the United States learned far too much about during the Bush and especially the Obama administrations.)   I wish everyone starting to think about political philosophy would read it. It could get a person off  to a splendid start.