Stereotypes

Righty: You have to be either blind or a political correctness fanatic (essentially the same thing) not to notice that blacks are superior athletes or that Jews are smart. Let’s face it: Asians love technology, Latin Americans love hot music, the Irish love drinking and politics. I’m not going out of my way to be offensive here; I’m just stating that we shouldn’t ignore the obvious. That’s what Lefty and his fellow PC freaks are doing when they deny the validity of stereotypes. I find it exasperating that godless liberals insist on explaining evolution strictly in genetic terms, yet they throw a hissy fit if you mention the role of genetics in determining the behavior of ethnic groups. We know that individual dog breeds, for example, exhibit distinct behavioral traits that have been perpetuated through selective breeding. Why shouldn’t it be the same with members of ethnic groups that have married within their own tribe for centuries?

Lefty: I won’t dignify Righty’s ghastly prejudices with a lengthy retort; I’ll let his ignorance speak for itself. (With his comparison of ethnic groups to dog breeds, Righty has just possibly reached a new low even by his standards.) Let me just assert that stereotypes are responsible for some of the most hateful crimes in human history, including most genocides. We reduce living, breathing individuals to identical units in a group. Then we dispose of the group. So neat and convenient, isn’t it? (Shudder.)

The New Moderate:

Stereotypes aren’t simply the wild fabrications of flaming bigots. Nearly all stereotypes, crude as they are, contain a kernel of truth that no open-minded person can deny. Jews, on average, do have higher IQs (and incomes) than the rest of us. Blacks do comprise a vastly disproportionate percentage of basketball, football, boxing and track superstars. And nobody who listens to hip-hop can honestly dispute the much-ridiculed notion that black people seem to possess a racially inherited sense of rhythm. Nearly all black music and dance -- African and African-American alike -- inform our ears and eyes that they do. Whether the inheritance is genetic or cultural is beside the point; all that matters is the finished product.

Is the black rhythm hypothesis a blatant stereotype? Of course it is, and a relatively silly one at that. But is it an inaccurate stereotype? I don't think so. We know it doesn't apply to all black people (we're not sure we'd want to see Oprah attempt to break-dance), but it applies to enough blacks within our experience to make the generalization stick.

Why do Lefty and Company profess to detest all stereotypes -- even positive ones? Because stereotypes deny due credit to individual talents and efforts. (If blacks are naturally superior athletes, then it follows that Willie Mays and Muhammad Ali were nothing special.) More insidiously, the mind that observes positive stereotypes is likely to use the same mental tools to concoct negative stereotypes. To the stereotyping mind, Jews are smart but also pushy; blacks are not only physically talented but intellectually indifferent. You can see why we’d want to avoid this line of thinking.

The New Moderate should point out that stereotyping isn't an exclusive pastime of the right. (Those who accuse right-wingers of indulging in stereotypes are themselves indulging in stereotypes.) Lefty's opinions of fundamentalist Christians, Republicans, the military, white male authority figures, Texans and other mortal enemies bear a distinct resemblance to stereotypes -- even vicious stereotypes -- though of course Lefty would simply shrug and insist that the truth can be unflattering.

Why do so many of us -- right, left and center alike -- engage in stereotyping? Because stereotypes help create order in a disorderly world. If you know what to expect from Group A or Group B (or think you know what to expect), then you know (or think you know) what to expect from all the individuals in those groups. Stereotypes help an uncertain soul feel more at ease in the cosmos.

Regardless of the common traits passed down from one generation to the next, all ethnic groups are made up of individuals. The more individual those individuals are, the less they resemble the group norm. Talented Jewish athletes and black scholars should never have to find themselves imprisoned by group stereotypes. Neither should heterosexual male interior decorators or gay airline pilots. Stereotypes are valid only as crude caricatures of group characteristics (and I’m probably giving them too much credit). They should never, ever be used to prejudge individuals within the group.

The folks who do resemble the negative stereotypes for their group are usually the ones who haven’t bothered to develop as individuals. Gun-toting black thugs, Jewish wheeler-dealers, puritanical WASPs, boorish Russians and rednecks, bland Asian technogeeks, compulsively clannish Greeks and Armenians, slap-happy Irish drunks... all of them exist in real life, at least to a degree -- and they tend to make their more enlightened kinsmen blush on behalf of their tribe.

