The Chain-Dog Serf

by: tim dunkin | published: 12 23, 2012

Earlier this week, Tea Partiers and conservative activists were pleasantly surprised by the decision made by South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to appoint Rep. Tim Scott to the seat being vacated by Senator Jim DeMint in January. Scott is a solid conservative of good character and high principles. His appointment to the Senate is another victory for those who would like to see smaller, more responsible government in Washington, in contrast to the irresponsible foolishness coming out of the current (mis)Administration and the Democrats in the Senate. It was somewhat unsurprising to see that the response of those on the Left was typically reprehensible. Case in point would be an editorial appearing in the New York Times by University of Pennsylvania professor Adolph Reed entitled “The Puzzle of Black Republicans.” This piece – which makes one question the decision-making abilities of the U-Penn hiring board – focused on soon-to-be Senator Scott as a “token,” an aberration whose existence upsets the “right” order of the universe because he is (the horror!) a black Republican.

In recent years, the thinking person has grown used to expecting the ghastly from the Democrats and their sycophants in the media and academia. This op-ed was no different. In it, we see from Reed the slave mentality mindset that has been forced onto many black Americans by the Democrat Party. See, the Democrat Party – once and still the party of slavery – believes that it owns black Americans. Black Americans owe the Democrats their support and their votes, and those who stray from the plantation can expect to be brought aggressively back into the fold. This was exactly what Reed was doing in his article – I doubt very much that it intimidated Rep. Scott, but it was designed to sent a warning shot across the noses of other blacks who might think for themselves when it comes to politics, as well as across those in the “progressive” movement who might be tempted to grant black Americans freedom of conscience in determining their own political and ideological inclinations. Reed was warning Democrat Party slaves that they can’t hope to evade forever the unwritten fugitive slave laws enforced by the Democrat Party cultural and political heavies.

Years ago, I became acquainted with a series of alternate history science fiction works by S.M. Stirling, the Draka series. This series of books chronicles the rise of the Drakan Domination, one of the most nightmare-fuel inducing group of villains in the history of literature. The Drakan civilization originated in this “timeline” as refugees from an American Revolution that was much more successful than it was even in our own. As a result, the British loyalists, bringing their slaves with them, could not flee to Canada, but were settled in South Africa, along with the Hessian soldiers to whom the British could only promise land grants in exchange for their service. Slavery quickly formed the basis of the Drakan colony’s economy, and the Drakans brought the entirety of southern Africa under their control, enslaving the entire populace. As the years went by in their timeline, the Drakans were joined by more of history’s losers – French aristocrats driven out by their Revolution, former Confederates who fled after that timeline’s American Civil War ended much like our own, and a whole host of “intellectuals” – from Carlyle to Gobineau to Nietzsche – who found the Drakan soil much more congenial, and helped the Drakans develop a philosophy explicitly centered on the Will to Power and the rightness of the strong enslaving and dominating the weak. Eventually, this morphed into an explicitly spoken desire to conquer the entire world for slavery and aristocracy. Something which the Drakans eventually did, after defeating the American-led “Alliance for Freedom” in their version of World War III. Copious amounts of cruelty, as well as genetic engineering, are involved (a good review of these books may be found here). As an aside, I do not recommend the books now, due to a rather large amount of…unedifying…material included in them. My experience with them preceded my conversion to Christianity. 

As I noted above, the Drakan society in these books is explicitly rooted in the institution of slavery – slaves being termed “serfs” as an euphemism after the British Empire abolished slavery, while the Drakans were still part of that Empire - they formally broke away after that timeline’s version of World War I saw them conquer not just the whole of Africa, but the Middle East and Central Asia, all the way to the western frontier of China. Of course, all of these regions saw their populations atomized and fed into the slave machinery of the Drakan Domination. One of the types of “serfs” to be found in these books was a class that were owned by the Drakan state’s security apparatus, and were tasked with spying on, reporting, and otherwise keeping in line unruly fellow serfs who might encourage wrong ideas, and therefore insurrection. These serfs were termed “chain-dog serfs.”

As I read his op-ed, it occurred to me that this is exactly what Adolph Reed is – a chain-dog serf whose purpose is to keep other Democrat Party serviles in line, to discourage them from independent thinking about the issues, or even worse, bolting the Party and voting for someone else.

