THE “INTERRACIAL PROBLEM” IS ABOUT DEVELOPING NATIONS
Today the global elites are dedicated to a program of destruction of creation. That takes the form of combating so-called climate change which translates into making unproductive most of the earth and it also takes the form of something called interracial justice which consists of suppressing, or fusing, or obliterating national differences to form a new type of human being who will be more pliable to their will. Both are against reason, human nature, human experience and history, and God’s will. This paper deals with the issue of so-called interracial justice which translates into the destruction of the Negro or Black nation with its distinctive character and the destruction of the White or American nation with its distinctive character.
Eric Sammons is the editor of Crisis Magazine, and recently he penned an editorial entitled “The Left and the Right Are Both Wrong About Racism In America.” He writes that the United States has a history of “long-lasting and tense race relations” and that “half a million people [were] enslaved based on their race” in 1776. He keeps alive the idea that people were denied certain things solely “due to their skin color” and that “we are directly descended from some horrific racial practices, in the not-too-distant past”. He then proceeds with a Marxian dialectic by any other means of saying that “people do have disadvantages…due to class” by which he means “one’s income/wealth level.” All the while the dispute is cast in terms of right versus left, as if ideology really matters at the level of public policy in America given that the powerful private interests, the plutocrats, call the shots. Sammons proceeds from the assumptions that while there are gradations of wealth in society, the average guy is supposed to understand that we should all play nice because after all we too could become rich if we work hard and smart enough. Another assumption to believe that race really is not important except that it was used to do “horrific” things to fellow human beings all of whom are the same, well, except for individual differences.
Race if not also race and social class have come to take the place of discussions of nationality or peoples, and discussions of interracial justice and economic justice have supplanted the consideration of the development of peoples or nations which deals with traditions, history, culture, and religion – in other words, the whole unique essence of a nation which is a group of people united by these things and race. Wealth and race, economics and nations, implicates the international community. The international community is supposed to be right-ordered in accordance with the Natural Law that finds expression in something called the Law of Nations. This is understandable by everyone, and the Catholic religion has something to say about it all. Without this understanding, one ends up parroting the story put forth by the powerful interests of the day.
The Catholic understanding of the Law of Nations took form with the School of Salamanca, but its doctrines developed over the years. By the mid 1800s, Luigi Taparelli, SJ, founder of Civilta Cattolica, was contributing to the Catholic understanding of the topic. In the first half of the Twentieth Century the popes and a number of laymen were hard at work clarifying the elements of a right ordered international community which by necessity requires right-ordered domestic societies. The world wars and a number of international conventions and organizations to include the League of Nations and the United Nations urged this teaching forward. Perhaps the clearest expression of this body of thought lies in the Mechelen Code now also known as the Code of International Ethics.
The Law of Nations has come to mean the Natural Law as it applies to the peoples of the world, as well as those principles reasonably derived from the Natural Law in the sense of the community of nations on this earth. A lower level of the Law of Nations includes things like international customs and treaties between States.
The Plutocrats’ Narrative
In the Summer of 1937, Frederick Keppel (1875-1943), President of the Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropies which the industrialist founded in 1911, contacted Swedish sociologist, and socialist, Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) to do “a comprehensive study of the Negro in the United States, to be undertaken in a wholly objective and dispassionate way as a social phenomenon.”[1] Keppel was the one who, mostly after Andrew Carnegie’s death, redirected the work of the Carnegie Foundations making them more proactive in society in identifying problems and proffering solutions. Instead of just building libraries, the Carnegie philanthropies would rebuild American society. However, Keppel, like the foundations, had to operate from some point of view of what was good and bad, and that point of view was what was best for his social class, or perhaps that class which made possible his social standing.