The unenlightened ones simply inherit their behavior from their family and neighbors, follow the path of least resistance and never carve out their own identities. They're still creatures of the herd, and their numbers are probably larger than we’d comfortably like to admit. But do they deserve recognition as fitting representatives of their breed? Absolutely not. We should cheer all the quirky mavericks who emerge from those groups: nerdy blacks, lovably goofy Germans, ethereal Latinos, math-averse Asian rock stars and fashion-challenged gay men. They give us reassuring evidence that individualism is stronger than inheritance.

Summary: Most stereotypes contain nuggets of truth about various groups, but they’re only crude caricatures and should never be used to prejudge individuals within a group.

Diversity

Righty: Why do bleeding hearts on the left continue to gush about "diversity" when the guests at their dinner parties are almost exclusively white and upper middle class? I don’t detect much "diversity" among all you Chardonnay-sippers, eh Lefty? The fact is, most of us instinctively gravitate toward others like ourselves. Blacks do it. Hispanics do it. Greeks, Armenians and Jews do it. So do gays and celebrities. Even Lefty’s pampered, privately educated liberal friends do it. The difference between them and me is that I’m honest enough to admit it. Nobody who sends his kids to a private school is morally entitled to rhapsodize about diversity or impose it on others. I’m no bigot, but I’m comfortable among my own kind and I don’t see why we should have to include quotas of various favored minorities in every neighborhood, company, school, and TV show. I’m fine with blacks or gays moving into my neck of the woods as long as they’re decent, law-abiding citizens who embrace our Christian way of life. But I don’t see why we should have to send out engraved invitations to encourage them.

Lefty: I’m sure Righty would like nothing better than to whisk us back to the Eisenhower era, when America’s unofficially sanctioned national color was lily white. In those halcyon days, blacks, Hispanics, gays and even women were essentially disenfranchised and hidden discreetly from view. Is that the kind of society Righty (I almost said "Whitey") would have us celebrate? We need to empower individuals of all colors, genders and sexualities if we truly want to build an egalitarian society. We empower them by boosting their representation in academic and professional life, and by renouncing the primitive prejudices that made them second-class citizens in the first place. All right-thinking people have an obligation to help diversity flourish. Those who stand in opposition to it must be condemned as bigots, oppressors and -- worst of all -- Republicans!

The New Moderate:

I’m not especially fond of code words; they tend to conceal a multitude of agendas. "Diversity" is a stellar example of the breed. When a liberal uses this richly flavored buzzword in casual conversation, other liberals know immediately that the speaker is one of them... that they understand each other and breathe the same sociopolitical vapors. They’re siblings under the skin and firmly planted on the "correct" side of the great cultural divide.

What does "diversity" signify, exactly? Well, you’d think it would imply an open friendliness toward every conceivable minority group, white and otherwise... every economic class... every ethnic group, religion, philosophy and temperament. But as Righty suggested, those who talk loudest about diversity seem to be highly selective about the minorities they embrace. And that’s what bothers me.

An instructive example: here in Philadelphia, home of The New Moderate, the most richly diverse neighborhood is the Northeast -- a bubbling cauldron of hardworking whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and immigrants from dozens of outposts on the planet. But Northeast Philly gets no respect from the city’s educated white liberals. They positively shun the place. Too lower middle class. Too philistine. No trendy restaurants. Their paragon of "diversity" is my own Mt. Airy neighborhood, which is roughly 50% African American and 49% educated white liberal, including a generous sprinkling of lesbians and vintage hippies. You can search the place from top to bottom without unearthing any Poles, Greeks, Italians, Hungarians, Russians, Lebanese, Indians (Asian or American), Filipinos, Koreans, Mexicans or Jamaicans. Republicans are universally reviled and practically extinct. Presbyterians and pro-lifers languish on the endangered list. Other rarities include working-class whites, Boy Scouts, non-black fundamentalist Christians, gay men and young single heterosexuals.

Don’t get me wrong: Mt. Airy is a handsome and friendly old neighborhood. Blacks and whites seem to coexist peacefully and even marry each other. But diverse? The folks in Mt. Airy are clearly tailoring the word to fit their politics.

I’d like to see "diversity" used according to its dictionary definition rather than the ill-concealed biases of its liberal champions. If you want real diversity, take a walk around Northeast Philly, not Mt. Airy. Be true to your creed and welcome Irish-American firefighters into your neighborhood as readily as you welcome blacks, lesbians and educated white liberals. You might actually learn something from them.

