{"id":1798,"date":"2024-04-03T19:37:39","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T19:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2026-05-19T03:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:05:15","slug":"joseph-de-maistre-against-critical-race-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/?p=1798","title":{"rendered":"Joseph De Maistre Against Critical Race Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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King John signing the Magna Carta reluctantly by Arthur C Michael.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been much talk about Critical Race Theory (or CRT for short) in recent years. Cancerous sect that it is, this ideology, having first festered and proliferated in the law schools and universities, has filtered its way into the other institutions of public life in the United States. Among the many examples of this infiltration that can be marshaled, the public schools\u2014quite understandably, it may be added\u2014have gained the most visibility. The conservative responses to the claims of this bastard of the Frankfurt School have been lackluster in that they have tended to ignore the major premise of CRT.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Given the craven race-denialism of the mainstream conservative position, it follows that they avoid refuting the foundational error that, as leading CRT thinkers put it themselves in the introduction to a book entitled Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement<\/em>, \u201claw constructed<\/em> race\u201d (Crenshaw et al., xxv).<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, therefore, a need for this belief system to be examined from a more sound philosophical and historical perspective, as this seditious construct ought to be attacked on its own erroneous terms. This is a necessary attack; for when destroying weeds, does it stand to reason to leave the root untouched, satisfying oneself with cutting the stem? Errors must be countered by vigorous force, but they must also be pulled out by the roots. Considering that the great Catholic philosopher Joseph de Maistre touched excellently on both subjects in his writings, an effort will be given here to analyze this novel ideology with the traditional principles he has handed down to us from the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founding myth of CRT must be examined more concretely; thus, the following excerpt from the previously mentioned work is cited that it may be evaluated in full:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

…[W]e began to think of our project as uncovering how law was a constitutive element of race itself: in other words, how law constructed<\/em> race. Racial power, in our view, was not simply\u2014or even primarily\u2014a product of biased decision-making on the part of judges, but instead, the sum total of the pervasive ways in which law shapes and is shaped by \u201crace relations\u201d across the social plane. Laws produced racial power not simply through narrowing the scope of, say, of anti-discrimination remedies, nor through racially-biased decision-making, but instead, through myriad legal rules, many of them having nothing to do with rules against discrimination, that continued to reproduce the structures and practices of racial domination.<\/p>\n(Ibid)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Law cannot construct<\/em> anything\u2014it can only defend something that already exists, whether true or false. For even though man has a likeness to God, only He can create out of nothing. This fault is not unique to the CRT thinkers; in fact, they are repeating an error that extends beyond the articulations of pedophile apologist Michel Foucault, for his concept of \u201csocial construction\u201d builds upon the so-called \u201cEnlightenment\u201d concept of the social contract. Foucault held that social institutions, guided by what he ominously terms \u201cthe Power\u201d, artificially impose not only laws, but our social categories and values as well. Jean Jacques Rousseau likewise held that society was artificial\u2014contrary to Aristotle, who rightly terms man a social animal\u2014as the Genevan gigolo imagined that it was natural for man to live alone. The first society, according to him, was formed by a kind of contractual agreement, which Maistre lampooned in his Study on Sovereignty:<\/em> <\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rousseau and all the thinkers of his temper imagine, or try to imagine, a people in the state of natur<\/em>e (this is their expression), properly deliberating on the advantages and disadvantages of the social state and finally determining to pass from one to the other. But there is not a shadow of common sense in this. What were these men doing before this National Convention<\/em> in which they finally resolved to give themselves a sovereign? They lived apparently without laws, without government; but for how long?<\/p>\n(Maistre 169)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau\u2019s iteration of this philosophical myth heavily influenced the American Founders, the idea that society is an artifice, a convention, has come to influence major American thinkers since the nation\u2019s beginning. Ironically, in spite of the evident hatred the CRT thinkers hold towards the American nation, these ideologues have imbibed one of its oldest philosophical presuppositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maistre, responding to such claims in his Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions<\/em>, utilized the example of the Magna Carta<\/em> to illustrate that law is the documented result of an unwritten tradition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Never, doubtless, would these Englishmen have demanded the Magna Carta <\/em>if the privileges of the nation had not been violated; nor would they have asked for it unless these privileges had existed before the Charter.