Noblesse Oblige in the Modern World

Apr 19 01:34 UTC 2002

An exchange in a recent item prompted me to enter this, an article from the
Daily Northwestern newspaper by Joshua Elder:

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/
-----


     I was sitting in Northwestern University's Fisk Hall listening to
left-wing British journalist Robert Fisk, a veteran foreign correspondent
in the Middle East, when it came to me ... but more on that in a moment. 

     First, a little background on the esteemed Mr. Fisk. He first came to
my attention in December when he wrote a column for his newspaper,
The Independent, headlined: "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the
hatred and fury of this filthy war." 

     According to Fisk's account, a mob of Afghan refugees in Pakistan
savagely assaulted him. The men beat him with their fists and large
stones. One young boy even tried to steal his bag -- which held his money,
credit cards and passport. 

     Fisk fought back and managed to get away with the help of a good
Samaritan, a Muslim, who stepped between him and the attackers and
probably saved Fisk's life. 

     A harrowing tale, but not all that unique. Daniel Pearl, a reporter for
the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and murdered by a group of Muslim
extremists after being forced to record statements denouncing America and
Israel. 

     Fisk was lucky. He survived. Yet in an almost Christ-like act of
forgiveness, Fisk pardoned his attackers.  According to him, their violent
behavior was not their fault. It was America's. 

     "The Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who should have never done
so but whose brutality was entirely the product of others, of us," he said. 

     I asked Fisk if he would have found the attack justified if the roles
were reversed, if it had been an Arab journalist attacked by a group of
grieving American relatives of those who died in the World Trade Center. 

     What he said surprised me. In Fisk's view, Americans were too educated
and too civilized to ever do something like that. Following this reasoning to
its logical conclusion, the Afghan refugees who attacked him were little more
than savages. 

     Aside from the obvious fallacy that Fisk makes in assuming that one needs
a college education to know the difference between right and wrong, his
statement shows a kind of colonial mindset of noblesse oblige that I thought
had long since been buried but apparently is still alive and well in the
dogma of the modern leftist. 

     This is the epiphany I spoke of earlier. 

     Many of the liberals that I have encountered on this campus seem to be
motivated in whole, or in part, by this ideology of noblesse oblige. They are
comfortably middle and upper class -- secure in wealth, education and social
privilege. They are superior to the general population and they know it.

     Of course, that superiority brings with it guilt. This leads them to tear
down the very institutions that gave them their privileged positions, while
at the same time, they try to raise up those hopeless "savages" who cannot
achieve success on their own. 

     Fisk made that very clear when he excused the Afghans who so brutally
attacked him because the "Great Satan" made them do it. So pathetic were
those people in his eyes that they lacked even a rudimentary moral agency. 

     Fisk, like so many other liberals, pities those whose causes he
champions. There is no respect or compassion -- only pity motivated by
guilt. 

     Noblesse oblige, indeed. 

     By Joshua Elder 

     http://www.dailynorthwestern.com
-----

response 2 of 20:

Apr 19 04:03 UTC 2002

        I know whereof he speaks, but serious liberals condemn their thinking
as much as they condemn the thinking of the religious right.

response 4 of 20:

Apr 19 14:19 UTC 2002

Where's a dumbass tag when I need one.

response 6 of 20:

Apr 19 20:31 UTC 2002

From time to time.  :)

response 8 of 20:

Apr 21 02:37 UTC 2002

Re #7:
> Or maybe I could decide that I'm better off than the average Afghan 
> refugee purely because of my greater personal virtue and my harder 
> work, and tell myself that because of that I have no need to pity
> them?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's a basic right-wing plank.  It's one 
I've seen jp2 espouse often.  It's a pretty basic application of Social 
Darwinism.

response 10 of 20:

Apr 21 22:48 UTC 2002

Hmm... I read #0 and think of Kipling's "White Man's Burden".  Not much has
changed in a hundred years.

I think it takes quite a bit to read "In Fisk's view, Americans were too
educated and too civilized to ever do something like that" and come up
with "he [is] acknowledging that things like poverty and hunger often
frustrate people to the point where they are more likely to do bad things".

response 12 of 20:

Apr 24 01:40 UTC 2002

7: I real life, the alternative for almost everyone, I suspect, is to 
understand that those are the breaks.  Some people are luckier than 
you, and some people are unluckier.  The feeling of obligation to help 
the unluckier ones is practically what defines a good person.

But while we're feeling sorry for the Afghanistanis and the 
Palestinians, we need to keep reminding ourselves that many of them 
think it sucks to be *us*.  That's why they want to prevent us from 
turning the rest of the world into us.  

response 14 of 20:

Apr 24 01:45 UTC 2002

You could make a real good case for that.

response 16 of 20:

Apr 24 01:47 UTC 2002

You didn't.  I agreed with you!

response 18 of 20:

Apr 24 21:25 UTC 2002

Re: 7 - the issue is not a lack of recognition that they are worse off than
we are, but rather the attitude that they can't help but be worse off than
we are because of their presumed inferiority, and they'll stay that way unless
we help them, and even when we do help them, they can't be expected to behave
like civilized people.

response 20 of 20:

Apr 24 22:55 UTC 2002

That mysterious mnvpel; he's an enema wrapped in a puddle! 

FWIW, #0 contains exactly two quotes. The rest is the author's attempt read
Fisk's mind or project ideas on him that we have no way of knowing he actually
endorses. Pretty absurd actually. A more reasonable interpretation, although
one we again don't know is correct, is that "To whom much is given, much is
expected."