Summary: Diversity is an admirable concept, but the term is habitually slanted to promote favored minorities and exclude those who offend liberal sensibilities. True diversity embraces all ethnic groups and philosophies; it can't be achieved through selectively imposed quotas.

Global Warming

Righty: Those sandal-wearing, NPR-addicted, tree-hugging Chicken Littles on the left have already convinced mainstream America that the sky is falling... that we’re about to be inundated by rising seas, tropical heat and other meteorological catastrophes of an apocalyptic nature. All as a result of filthy capitalists and piggish American middle-class consumers releasing tons of pollutants into the atmosphere, of course. Did they ever consider that the Earth has naturally occurring cycles of colder and warmer weather, and that we’re simply emerging from a minor ice age? Presidential aspirant and perennial flake Al Gore has lent his prestige to the global warming hysteria, complete with PowerPoint presentations and a jumble of statistics. Just remember that you’re listening to the man who claims he invented the Internet.

Lefty: Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Retreating glaciers. Cherry blossoms blooming in winter. The hottest recorded temperatures since temperature-recording began. Wake up, everyone, THIS IS FOR REAL. The fabled snows of Kilimanjaro have virtually vanished, and Glacier National Park will need a new name within a few decades. Even the great Greenland icecap is melting at an alarming pace and sliding slowly into the sea. By the end of this century, all our coastal cities will be looking like Venice. Changing patterns of vegetation will decimate crops and cause massive famines. How much more evidence to we need to produce before those right-wing energy hogs smarten up and reverse their catastrophic environmental policies? Their intransigence in this matter is nothing less than evil, and their greed will visit horrendous consequences on every future generation to inhabit this once-pristine planet.

The New Moderate:

I have to lean in Lefty’s direction on this one, but (naturally) with a couple of qualifications. For anyone who cares remotely about the future, the gradual transformation of our dazzling blue-green globe into a hellish pressure-cooker is a catastrophe that makes Islamist terrorism look like a game of croquet. Who would have dreamed that one puny species of higher ape could have wreaked such general havoc across the planet?

That we’re already heating up has been established beyond argument. Only two matters remain to be debated: how much of the warming is due to manmade rather than natural causes (The New Moderate is moderate enough to admit that not all the change might be traced to us humans), and how quickly the Earth will be turning up the burners. Will average temperatures rise 3 degrees or 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100? Will sea levels creep 8 inches or 8 feet higher? Should smart real estate investors abandon the Jersey shore and start buying up beachfront property in Pennsylvania? Scientists haven’t been able to agree on the degree of change, but nearly all of them agree on the direction of the change. Greenland might not melt like a heated popsicle in our lifetimes, but it will melt in somebody’s lifetime if nothing is done. And that’s enough to make an alarmist out of The New Moderate, even if some of my fellow alarmists go embarrassingly overboard in their hysteria. I’d like to believe that future generations might be able to enjoy London, Paris, New York and Boston without gondolas.

It doesn’t matter whether some or even most of the change is the result of natural shifts in climate. We know that manmade emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect, so we must stop in our tracks and develop new energy alternatives now. Not ten or twenty years from now. As China, India, Brazil and other late bloomers require more energy to fuel their giddy growth, we will be making impossible demands on our resources and (given our current energy habits) turning our atmosphere into a noxious soup of greenhouse gases. It doesn’t take a professional geologist to see that we’re headed for a scenario in which the future Earth resembles some nightmare landscape from the mind of Hieronymus Bosch. Either we find more benign sources of energy, or we cut our fuel consumption drastically across the planet. The New Moderate would favor the former. Imagine trying to live without air-conditioning when summer temperatures routinely top 100.

Summary: It doesn’t matter whether global warming is a natural or manmade phenomenon (or a combination thereof); we have to address it NOW.

White People

Righty: White people created Western Civilization and all its wonders. We built everything of note from the Parthenon to the personal computer. We explored the world from top to bottom, delivered most of it from ignorance and savagery, spread the Gospel, advanced the frontiers of science, discovered cures for dreaded diseases, and founded numerous great nations, including, of course, the United States. White people were designed by nature to rule. Why shouldn’t we band together and resist the steady erosion of our culture by foreign elements? Why is it OK for black people to celebrate black power when we’re not allowed to promote white power? We detect a double standard here, and we’d better do something about it before white societies are completely overrun by hostile dark-skinned immigrants who breed like mosquitoes. White people are already an endangered species, and the world won’t realize it until it’s too late. Self-hating white liberals like Lefty are probably our worst enemy. Two hundred years from now, Lefty, your coffee-colored great-great grandchildren will probably have to visit Iceland or Iowa to see actual specimens of white people.