Still years in the future was the Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Foundations and Other Organizations (Pursuant to H. Res. 561, 82d Congress), otherwise known as the 1953 Dodd Report named after banker Norman Dodd, the chief investigator of the Select Committee. That Congressional effort, also known as the Reece Commission, identified a major weakness in the American system which weakness was suspected for a long time. The Commission, or committee, did so in the context of setting out its purpose. It was as though the elected leadership of the American people trusted the plutocracy of the day, but they just wanted to verify. The purpose of the Commission was set out thusly:
“to conduct a full and complete investigation and study of educational and philanthropic foundations and other comparable organizations which are exempt from Federal income taxation to determine which such foundations and organizations are using their resources for purposes other than the purposes for which they were established and especially to determine which such foundations and organizations are using their resources for un-American and subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest or tradition of the United States…” (Dodd Report, 1953, p. 2)
The perennial fear was that the foundations were disloyal to the American people and the American project because of their huge endowments which would allow them to work mischief without any sort of check on their power. The form of the feared disloyalty changed from generation to generation, but the fear remained. By the early 1950s with the Red Scare, the fear was that the foundations were disloyal to capitalism, whereas more than a generation earlier the fear was that the foundations would serve the “vested interests”:
“Many studies in these fields have benefited government as well as business. Among these are studies of our national income, our markets, our productivity, our business cycles, the relationship between the productivity of the worker and the standard of living. It has been said in the hearings that the foundations, both in their conception and their work, give support to the capitalistic system…..in a previous congressional investigation in 1915 the fear most frequently expressed was that the foundations would prove the instruments of vested wealth, privilege, and reaction, while today the fear most frequently expressed is that they have become the enemy of the capitalistic system. In our opinion neither of these fears is justified.” (Dodd Report, 1953, p. 10)
In any event, the issue remained the loyalty of the foundations – and the powerful private interests — to the American people. As shown elsewhere, namely in the work of Antony Sutton and James Perloff, the powerful private interests, the vested interests, the plutocracy, were supporting various factions and enemies of the American and global peoples around the world during the course of the 1900s. All of that resulted in the strengthening of the position of the plutocracy, which was further enhanced during the Cold War, something detailed in John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition.
Myrdal’s book was used to lay the groundwork for a major social reorganization of American society, and not for the better. The breakdown of societal structures to which Americans and Negroes had become accustomed, would lead to further developments that were always at the direction of the powerful private interests. At the heart of Myrdal’s effort was the reduction of nationality to one factor — race, or DNA. He wrote:
“The American Negro problem is a problem in the heart of the American. It is there that the interracial tension has its focus. It is there that the decisive struggle goes on. This is the central viewpoint of this treatise….The `American Dilemma,’ referred to in the title of this book , is the ever-raging conflict between, on the one hand, the valuations preserved on the general plane which we shall call the `American Creed,’ where the American thinks, talks, and acts under the influence of high national and Christian precepts, and, on the other hand, the valuations on specific planes of individual and group living, where personal and local interests; economic social, and sexual jealousies; considerations of community prestige and conformity; group prejudice against particular persons or types of people; and all sorts of miscellaneous wants, impulses, and habits dominate his outlook.”[2]
While Myrdal’s two volume work discussed Negro society, he boiled everything down to race and economics. The liabilities for the current segregated state of affairs were socialized in that they were placed on Whites, or Americans. The benefits of the resulting restructuring were privatized or accrued primarily to the benefits of the powerful private interests who could select the best candidates for a position or more, reduce or check nationalist tendencies amongst Negroes and Americans, and ultimately, as we witness today, constrict the avenues of access to membership in the elites and with that the concentration of power and wealth. Emphasizing race to destroy national or ethnic solidarity is an old tactic. Professor Michael Hudson knows as much, and in his book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism he intimates how the CIA does this overseas.[3]