Morally, his article was on par with those who refer to black Americans who become successes through their own hard work and initiative as “Uncle Toms” or “oreos” – black on the outside, white on the inside. As if individual success, hard work, and industry, and, not incidentally, voting Republican, were “white only” traits. That assumption, implicitly made by those who seek to discourage their fellow blacks from succeeding, is really insulting to their own race. It presupposes the same sort of inability that used to only be found as an assumption among Klan members and others of that ilk. I suppose it isn’t a surprise that a guy named “Adolph” makes his trade in trying to keep his fellow black Americans down.

This attitude was apparent in his article, as he seems mystified that a man like Tim Scott, who as he points out was raised in poverty by a single mother, would ever entertain a Party besides the Democrats. The thought never occurs to Reed that perhaps it is the Democrat predilection for discouraging individualism, economic success, and personal initiative that keeps so many people in poverty, and hence, is what Scott was escaping from when he pulled himself up by the bootstraps. 

That’s because of Reed’s fundamental worldview, which is one in which the individual is supposed to be subsumed into the collective of “racial solidarity.” Blacks are supposed to vote for and support the Democrat political platform. Not doing so makes them traitors not just to pencil-necked Ivy League “intellectuals” like Reed, but indeed to their entire race. Working hard and building wealth over a lifetime, and voting to keep the fruits of their own labor instead of having it forcibly confiscated from them by the defalcatory powers of the state, essentially makes blacks into scoundrels and apostates, per this worldview. Reed and his ilk exist within the framework to disparage, denigrate, and discourage such treason. Racism of any sort is inherently collectivist (which is, among other reasons, why most conservatives are not really racists, no matter how often the Left accuses of such – we judge the individual, not the group to which they incidentally belong because of factors beyond their control). Racial collectivists are inherently racist, not just against the group that they’re trying to set their own people against (in this case Republicans, who are implicitly cast in Reed’s screed as “the white party”), but also against their own people for assuming that they can’t, or shouldn’t, do any better than they already are. 

This is shown repeatedly in Reed’s op-ed, in which Tim Scott and other black Republicans are referred to as “tokens” – again reinforcing the belief that blacks are “supposed” to be Democrats, and that if they’re not, they’re not “really” authentically black, but are just being “used” by the Republicans to fill in a few quota boxes. 

Allied with this train of thought is Reed’s stated belief that black Republicans like Scott are used by Republicans to “undermine black interests.” Implicit in this argument is the assumption that generational dependency on the subsistence poverty of a welfare check is, or is supposed to be, a “black interest.” Apparently, aborting millions of black babies, punishing those who have been successful in this life, and removing from black Americans the means to defend themselves against criminals are all “black interests.” In his view, working hard, delayed gratification, and wealth building are not “black interests.”

This error is compounded by Reed’s statement that “Republicans will not gain significant black support unless they take policy positions that advance black interests.” What he and others like him don’t realize is that conservatives (if not all Republicans) DO take policy positions that advance black interests – that is, if you believe that it is in the interest of black Americans, like all other Americans, to pursue the American dream of individual success and a fulfilled life through individual initiative, by removing the impediments set in place by expansive and intrusive government. 

As conservatives, we believe that it is entirely and completely within the interests of black Americans to break the chains of welfare dependency and have the opportunity to prosper through initiative and enterprise; to stop looking to government for a menial handout when they can rise above poverty to become successful in life, like Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas, and many other black Americans who are despised by the Left have. It is in the black interest to stop voting for incompetents like Barack Obama just because he shares their skin color and promises government goodies, but on whose watch unemployment in the black community is edging 15%. In that vein, we’re no different than Booker T. Washington, an early prominent advocate for exactly this approach by the newly freed slaves after the Civil War, but unfortunately one who was eventually overshadowed by the “complaint and dependency” approach advocated by socialists like W.E.B. DuBois. 

In short, “gimme a handout because you owe it to me” should not be a black value. Ever. 

The duty of the conservative movement is not to “take policy positions that advance black interests,” as defined by radical leftists like Adolph Reed. Instead, it is to work to demonstrate to black Americans that their interests should be tied up with the interests of anyone else who wants to succeed in life instead of remaining stuck where they are. Indeed, we must reject the whole racist and collectivist notion of there being “a black interest,” and work to advance the real interest of all Americans in reducing government, freeing the individual to prosper as he or she will, and promoting and increasing genuine liberty for all. When black Americans stop listening to the chain-dog serfs like Adolph Reed and start grabbing hold of liberty, their birthright as Americans, then we will see genuine changes that will benefit the black community in America 

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