Lefty: White racism has given us slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Nazism and the Holocaust. Quite a legacy there! White supremacists are almost without exception moronic, malevolent, impotent psychopaths. (How could anyone believe in the notion of white superiority after watching these clowns in action?) What do white people have to celebrate other than a heritage of greed, exploitation, war, materialism and bad dancing (Fred Astaire and a few others excepted)? African Americans and other minorities are entitled to celebrate their cultures because they’ve been the victims of systematic white oppression. They must be given a chance to undo centuries of forced hypnosis that essentially told them "White is right." There has never been a white pride movement capable of divorcing itself from racism. It is a poisonous issue that must be banished from every forum of civilized discourse.

The New Moderate:

The New Moderate must acknowledge Righty’s gripe about a double standard that allows dark-skinned minorities, but not white people, to celebrate their race-based cultures. I must also support Lefty’s contention that every "white pride" movement that has ever existed seems to have been tainted with obnoxious strains of racism. Why can’t white people simply look after their interests without bashing their darker brethren? Until they can, anyone who espouses white power or even white rights will be condemned (and justifiably so) as racist. (It might be that all ethnic "pride" celebrations are essentially racist or chauvinistic, regardless of who is doing the celebrating.)

Why would The New Moderate suggest that white people might want to "look after their interests"? Aren’t we slowly sinking into the bottomless bog of racism here? Stay with me for a moment. If current demographic trends continue unchecked, whites of European ancestry will account for less than half the population in both North America and Western Europe within half a century. In other words, white people will officially be a minority group. This revolutionary shift in population will forever alter the nature of Western societies and their cultures. (Forever is a LONG time, in case you’re not convinced.) It is not unreasonable to assume that the United States will eventually be speaking Spanish as its primary language, or that minarets will be sprouting alongside the abandoned cathedrals of France and England. And there is nothing wrong -- repeat, NOTHING WRONG -- with expressing dismay at this development. In fact, it might be desirable and even heroic to prevent it from happening. We’ve become so sensitized to leftist accusations of racism, and so bankrupt as a civilization, that we’re willing to just roll over and let the forces of history have their way with us.

There is nothing racist about simple self-preservation. I’m not even of European stock (my ancestors were Armenian Christians from the Ottoman Empire), and yet I’d mourn the disappearance of blond hair, blue eyes and freckles from our midst. I’d hate to see fine old languages like Dutch and Danish frittered into extinction. As much as I love Middle Eastern food, I’d never want it to replace the meaty succulence of German cooking or the epicurean delights of French. The New Moderate loves all nationalities in their infinite variety and would be loath to see any of them go the way of the dodo. I’d be just as unhappy if Americans settled en masse in the Middle East, reproduced out of control and festooned the stark landscape with golf courses and endless rows of McMansions.

How can white people "look after their interests"? Definitely not by mobilizing into fascist brigades, spouting racist diatribes or rounding up everyone who doesn’t fit the desired mold. No, if the white residents of North America and Western Europe don’t want to see their societies changed beyond recognition, they should simply do everything in their power to reverse the internal rot that has put them in this melancholy predicament. That means encouraging their own people to work at jobs they’ve been content to assign to immigrants. It means restricting immigration and downsizing the cushy welfare systems that attract foreigners who choose not to work. It means creating a vigorous culture that shuns cheap values and empty materialism. It means daring to sacrifice a little comfort for the scary proposition of having children. You can’t expect a race to survive when it lacks the resolve to reproduce.

The gods have always favored the hardy over the refined, in nations as well as individuals. The nations of the West (and especially Western Europe) are looking dangerously anemic right now. It might be that today’s white-dominated societies won’t survive in any form unless they receive an infusion of vitality from darker-hued populations. If those populations absorb Western values along the way, the darkening of Europe and America might actually be something to celebrate. But if those alien populations continue to multiply while remaining hostile to their host societies, the entire West can look forward to joining the Hittites, Babylonians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians in history’s dustbin.

Summary: White people of European stock have a right to look after their interests, especially in light of current demographic trends in the U.S. and Western Europe. Unfortunately, virtually every "white rights" movement has been laden with racism. What to do? Western societies need to shun decadence, depend less on foreign labor, and resolve to reproduce!