Allied with that dynamic is one of creation of a new people who are likely to be more pliable, more receptive, to the commands of the earthly creators. This is part of fusion or suppression of both groups or races, Blacks and Americans. Myrdal acknowledged this fear in his book. He wrote that the Americans, especially Southern Americans, feared amalgamation.[4] Interestingly enough, Negroes saw the same problem as the Southern Americans. The Negro leadership wanted assimilation with Americans and hence they opposed the nationalism of Marcus Garvey[5], but there still existed a “Negro chauvinism” which Myrdal concluded had to be broken, or at least starved. Myrdal wrote:
“…the Garvey movement illustrates – as the slave insurrections did a century earlier—that a Negro movement in America is doomed to ultimate dissolution and collapse if it cannot gain white support. This is a real dilemma. For white support will be denied to emotional Negro chauvinism when it takes organizational and political form.”[6]
Negro nationalism was not something the elites wanted, just as they do not want identities not of their making or outside of their control. Myrdal recognized legal segregation allowed Negroes to grow more apart from Americans, and that, as a friend of mine said, would lead to an apartheid state which would be bad for business if the Chamber of Commerce’s support for civil rights was any clue. Myrdal wrote:
“The separation of the two groups in the South was, meanwhile, becoming more and more perfected as the frequency of personal master-servant relations was decreasing and as the segregated Negro institutions and Negro professions were being built up. There even seemed to be a growing mental isolation between whites and Negroes. Behind this potentially most dangerous development was no only the exclusionist policy of the whites but also the sullen dissatisfaction and bitter race pride of the Negroes themselves. They were `withdrawing’ themselves as a reaction to the segregation and discrimination enforce by the whites….”[7]
Myrdal’s book is considered one of the most influential works in getting the Supreme Court to rule against segregation in 1954 in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case.[8] Overturning decades of “separate but equal” previously held to be in accord with democratic institutions and Constitutional principles, this decision effectively ended legal separation on a large scale of the peoples or nations, at least for a while. It also established the idea that all peoples are the same, that national differences in character and such do not really matter as only ability matters, and that the elites or powerful private interests and not the civil authorities actually call the shots in American society.
Assimilation is something that allows the selection of the best and the brightest on the basis of individual merit. Michael Sandel, in his critically acclaimed work, The Tyranny of Merit, explained how the elites want the best to advance their interests. Proceeding from Sandel’s premise, if the best of the various peoples are taken to serve the elites, several objectives are achieved. First, assimilation, or re-engineering of people into a new identity, is encouraged which serves to separate one from one’s roots making one more dependent on or grateful to, the ruling powers. Second, assimilation carries with it the requirement or inclination to pursue material success. Third, competition, and not cooperation or cohesion, becomes an important dynamic, as national identity is weakened. All of this keeps the control and wealth in the hands of the few who are capable of navigating all of the various situations.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his controversial 1965 study[9] concluded that the end of legal separation benefitted the Negro (Black) elites and middle class, but not the rest of the Black people. The laws and policies removing segregation did not help so much the rank and file Negroes who needed proper development and a culture, a nation, to which they could repair and be preserved in this life because ultimately it is the “little guy,” the commoner, who is greatest in need of tradition, culture, religion, and a right ordered society. Moynihan concluded that the Negro family was in need of repair, something for which he was roundly criticized by the Negro leadership. The reason for the damage to the Negro family was the Anglo-American institution of slavery which was radically different from the Brazilian, and hence Catholic, institution of slavery. Myrdal reached a similar conclusion in that slavery harmed the psyche, society, and competitiveness of the Negroes. However, the impact of DNA or race on a people was not considered by Myrdal or Moynihan. Race is a lot more than skin color. It involves other physical attributes, mental abilities, and temperament. Race is based on DNA and DNA is real – it is empirically verifiable and not a social construct or some fabulous category.
Charles Murray’s studies have been cited by some to show that DNA alone is determinative, however, that conclusion is by no means certain. Murray explained in Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race In America that people self-identify to an ethnic group by virtue of their race, and the categories for that are White, Black, Latin, Asian, and Native American. He discusses genetics and he points out group differences and similarities by what he calls race, when it perhaps more accurately should be defined as nation. Murray’s work supports the view that there are underdeveloped peoples, even backwards peoples, in need of protection and development. Murray wrote
“Of the many facts about race that are ignored, two above all, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, must be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we thing about why American society is the way it is and what can be done through public policy to improve it.
