Quote of the Day - racism is collectivism

As a conservative, I'm often lumped in a group the left/progressives/democrats accuse of being racist. I think, however, that it is the left/progressives/democrats who are the real racists in that they (as a group) tend to delineate people by the color of the their skin rather than the "content of their character."

In fact, I once voted against an individual for appointment to the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library board. He was a union officer whose only qualification was that he was a union officer. There were several business leaders with experience in running organizations whom I preferred for the post, but I was the lone Republican on the Board of County Commissioners and the union guy was appointed.

I received a phone call from a local minority newspaper to ask about my vote. I explained the difference in qualifications between the individuals I supported and the one selected. I was then asked if my vote was because the union guy was black.

My response was, "I don't know what color his skin is - it's irrelevant to the position and has nothing whatsoever to do with the ability to do the job."

The reporter didn't know what to say, because clearly, the external, visual pigmentation should have been the ONLY consideration - at least to him.

The union guy was later convicted of embezzling.

Here is the quote:

"Collectivism is a doctrine that holds that the individual has no rights, and the ultimate standard of value is the group to which 'he belongs.' Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas -- or of inherited knowledge -- which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men. Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination." ~ Ayn Rand