Terrorists

Righty: These bloodthirsty fanatics represent the gravest threat to Western Civilization since the Turks advanced to the gates of Vienna in 1683. (Remember what religion those Turks believed in?) We’ve done nothing to deserve their hatred; they’re simply jealous because we’re living in comparative luxury while they’re still shacking up with camels. We need to do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks, even if it means temporarily surrendering a little of the freedom that we take for granted. I don’t mind being searched at the airport, because I have nothing to hide. I don’t mind having my phone tapped, because I’m not talking to overseas terrorists. We need to find the people who ARE talking to them. Muslim terrorists are the most vile criminals on the planet. They kill for the sheer joy of seeing innocent people blown to bits, based on the dictates of a brutal desert religion that exhorts the faithful to shed the blood of infidels. Lefty and his crew profess shock that we humiliate captured terrorists, that we don’t grant them the full rights accorded to prisoners of war. Believe me, ordering these scumbags to form naked pyramids is a laughably mild punishment compared to what they deserve. Why should we grant them a shred of mercy when they’re utterly merciless toward their victims? I say we boil them all in oil -- Arab oil.

Lefty: Of course terrorists are a threat to innocent people; nobody disputes that much. But we need to do some serious soul-searching to uncover the reasons they hate us -- and do something about it. We’re so mind-numbingly self-righteous as a nation; we can’t even see that we bring terrorism on ourselves through our imperialistic foreign policy, our unquestioning support of Israel and our sickening materialism. I’m not justifying terrorism, of course; I’m simply explaining it. As for the treatment of captured terrorists, we can’t allow ourselves to stoop to their level. The torture of suspected terrorists (emphasis on "suspected," since we don’t allow them to be tried) flagrantly defies the Geneva Conventions. On a more human level, it should grate against every honorable instinct of a decent nation. And the suspension of our civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorists is nothing but a bogus excuse for an evil administration to steer us toward fascism. A government that curtails our freedoms in the name of freedom is perverted. It’s a scenario right out of Orwell’s 1984. We’re in desperate need of a regime change before more of our rights are eroded by this stupidly fanatical administration. By comparison, the terrorists have only the slimmest chance of affecting our lives.

The New Moderate:

You’re right, Lefty: it wouldn’t hurt us to understand why the terrorists hate us, and to use that knowledge to make them hate us less. President Bush II explained that terrorists hate us because of our freedom. (By tampering with our civil liberties, he did his best to make sure they’d resent us a little less on that score.) But come on -- let’s peel this onion and uncover the real reasons for their hatred.

Do they hate us for our excessive wealth? Sure, but not enough to kill us because of it. Do they hate us for our lewdness and lasciviousness, our liquored lifestyles and seminude womenfolk? Undoubtedly, though probably not enough to launch a jihad in our direction. Young people throughout the Islamic realm seem to regard American pop culture as a guilty pleasure.

Now let’s peel some more. Do the terrorists hate us for meddling in their corner of the world... for regarding their nations as mere spigots for the flow of fuel... for supporting Israel as a de facto fifty-first state? Now the oil is beginning to boil.

And what about their radicalized religion, which exhorts the faithful to spread Islam over the face of the world by sword and bloodshed -- and promises an eternity of orgasmic bliss to those who die in the name of Allah? Well, duh! Should we be shocked that they’re coming after us?

We can’t do anything about our freedom and wealth, despite Bush’s efforts to curtail the former and redistribute the latter to a small tribe of hereditary tycoons. We can’t do much about our increasingly degenerate culture, though we probably should for our own sakes. But we can definitely check our national impulse to bounce uninvited onto every piece of turf that represents a potential U.S. interest. We have too many interests.

Should we be Israel’s ally even at the risk of Islamic animosity? Absolutely. Should we be granting it (as we do now) over 200 times as much foreign aid per capita as we grant Africans and Latin Americans? Absolutely not. Israel is over fifty years old now; it has to learn to walk on its own sooner or later. We just need to make sure that its neighbors respect its right to walk there.

As for the fierce desert religion that has fueled terrorism on an unprecedented scale, our options are few and potentially futile. We could shut down all the madrasses that teach jihadism to new generations of the faithful within our borders. But the schools would simply regroup somewhere else and fill those young minds with more vehement fanaticism. The real solution is for Islam to reform itself from within, ASAP. If it doesn’t, the West will have to reform it by force, and that could take centuries. I have a sickening suspicion that if Islam and the West come to blows in an all-out war, we’ll eventually see crescents atop the churches of Europe and America. We might have technology on our side, but the Muslims have fanaticism. Fanatics generally get what they want.