“The first is that American Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as groups, have different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The second is that American Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as groups, have different rates of violent crime. Allegations of systemic racism in policing, education, and the workplace cannot be assessed without dealing with the reality of group differences.
“There is a reason that reality is ignored. The two facts make people excruciatingly uncomfortable. To raise them is to be considered a racist and hateful person. What’s more, these facts have been distorted and exploited for malign purposes by racist and hateful people.”[10]
Murray saw decisions made based on race (nationality perhaps) despite individual abilities. His argument was that this resulted in societal conflict and institutional chaos. This does not lead to the development of peoples, but rather it leads to a state of war over limited resources. Unsaid is that the path to the top of society becomes more constricted with the hiring and promotion of the less qualified who are beholden to the elites, and so those at the top keep their power, wealth, and privilege. Also unsaid is that the economic “pie” is limited and there is no call for expanding it to the benefit of the peoples, or nations.
The elites believe in the importance of DNA — they are the real racists or those who make decisions based solely on DNA. Consider this from plutocrat Ray Dalio who in his Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail explained what venture capitalists and investors consider in making money:
“By inherited determinants of a country’s well-being I mean its geography, geology, genealogy, and acts of nature. These are big drivers of each country’s and each people’s stories….4. Genealogy. Regarding genealogy, I’m not expert on genetics, so I have little to offer other than to say that all people come into this world with inherited genes that affect how they behave to some extent, so it is logical that the genetic makeup of a country’s population should have some effect on its outcomes….”[11]
Myrdal saw a fixed economic pie as he concluded that the “concentration of unemployment upon the Negro people is explainable only as the direct and indirect effects of discrimination.”[12] Such a view prevents greater wealth creation and benefits the elites who seek to concentrate wealth and keep people’s in competition so as not to notice their oppression. Myrdal, and even Moynihan, should have argued for an expansion of the economic pie, along with strengthening the family. The family is an important institution but the Catholic view of the Law of Nations sees the protection and encouragement of the family as central to all the efforts concerning nations and between states and members of the international community. That is because the family itself is essential to the proper and complete development of the person.
American Law and Policy Permits National Development, of Sorts
Myrdal’s work, Moynihan’s study, Murray’s books, and even the Supreme Court itself recognized that Blacks or Negroes, a national minority in the United States, are also a disadvantaged people in that they do not have the affluence nor do they have the social benefits nor do they have the material opportunities of the majority population, or Americans. One could say that Blacks lack the level of civilization of Americans and that places them in the category of a backwards people. As a minimum, this is the result of a number of historical, material and social factors that call for some sort of remedy, a remedy that can only be undertaken if the racial or DNA factor is properly taken into account, and not extolled to the detriment of other factors of nationhood.
American law has historically recognized racial, or national, differences, and American law has striven to protect national minorities if not also their development albeit in a material sense. There is an upheld tradition in American law of discriminating on national grounds, though some would say on racial grounds. The purpose of this tradition was always to either protect peoples or to help their material existence to include insuring their survival. In the recently handed down decision, Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard et al., Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor remarked how American laws have, and may, discriminate on the basis of nationhood though they put it in terms of race. Justice Thomas, who slapped down the elites repeatedly[13] in his decision, wrote:
“Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) do not have a large amount of racial diversity, but they demonstrate a marked ability to improve the lives of their students. To this day, they have proved `to be extremely effective in educating Black students, particularly in STEM,’ where `HBCUs represent seven of the top eight institutions that graduate the highest number of Black undergraduate students who go on to earn [science and engineering] doctorates. W. Wondwossen, The Science Behind HBCU Success, Nat. Science Foundation (Sept. 24,2020), https://beta.nsf.gov/science-matters/science-behindhbcu-success. `HBCUs have produced 40% of all Black engineers.’ Presidential Proclamation No. 10451, 87 Fed. Reg. 57567 (2022). And, they `account for 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black doctors, and 50% of Black lawyers.’”[14]
Justice Sotomayor provided a lengthy discussion of the statutory scheme enacted during the Reconstruction to help Blacks[15]. While the Thirteenth Amendment freed Blacks, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified to protect the civil rights of this ethnic minority because of the tension that existed between the Southern Americans and the recently freed slaves. In addition, a number of “race-conscious” statutes creating agencies and economic opportunities for Negroes were established to “fulfill the…promise of equality” held out by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Freedman’s Bureau invested in Negro education as well as land and funding to create some of the country’s HBCUs. In the US, promoting or assisting nationhood can be the proper subject of the laws.