<\/p>\n(Maistre 17)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What does he mean by this? Earlier in this work, he explains that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The essence of a fundamental law is that no one has the right to abolish it: but how can it be above all<\/em> if some one<\/em> has made it? The agreement of the people is impossible; and even if it were not, an agreement is not a law, and binds no one unless a superior authority grants it. Locke<\/em> sought the character of the law in the expression of united wills; we must be happy thus to meet precisely that trait which excludes the idea of law. In fact, the united regulations form the regulation<\/em> and not the law<\/em>, which necessarily and manifestly presupposes a superior will which makes itself obeyed.<\/p>\n(Maistre 9)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Being this superior will, tradition must precede the actual codification of a law. It is this that generates laws, not the sudden fancy of a \u201cPower\u201d that neither the CRT deceivers nor Foucault could ever truly define. And because tradition is organic, growing outwards of the customs and nature of a given people, the societal institutions, morals, and laws that emerge from a nation are not artificial social constructs. Instead, they are exterior expressions of an inward national spirit, in a similar way to how one uses body language to convey interior emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, it is worth mentioning that not all traditions are good; there have been wicked societies\u2014their laws, if they had them, indicated this too. But it is quite erroneous to blame these downfalls on the existence of society itself. Rather, such decadence is the result of man\u2019s fallen nature prevailing over the best intuitions of a people. These \u201cbest intuitions\u201d did not emanate from an innocence which Rousseau, who believed that Original Sin began with the first society instead of the Fall, presumed present in his farcical state of nature. Any goodness in man ultimately comes from God, for He said to Moses \u201cI AM WHO AM\u201d (Exodus 3:14). God, since He is Goodness itself, is;<\/em> therefore the nature of man\u2019s goodness derives from the goodness of God. Evil, however, is a perversion of the good. It has no nature of itself, being akin to a carcass\u2014a body, once beautiful, which has become vile by decay. Man\u2019s cooperation with the good thus builds and sustains society, while his neglect or even contempt of it harms the social order. In short, it is precisely as the Wise Man wrote: \u201cJustice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable\u201d (Proverbs 14:34). It has happened to societies both Christian and pagan, and will continue happening until the end of the world. However, it must be pointed out here that the Social Reign of Christ the King offers men not only the path to eternal salvation, but also the path to human flourishing in this world, insofar as such a thing is possible in this vale of tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our present society is unfortunately a striking example of how such a downfall happens; why study the societies of the Egyptians and Aztecs, when our post-Christian society enshrines monstrous crimes such as abortion and sodomitical sham marriages as \u201cfundamental civil rights\u201d? Honestly observing these moral ruins, the idea that \u201claw constructed<\/em> race\u201d or that it can construct<\/em> anything reveals itself to be an apparent falsehood; for without a social and an intellectual tradition that advocated for the previously mentioned \u201ccivil rights\u201d, there could be no laws enshrining them. This likewise applies to the case of the so-called \u201cCivil Rights Act\u201d, as this legislation would not have come into being without the Marxist-led \u201cCivil Rights Movement\u201d which preceded it. By a simple glance at the history of their own revolutionary predecessors, the law as construct claim of CRT stands refuted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201crace\u201d part of the claim that \u201claw constructed<\/em> race\u201d must now be evaluated. Returning to the aforementioned quote from Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings<\/em> that Formed the Movement<\/em>, the second part of this passage proposes an accusation that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laws produced racial power not simply through narrowing the scope of, say, of anti-discrimination remedies, nor through racially-biased decision-making, but instead, through myriad legal rules, many of them having nothing to do with rules against discrimination, that continued to reproduce the structures and practices of racial domination.<\/p>\n(Crenshaw et al., xxv)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is essentially a means of arguing that, somehow, a grand conspiracy exists in the United States to undermine the well-being of Black Americans by means of a legal system that is secretly \u201cracist\u201d. Never mind the truth of the matter. Among many proofs to the contrary which can be cited, Black criminals are treated with an incredible and foolish leniency that is denied to their White peers. Similar to the canard of explaining the disproportionate violent crime rates of Black American males to their counterparts of other races<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> as solely resulting from \u201csocioeconomic factors\u201d, this claim is, fundamentally, a lie to disguise an inconvenient truth. It stands as an attempt to brush away any inquiry that it could, indeed, be that biological factors influence such differences; for such revelations, if allowed open expression, would forever destroy the egalitarian fantasy to which these thinkers so fanatically attach themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further explaining their beliefs, they write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was obvious to many of us that although race was, to use the term, socially constructed (the idea of biological race is \u201cfalse\u201d), race was nonetheless \u201creal\u201d in the sense that there is a material dimension and weight to the experience of being \u201craced\u201d in American society, a materiality that in significant ways has been produced and sustained by law. Thus, we understood our project as an effort to construct a race-conscious and at the same time anti-essentialist account of the processes by which law participates in \u201crace-ing\u201d American society.