Back to the terrorists and how we treat them. Terrorists aren’t soldiers, even though Bush II seems to be fond of describing them as "enemy combatants." Terrorists fight on behalf of no state or government; they’re simply mass murderers on self-appointed missions. I don’t believe they’re entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions or, for that matter, to the customary respect we grant legitimate military personnel. Should we subject terrorists to physical torture? No. We’re better than that. But I think we’re entitled to wear them down in captivity, interrogate them under blazing lights and even stack them in naked pyramids while silly female soldiers pose for pictures in front of them. All terrorists, simply by being terrorists, forfeit their right to civilized treatment.

One bone of contention (and it’s a major bone): for God’s sake, let’s determine whether the suspected terrorists we round up and lock away are, in fact, actual terrorists. Yes, terrorists deserve to be treated like vermin, but not while the adjective suspected is still attached to them.
Our leaders need to address this nasty issue right now. They can start by revoking the portion of the so-called Patriot Act that conveniently allows us to toss all suspected terrorists into our scattered gulags, where we leave them to rot without recourse to representation. Imagine if the Almighty were to condemn all suspected sinners to hell. That’s essentially what we’re doing under the Patriot Act. It’s unworthy of us. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff before we condemn anyone.

Summary: Obviously we’re right to hate terrorists, but we should try to make them hate us less by modifying our meddlesome foreign policy. The ultimate solution is a major reform movement in Islam, but we can’t wait that long. In the meantime, we have a right to imprison terrorists and even torment them (within reason) -- once we’ve proven that they are in fact terrorists. All suspected terrorists have a right to legal representation.

Afrocentrism

Righty: The glorification of African culture is just a transparent attempt by disaffected black intellectuals to further discredit our European heritage and weave a web of self-aggrandizing myths and lies around their primitive culture. Let’s get real: how can you compare tribal masks to the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Afrocentrists even have the audacity to claim the ancient Egyptians as ancestors of today’s African Americans, when everyone knows the Egyptians weren’t black. Afrocentrists are clearly desperate to find some evidence of distinction in their past, but their efforts are either self-deluding or plainly dishonest. To make matters worse, they’re actually teaching this drivel in schools today. What about teaching black kids how to read and write so they don’t end up as angry, drug-dealing street thugs or unwed teenage mothers?

Lefty: Africa was the birthplace of humankind and home to the most ancient civilization on the planet. Africans built the pyramids and the Sphinx; they created brilliant works of art while Europeans huddled over peat fires to warm their sorry backsides. Systematically excluded from our racist school curricula until now, Africa has re-emerged as the cultural focal point in restoring pride and dignity to millions of African-American students -- the descendants of enslaved Africans who had been blatantly deprived of their cultural birthright for centuries.

The New Moderate:

African history and culture are worth studying, but so is everyone’s heritage. All world history courses (and world history must become a requirement in all public schools) should include a segment on Africa -- as well as on Europe, the Middle East, India, China, Latin America (you get the picture).

The Afrocentrists’ emphasis on the glories of their African heritage might boost the self-esteem of underachieving black kids, and that’s a worthy goal. But at what price? Dismissal of (and hostility toward) European history as little more than a chronicle of systematic imperialist exploitation? Further self-ghettoization of the already ghettoized African American community? The creation of a narcissistic cultural identity that clouds reality with wishful half-truths? (Yes, the ancient Egyptians were African; no, they weren’t black.)

The cultivation of a mythic Afrocentric world-view, like the invented holiday Kwanzaa, springs from noble intentions but will only dig a deeper gulf between the black community and the rest of American society. Include African history and folk traditions in every social studies curriculum, definitely -- but teach it accurately, and don’t make it the focal point of a black child’s education. With slavery and Jim Crow dead and buried, black separatism should join them in the cultural graveyard.

Should American blacks take pride in their African heritage? Absolutely. With a passion. Do they need to connect with Africa in order to feel good about themselves and their achievements? Absolutely not. What a sad idea. African Americans need no validation from another continent. A four-century history of suffering and redemption on these shores is validation enough. African Americans are, above all else, quintessentially American, and they have an abundance of American heroes to admire. In a New Moderate’s utopia, some of those heroes might even be white.

