THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Filter Down I

My apparent prophetic ability in my teens was not just that I knew where integration and other trends were going. More important, I could see the ideas that dominated academia. I could see, plain as day, that the concepts the Masturbation Generation were spreading, the ones coming down the pike, were going to make things WORSE.

I NEVER lived in the present time intellectually. I could watch ideas go from Harvard to smaller universities and the New York Times and then listen without the slightest surprise as they began to take over in Suburbia.

That was half a century ago.

I became an expert in seeing an idea go along on its predictable pattern, the way we NOW know that serial killers do. We are used to patterns now, but back then it was an alien idea. Keynes talked about it in his introduction in 1937 but most "intellectuals" had no idea he was right.

And this was because of one of the ideas I am talking about. Back then there was "intellectual opinion." Back then there was Social Progress. I remember one history book was praising a Thinker of two centuries ago and he said that "his ideas today are as modern as those of Karl Marx, as relevant as Beatrice and Sidney Webb."

The latter pair were founders of the British Labor Party.

Another concept that was considered absolutely unquestionable was Ex Oriente Lux, that all things were invented in the Middle East and spread to us lesser mortals. All that the Middle East had invented was the product of All Mankind:

"One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind."

The most basic absolute, adamantine concept spread by the Masturbation Generation from Mommy Professor was Inevitability. Socialism of the type rejected by the Labor Party by the 1970s was Inevitable in 1050. The only question was whether it would be Beatrice and Sidney Webb's Democratic Socialism or Marx's totalitarian socialism.

As Paul Weyrich explained in his section of my New Right Papers, when he first got to Capitol Hill, conservatives subscribed to this Inevitability. Their only pride was in being the last of a dying, noble breed. When National Review was funded in 1955, it declared that its only purpose was to stand atop the Tide of History and shout: "STOP!"

So I could see the future because I could see the ideas that were filtering down.

EVERYTHING has changed. Ex Oriente Lux has filtered down. I was there fifty years ago when it was the Inevitable, the Future. Carbon dating simply killed it.

Back then, everybody in the Masturbation Generation was just learning from Mommy Professor that man is the only animal who has a class system. Man was the only animal who had borders. Male birds tweeted entirely for the purpose of attracting female birds.

All borders, all violence, all class systems had been explained by Marx and the Webbs to be the products of human society and economics.

The list of absurdities, no, insanities, is ENDLESS. "Modern anthropology has proved that all races are equal in innate abilities." That one took us DECADES to root out. It was replaced by "Race does not exist."

But "race does not exist" was cut to pieces INSIDE academia! In record time! What I simply cannot convey to you is that all this was just BEGINNING to filter down in 1955. NOBODY remembers when it was doctrine that male birds only tweeted to attract females. Back then, as Freud had said, the only basic drives were hunger and sex.

Everybody now knows that animals yell or tweet or roar to mark their territory. Everybody knows that EVERY social animal has a ruthless class system that makes our feudal system look classless.

I was familiar with all this crap. But it was news, news of "sophisticated thought," of Historical Inevitables, back then. It was the doctrine that the Masturbation Generation was spreading down to us all. I could see it perfectly, clearly. Nobody else could.

Back then, those who disagreed did not KNOW that they AGREED. The opposition consisted entirely of those who, like National Review, were convinced they were the last champions of a Lost Cause.

Back in that intellectual environment no one now can understand, everything was hopeless. But no one knew that this was because a host of insane ideas was coming down the predictable pike, no one could understand that then, and damned few can understand that today.

Obviously The Other Side would win. They would win because things were going their way.

Inevitably.

I wrote a piece called "I Won Some!" I got the impression that nobody understood me.

"Bob," they told me, how can you be wasting your time fighting in academia for the innate differences in races when the Communist Conspiracy or The Jews are omnipotent and omniscient?"

"Bob," they said, "Why are you out there trying to get a coalition of Wallace voters and conservatives instead of exposing the Communist Conspiracy?"