<\/p>\n(Crenshaw et al., xxvi)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here, these authors make it transparent that they believe race to exist only in a \u201csocially constructed\u201d sense, being a creation of \u201cthe law\u201d to serve the purpose of \u201crace-ing\u201d people in American society. In this, it is difficult to not make an analogy to Judith Butler\u2019s moronically cryptic ranting about how \u201cgender\u201d is merely a \u201csocial performance\u201d; Liberal-Marxist social theorists and their adoring peers have little patience for obvious biological facts. Truth does not matter to the CRT thinkers, as the term \u201canti-essentialist\u201d gives away. It is important to note that this term is not restricted to them, as it enjoys a disgraceful popularity among post-modern philosophers and their followers. But in doing so, they have revealed themselves to be the nominalists they really are, using a concept which fundamentally asserts that things do not have an essence to themselves<\/em>. Of course, the previously mentioned political reasons for believing in such nonsense make sense on some level. If you do not believe that racial groups can even be<\/em> possible since\u2014to your mind\u2014all Blacks merely happen<\/em> to look like other Blacks and all Whites happen<\/em> to look like all other Whites, then it is impossible to state that the violent crime rates of Black males are disproportionate because there are no Black males.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this\u2014as can be quickly ascertained\u2014ends in contradiction for the CRT believer. How can reparative justice for Black criminals exist if, ontologically speaking, Blacks do not really exist? Moreover, if race exists only as a \u201csocial construct\u201d, then why do these authors refer to \u201cscholars of color\u201d (Ibid) throughout this same introduction? Unless these charlatans sincerely desire to tell us that \u201claw constructed<\/em> skin color\u201d, is skin color not a biological difference in of itself? The existence of this variation among mankind\u2014compounded with the other differing physical features among the races, such as distinct skull structures\u2014indicates that, indeed, race is<\/em> biologically real.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim of CRT in \u201cunveiling\u201d race to be a \u201csocial construct\u201d created by the legal system to \u201coppress\u201d non-Whites reveals itself to be even more ridiculous if the history of race is honestly studied. \u201cHonestly\u201d is insisted upon here, for there are many \u201chistorians\u201d today who would tell you to your face that, for example, neither the Greeks nor the Romans of Antiquity believed in \u201crace\u201d. Quite the contrary is true; only a cursory glance at Aristotle is needed to prove this point:<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The peoples of cold countries generally, and particularly those of Europe, are full of spirit, but are deficient in skill and intelligence; and this is why they remain comparatively free, but attain no political development and show no capacity for governing others. The peoples of Asia are endowed with skill and intelligence, but are deficient in spirit; and this is why they continue to be peoples of subjects and slaves. The Greek stock, intermediate in geographical position, unites the qualities of both sets of peoples. It possesses both spirit and intelligence: the one quality makes it continue free; the other enables it to attain the highest political development, and to show a capacity for governing every other people\u2014if only it could once achieve political unity.<\/p>\n(Politics<\/em> 1327b)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For the case of this study, it is not necessary to discuss the truth value of how the differing environments of the peoples Aristotle mentioned influenced their mental and social development. It proves that he, and in fact every discernible writer in those times, believed and knew the concept of race to be natural (therefore biological), not constructed.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to cite evidence with more direct relevance to the case of the United States, it is worth referencing how racial distinctions had already become apparent among the Englishmen and the Indians during the obscure conflict known as King Philip\u2019s War (1675-1676) which was waged in the New England colonies. Within the pages of a book on the subject entitled King Philip\u2019s War: The History and Legacy of America\u2019s Forgotten Conflict<\/em>, several accounts of settlers who experienced the conflict can be found. The following is related one from these accounts, this being an excerpt from the diary of Captain Charles Benjamin Church:<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Captain Church enquired of some of the Indians that were become his soldiers, how they got such advantage often of the English in their marches through the woods. They told him that the Indians always took care in their marches and fights not to come too thick together. But the English always kept in a heap together; that it was as easy to hit them as to hit an house. The other was, that if any time they discovered a company of English soldiers in the woods they knew that there was all, for the English never scattered, but the Indians always divided and scattered.<\/p>\n