Blacks, formerly known as Negroes, are, and have been, separate and distinct people from any other people on earth largely because of the conditions that gave rise to their nationhood on this soil known as the United States. They have a unique or distinct history, culture, linguistics, traditions, group physical and mental attributes, and ancestry which is where race comes in. To the extent there was, or is, any tension in America, it was a tension between Blacks, as a disadvantaged or backwards people as well as a national minority, with the dominant nation, the Whites or Americans. Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Longinqua Oceani (1895) and in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899) recognized in America there are three peoples: Indians, Negroes, and Americans (that is, whites)[16]. He recognized the need to fully develop the Negroes both spiritually and materially, something which Catholics in the US had been busy doing for some time and would continue to do after Leo’s encyclicals.
Fast forward to the Twentieth Century. A backward people is in need of material and spiritual development as the Church reiterated in Gaudium Et Spes which issued from the Second Vatican Council on December 7, 1965:
“9. Meanwhile there is a growing conviction of mankind’s ability and duty to strengthen its mastery over nature and of the need to establish a political, social, and economic order at the service of man to assert and develop the dignity proper to individuals and to societies.
“Great numbers of people are acutely conscious of being deprived of the world’s goods through injustice and unfair distribution and are vehemently demanding their share of them Developing nations like the recently independent states are anxious to share in the political and economic benefits of modern civilization and to play their part freely in the world, but they are hampered by their economic dependence on the rapidly expanding richer nations and the ever widening gap between them….Now for the first time in history people are not afraid to think that cultural benefits are for all and should be available to everybody….There is a growing movement to set up a worldwide community.”
Later in the document, coupled with a recognition of differences in character between different peoples or nations, the Second Vatican Council told us:
“29…..Furthermore, while there are rightful differences between people, their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer and more humane conditions. Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international people.
“It is up to public and private organizations to be at the service of the dignity and destiny of man; let them spare no effort to banish every vestige of social and political slavery and to safeguard basic human rights under every political system. And even if it takes a considerable time to arrive at the desired goal, these organizations should gradually be brought into harmony with spiritual realities, which are the most sublime of all.”
The Catechism, that is the 1997 version promulgated by Pope St John Paul II, recognizes there is a duty to develop peoples, and development encompasses both the spiritual and the material. To do so, solidarity is required, and solidarity, which is of the order of charity, is something that the powerful private interests do not have as they are motivated primarily by self-interest. With good will and good faith, several things must be done.
First, one has to recognize that there are different peoples, and the Catechism does that as it explains that differences between individuals and peoples “often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness, and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures….`I have willed that one should need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts they have received from me.’”[17]
“Sinful inequalities” are “in open contradiction of the Gospel: `Their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer and more humane conditions. Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace.’”[18]
In Section V of the discussion of the Seventh Commandment,[19] the Catechism addresses the issue of justice and solidarity between the nations. “True development concerns the whole man” for it increases a persons’ ability to “respond to his vocation and hence to God’s call.” The Faith directs
“In place of abusive if not usurious financial systems, iniquitous commercial relations among nations, and the arms race, there must be substituted a common effort to mobilize resources toward objectives of moral, cultural, and economic development, `redefining the priorities and hierarchies of value.’”[20]
Right ordering of domestic societies will result in right ordering of the international community. This requires recognizing that there are nations, some of which are backwards or undeveloped, many of whom are minorities in countries that are governed by States responsible for right order and for suppressing disorder. The United States was, and is, hampered in effectuating the full development of peoples because the Liberal Order, while providing enormous material benefits and technological advances, emphasizes the individual with his or her material success, and the same Liberal Order placed real power in the hands of what I have repeatedly called the plutocracy. While government in the United States has often worked with religious groups, there is always a suspicion those groups will violate terms of engagement and engage in proselytizing and that serves to retard efforts at conversion. In the American heart there rages a conflict between the Natural Law, with its fuller understanding of the Law of Nations, and an ideology. This conflict periodically surfaces as it did with the Reece Commission when the civil authorities, knowing their duty to all the people, suspect that some of the people may be using the system for their own, or primary benefit. And, as I said to much criticism before, I believe the American system allows for self-correction, even if that does not seem so apparent.
