Monday, January 29, 2007

Ideas Have Consequences

Over at National Review's postmodern blog, The Corner, Mark Steyn begins a chirruppy little morality lesson with this head-spinning morsel:
Remember the days when our segregated society was so deeply prejudiced that different groups had to use separate bathrooms.

Why, yes, Mark we do. Remember which magazine proudly boosted Jim Crow laws and boasted the byline of Richard Weaver in its pages?

You remember: the Richard Weaver who Jonah Goldberg still recommends as required reading and who wrote this nugget on Jim Crow in 1957:

'Integration’ and ‘Communization’ are, after all, pretty closely synonymous. In light of what is happening today, the first may be little more than a euphemism for the second. It does not take many steps to get from the ‘integrating’ of facilities to the ‘communizing’ of facilities, if the impulse is there.

You would think that, given its proud Aryan history, National Review writers would learn to just avoid the topic of segregation altogether.

Ideas have consequences, indeed.