Summary: Afrocentrism is a well-intentioned but divisive influence. Include African history in social studies courses, but keep it free of dogma and don’t make it the core of a black child’s education.

Evolution

Righty: The theory of evolution (emphasis on theory) is incompatible with the account of creation handed down to us via God’s own Word in the book of Genesis. The Bible clearly states that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. That hardly leaves time for the vast parade of prehistoric creatures that supposedly romped around the Earth a hundred million years ago, according to the mythology of evolutionists and nonbelievers. Those fossils may have been deposited at the time of the Flood, or they might have been fudged by overambitious paleontologists. (Amazing, the way they can recreate an entire creature from a single neck bone!) We don’t necessarily believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old (the Bible doesn’t provide us with specific dates, after all), and it could be that a "day" at the dawn of time was considerably longer than a day is today. But we do believe in the Bible, and the Bible makes it clear that God created the fishes, the beasts, the "fowls of the air," and "every thing that creepeth upon the earth." Finally, He created man. How could anything so mindbogglingly complex as man -- or even a housefly -- be the result of mere accident? Evolutionists are asking us to take an awful lot on faith.

Lefty: Mythology has no place in science. In fact, it has been the mission of science since its ancient beginnings to lift the veil of the supernatural from the inner workings of life and matter. As hard as this may be for Righty to accept, the Book of Genesis is just one of the many creation myths fabricated by primitive tribes to explain the mysteries of the universe. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that only the most ignorant Bible thumpers continue to reject it. (Unfortunately, those Bible thumpers continue to hold sway in the vast hinterland between the East and West coasts... Jesusland, as one inspired cartoonist dubbed it.) How can these imbecilic rubes continue to deny what paleontologists have uncovered in layers of rock dating back hundreds of millions of years? How can they fail to notice the striking similarities between man and chimp? Righty and his obstinate brethren are in serious denial. If they still can’t admit that we’re descended from apes, the rest of the world can clearly see that they are -- and that they haven’t evolved very far from their simian origins.

The New Moderate:

Nobody with any sense still believes that the great parade of creation marched from nothingness to Adam and Eve in six days. We can give the Bible some latitude here and there; we can interpret the "days" as epochs that correspond roughly to the geological ages, or we can wonder if the Genesis account of creation was meant to be viewed as a myth all along. But the evidence for evolution is impressive. We can look at a fossilized archaeopteryx and immediately see the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. With a little imagination, we can understand how the modern horse developed from a cat-sized critter known as eohippus.

So how did primitive life diversify into the millions of astonishing forms we see around us today, all without divine assistance? Darwin’s theory of natural selection offers a brilliant (and brilliantly simple) explanation: mutations that popped up in our genes conferred advantages that enabled the lucky mutants to attract desirable mates, prosper in their native habitats, or exploit new niches that no comparable creature had exploited before. A small dinosaur born with membranes that enabled it to glide through the air might be able to evade predators (and find prey) more easily than its earthbound cousins. It would live longer and presumably raise more offspring, several of whom would share its ability to glide. Those gliding offspring would prosper, and so on down the line. Eventually some of them would produce descendants that could flap their wings and stay aloft for hours at a time. That’s progress. That’s evolution.

Natural selection is essentially free-market capitalism as practiced by plants and animals. Individuals, species and businesses that develop useful new widgets will be more likely to perpetuate themselves through time. Those that fail to adapt are destined for the compost heap. Like business, natural selection is totally amoral: it favors the opportunists.

It all makes sense, but I’ve noticed a few loose ends. How do you account for the development of new traits that don’t seem to confer any evolutionary advantages? (Wouldn’t we have survived and reproduced just as readily without eyebrows, for example?) And how do you explain the evolution of something as complex as a circulatory system? A partial circulatory system would be of no use at all; blood vessels have to reach every living cell, or clumps of tissue would start sloughing off in a disgusting and probably fatal manner. How could any creature have developed even a primitive circulatory system as the result of a single mutation? Correct me if I’m wrong, but evolution alone seems powerless to explain it.

I’m not proposing that God or even some nameless Intelligent Designer engineered the first circulatory system, though I refuse to shut the door on those possibilities. It’s just that the visible world doesn’t always fit neatly into prepackaged theories -- even one as beautiful and widely accepted as the theory of evolution. Religious skeptics probably shouldn’t take so much of their science on faith.

Summary: The theory of evolution explains most (but not all) developments in the history of life. We should be willing and able to question science as readily as we question religion.