The Principles
American blueblood and Jesuit, John Lafarge, SJ, (1880-1963) ministered to Blacks on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the early 1900s. Lafarge noted they had their own society and institutions, things of which they were proud, and that the same economic situation affected many Blacks, or Negroes as he called them, and Americans. In ministering to Blacks, he realized that he had to deal with the Catholic view of the Law of Nations, and so in his book, The Race Question and the Negro, Lafarge mentioned John Eppstein’s work, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, released shortly before Lafarge’s. Unfortunately, Lafarge cited the work to emphasize the similarity of all peoples. The important question was not, nor do I believe it is now, primarily the similarity of all members of humanity. The question is how to recognize, perfect, and integrate the various peoples such that they exist so as to form a harmony on earth. The body of doctrine and thought that appears most comprehensive, and best able to accomplish world peace while adequately addressing the issues of today, is that contained in the Catholic view of the Law of Nations. That having been said, the concepts and precepts of the Natural Law are knowable and understandable by all, regardless of religion. Accepting the same only requires good faith and good will, two things lacking amongst many people, particularly the plutocrats.
Eppstein put in English a number of critical texts which, up to then, had not been available to Americans and the English speaking peoples of the world. His work, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, came into being through the efforts of a number of people to include, interestingly enough, James Thomson Shotwell (1874-1965), a Quaker and Director of the Division of History and economics at the Carnegie Endowment.[21] Going back to the Salamanca School, Catholic teaching and doctrine recognized the existence of nations[22] along with things like backward peoples and national minorities. The definition of national minority is self-evident, and backward nations are those of “unequal degrees of civilization” in both the material and spiritual sense.[23]
The State has a duty to maintain order and to suppress disorder. Part of that order is to properly develop nations because after all we live in a world where there is an international community. The State is to prevent a situation from developing in which armed force is needed.[24] In other words, each nation, being separate and unique, is something desired by God and necessary for the proper functioning and harmony of the world provided each nation is properly developed. Quoting Pope Benedict XV at one point, Eppstein remarked how “nations never die” and that even the State is an historical contingency that theoretically could be superseded by something else.
Eppstein writes of the need to develop backward peoples:
“…But there is also a certain obligation of social charity incumbent upon the civilized, organized, highly developed State to aid to a higher and a better life the simpler and weaker people, especially if it be in a low condition of private and public morals and deprived of the light of the Gospel. The object of that assistance in the political order should be to enable the weaker people to hold its own in the economy of the world and to bring out potentiality into actuality the participation of that people in the common benefits and the common duties of the society of nations. This obligation is intensified by the supernatural law of Christian charity, whereby we are bound not only to love all men as brothers but to seek to unite or reunite them with ourselves in the Mystical Body of Christ.”[25]
Jozef-Ernest Cardinal van Roey (1874-1961) was the Archbishop of Mechelen, in Belgium, from 1926 until his death. He was an opponent of the Nazis whose emphasis on race as a part of nationalism was inordinate. Nazism was denounced by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, and by the Catholic intellectuals of the day. This helps explain why Catholics for the last 60 years or so in the US were so quick to denounce “white supremacy” which is nothing more than a dog whistle from the elites who alleged that Whites, or Americans, believed themselves genetically superior to others. (If anything, the plutocrats like Dalio consider themselves genetically superior to everyone else.) This ruse by the elites prevented Americans, and intellectuals, from properly dealing with the issue of right ordering nations or peoples, while plunging us into conflict.
