Gilder's delusions are this nation's spectacles.
My first and totally ignored post on the MMM ('the cult of the
male')pointed out the link between Farrakhan and the 'independent' right as
I quoted from Gilder's Men and Marriage, critically reviewed by the way in
a helpful comparative study of Britain and the US by Pamela Abbott and
Claire Wallace, *The Family and the New Right* (London: Pluto, 1991).
By independent right, I mean those working from powerful institutions
which are able to foist upon the public the vilest propaganda without any
sort of peer review. The independence of these right-wing thinkers was for
example underlined and lamented in the *American Economic Review's*
critical piece on the *Bell Curve*.
Murray's earlier shit was discredited in many reviews; at any rate, Clinton
only recently suggested that Murray was indeed correct--in other words,
Clinton showed all the potential of a social-fascist. This speaks to my
point that Murray and Gilder need to be taken seriously, no matter how
vacuous one finds their analysis.
Gilder of course concludes today's WSJ article with the most resounding
applause for the MMM.
I won't reproduce the last two paragraphs; I trust that those who are
interested will read it.
What are the political implications of Gilder's 'delusions' in the context
of today's economy? I don't think it is simply to cut AFDC and any job
training for women, so as to force them to become dependent upon men and
restore the patriarchal family through which boys are to be socialized as
hard-working proletarians. Of course, undercutting women's independence may
not lead them into marriage, and it won't establish men as economically
powerful enough to become patriarchs. The "Leave it to Beaver" family,
then a fantasy, is even more of one now.
So the real agenda now is both to round up the boys into boot-camps in
which they are to receive this patriarchal socialization (see James Q
Wilson) and to commence the sterilization of women on the grounds that it
is a "menace to society" to allow them to have children without fathers.
Tellingly, Charles Murray has openly supported full abortion rights for the
so-called underclass. In other words, the agenda is quickly moving from
neglect to further and deeper coercion, and the NOI is being set up to play
a very important role in this.
For the threat of sterilization, see the disturbing book by UC Berkeley
sociologist Troy Duster, *The Backdoor to Eugenics*. Routledge.
Rakesh Bhandari
Ph.D. Candidate
Group in Ethnic Studies
UC Berkeley
