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Howie Blogger Celebrates Social Dysfunction, Prefers Brutal Anarchy

Gordon Howie's blogcrow Brad Ford posts a reasonable essay on the merits of solitary, attention-focusing childhood hobbies. This moment of clarity stands in stark contrast to Ford's foray into civic insanity in defense of anarchy in Kinshasa.

Ford drags up a year-old National Geographic article about the the Congolese capital that includes this tale of the breakdown of civil society:

You will be in an SUV driving through Matonge, and suddenly a man will jump onto the running board of your car. He will bang on the window. He will say that your car sideswiped his and that he demands immediate compensation. Your guide will deny this and accelerate the vehicle. The man will hang on, mile after mile, until a traffic cop witnesses the situation and signals for you to pull over—and will also demand money. If your guide does not happen to have the cell number of the chief of police, as ours did, then you will spend the next several hours in a state of detention until you agree to cough up sufficient money to ensure your freedom [Robert Draper, "Kinshasa: Urban Pulse of the Congo," National Geographic, September 2013].

Such thuggery shows the importance of a strong social contract, built on citizens' commitment to honesty, respect, and accountability to the rule of law. But Ford dismisses the social contract as Western snobbery and reduces this harrowing tale to a call for an anarchic, amoral survivalism:

Draper’s observations call into question our snobbish, diversity-intolerant tendency to look down on lifestyles that are different from our own. Material well-being doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, not does government administration that effectively reduces self-reliance to almost nothing. The people of Kinshasa adapt to a Darwinian world where the weakest aren’t just statistical projections and objects of pity. Rather, the weak are those who aren’t street smart and able to defend themselves without the aid of government [Brad Ford, "Citizens Get By in Congo’s Kinshasa Despite Dysfunctional Government," The Right Side, 2014.09.20].

Down Ford's road lies madness. In a world gone Kinshasa, children have little liberty to read books and collect butterflies. Their windows are smashed, their homes burgled, their schools and parents terrorized. The child who survives is not the quiet scholar who immerses herself in solitary intellectual delights. The child who survives lives the solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish life of constant war.

Our solitary hobbies depend on the collective effort to create a safe, stable, well-governed community in which we can lower our defenses and let our children lose themselves in quiet abstraction and play.

2 Comments

  1. Donald Pay 2014.09.21

    It always strikes me how many on the right, when they do attempt to bring in Darwinian theory, get it totally wrong.
    Ford says, "The people of Kinshasa adapt to a Darwinian world where the weakest aren’t just statistical projections and objects of pity." Ford could learn a bit about Darwin's theories from a fellow conservative, Ken Blanchard.

    A breakdown in human society in which criminals and psychopaths rule hardly constitutes a "Darwinian world." It is exactly the opposite.

    It would be far more accurate to say that humans evolved in a world where cooperation and minimization of conflict was the primary way to survive in the environment. Western humans in advanced societies call such culture and customs that minimize conflict and provide for the benefit of all the "social contract."

    The "weakest," by which Ford means we ordinary folks (as opposed to the criminals and psychopaths he wants us to emulate) generally create and conserve human societies and cultures. When the real "Darwinian world" breaks down, we get Ford's heros, the criminals and psychopaths, who may turn into warlords and terrorists.

    If Ford and his delusional followers hunger for this false Darwin world, they ought to pick up and leave us, rather than try to create that world here in the United States with their sick ideology. They can find just what their ideology would create in some of the worst places on earth to live. Yet, they stay here, don't they. They are not only psychopaths, criminals and idiots, they are also extreme cowards.

  2. Deb Geelsdottir 2014.09.21

    What the hell?! What's wrong with that guy? I agree with Cory. If that guy wants an amoral, animalistic, brutal world, let him buy a deserted island and be "The Lord of the Flies."

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