(Schultz and Tougias 330)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Such a passage reveals that the terms of Englishman and Indian were not intended to describe mere social groups, but racially distinct peoples\u2014for why else would Church have referred to the Indians among his English colonial troops as Indians<\/em>? If one wishes to sincerely play the \u201claw constructed<\/em> race\u201d card to its logical end, they will surely have a hard time explaining why the colonists and natives were already utilizing racial language to identify themselves as racial others before the existence of the American legal code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This historical source, alongside the aforementioned excerpt by Aristotle, serves to prove what should be self-evident to all: the reality of race was acknowledged before the legal system translated the prior racial categorizations into law. To paraphrase Maistre, the law cannot exist prior to what it sets down. These categories, therefore, were and are an attempt to classify reality. Evidently, since the categorization is being done by fallible men who may have good or bad intentions in doing this task, there will be error. But errors made in this process do not refute the reality which the categories attempt to classify, even with the blatant distortion of the American racial categorization system post Hart-Celler Act (1965). For a comparison, take the Periodic Table of the Elements: what person would dare assert that, because this classification system was not always accurate, that therefore the elements of gold and silver are socially constructed<\/em> by the will of the scientific establishment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it is not politically correct nor viable to deny the essence and existence of gold and silver. But it is politically correct, and convenient<\/em>, to assert that race does not have its origin in nature, but as artificial constructs produced by judges and lawyers for the sake of the \u201cPower\u201d. Maistre writes that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Law is not properly law<\/em>, nor is it truly sanctioned, except in supposing it emanates from a superior will; so that its essential character is that it is not the will of all<\/em>. Otherwise the laws will be, as we have just said, only regulations<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n(Maistre 9-10)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Having divorced law from any concept of order derived from the laws of God, the Liberal-Marxists have turned laws into regulations. Since they are regulations, even the most sacred can be redefined, even against a self-evident tradition which opposes the introductions of the desired new \u201claws\u201d. The Supreme Court, thus, can interpret sodomitical sham marriages as \u201cconstitutional\u201d\u2014as they have done\u2014because they have no real interest in doing the superior will of God or even the lesser will of traditional American morality, which is deeply influenced by Christian morality. Applying this to CRT, it is apparent that this false philosophy is simply another means of inducing the moral and social chaos inherent to this sophistic legal revisionism. It is the liberal-marxists who have invented false categories, not the defenders of Christ the King. They are to blame for the social confusion which results in such nonsense as youth declaring themselves \u201caromance\u201d or \u201cpansexual\u201d, not persons who stand for the truth that \u201cGod made them male and female\u201d(Mark 10:6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To counter the web of lies in American society, it is not enough to be a reactionary on the \u201cgender identity\u201d front; one must be a reactionary on the race front as well, or we are sure to lose. The truths about the historical and biological reality of race are just as deserving of a defense as are the historical and biological reality of the sexes. A proper understanding of race will only aid us, for it enables us to have true charity towards our neighbor and ourselves. In closing, we must profess with the pious Father James Wathen that:<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…[T]he key word in all discussions about the differences among human beings, whether as individuals, or as members of a family, a tribe, a nation, or a race, is complementariness. Marxists divide the human race into conflicting groups, and see all differences as pretexts for complaint and grounds for conflict. Because they are strict materialists, they must see all things in terms of this earthly life and economic status and material possession. Christianity sees every human being as part of a divine plan. This plan envisions all men, particularly the elect abiding in the Church, as fulfilling God\u2019s secret, holy purposes. While they are working out their salvation, they must recognize that God has cast them with others, all of whom exist as the dramatis personae<\/em> of the divine production, while, in charity, they help each other to obey God\u2019s laws and achieve his particular spiritual destiny in so doing.<\/p>\n(Wathen 103)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAn indomitable pride incessantly leads them to overthrow everything they have not made; and to create anew they separate themselves from the principle of all existence.\u201d – Joseph de Maistre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[28,43,40,22,26,10,36],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-america","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-history","tag-nature","tag-philosophy","tag-politics"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63060,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/63060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmenidean.is\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}