Cardinal van Roey was responsible for assembling in September, 1937 at Louvain what became known as the Mechelen Code, also known as the Malines Code. Under the watchful and brilliant eyes of Eppstein and Archbishop Francis Patrick Keough (1890-1961) of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Mechelen Code became the Code of International Ethics in September, 1952. Updated with commentary and analysis on the United Nations Charter, this valuable resource set out in succinct and easily to understand form the essentials of the international community or the world order: human societies (family, city, state, interstate collaboration, the natural society of states); rights and duties of states (fundamental rights and duties and rights and duties derived from positive international law); relations between unequally developed political societies; peace and war; international society organized in accordance with natural law and the Christian order; and international morality and the individual conscience.
The Mechelen Code discussed the duties between states in large measure. It also discussed the importance and rights of different nations:
“231….[I]t is a fact, willed by the Author of nature Himself, that humanity, in itself a unity, should be diversified in individuals and societies according to heredity, natural and society surroundings, education and customs. The traits and characteristics which constitute a nationality are therefore natural values which each national group has the right to maintain, enrich and defend against any attempt at assimilation or absorption.”
Right order between the nations meant the proper development use and allocation of resources or something called providential destination:
“101. The Creator, who has shared out the riches of this world between the various parts and peoples of the globe, has nevertheless given them for the use of all men. The plan of Divine Providence must be respected, and the various human groups have no right to consider themselves as the sole beneficiaries of the wealth and advantages of the territory they occupy. Thence it follows that an harmonious and fruitful division of labour must be established between the nations in order to place at the disposal of all the members of the human community the resources of each part of the world.”
When it comes to tutelage the requirement is one that also encompasses spiritual development:
“102. God has united men by close bonds of solidarity and made each one responsible for the fate of his fellow creatures….The same law governs the members of international society. The savage and degraded peoples, which are victims of vice, ignorance and superstition, nearly always need to receive stimulus, help and guidance from an external source….”
The Code recognizes that “Nationalism adds the duty of maintaining, developing and spreading those traits and characteristics which belong to the temperament and specific genius of the nation.” [26] However, nationalism, a “good and sound thing in itself,” is a “lawless and baneful passion” when it becomes an “absolute value” that sacrifices other nations’ cultural values while subordinating “to itself the transcendental and universal notions of right, morality, truth and religion.”[27] Nationalism has to be right ordered.
There is a Negro or Black people with specific characteristics that should be improved and purified, and their sense of nationhood developed but right ordered so that they may add to the harmony of nations. The same is true with the American people who are unique with specific characteristics. To these ends, the Negro people needed, and still need, tutelage or development which entails not just the material but the spiritual. At this stage of history, the American people also need tutelage or development. Obviously, a failure of the US Government was, and is, its inability to provide for full development of the peoples entrusted to its care. Another failure was to properly and effectively control the elites who could then manipulate nationhood, and even patriotism, to their own ends. With only part of the task of national development of the Negro and American undertaken, the way was opened for mischief by those without scruples – the plutocrats – who in Liberal societies have great power.[28] This is why the Liberal Order, especially as used most notably in recent years, poses a danger to the development of nations, domestic societies, and the maintenance of international order. The issue remains as to whether the Liberal Order, properly situated within a national structure may indeed prove beneficial, however, that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Conclusion
The issues between Blacks and Americans are not just of race, they are of peoples with all that entails – history, language, traditions, character, race, religion and more. Race is a factor, but the issue is about different nations coming in conflict. Placing peoples in competition, in conflict, especially on the basis of DNA, is not good policy but it is something desired by the plutocracy to further their control and wealth by destroying these peoples. This domestic situation spills into the international arena with dire consequences. As long as people consider the matter between Blacks and Americans as one of DNA, we are the thralls of the plutocracy.
If Eric Sammons of Crisis Magazine, and other chatterers for that matter, recognize this and write about it, I might just consider cracking my wallet to make a big contribution so they could get a raise once in a while.
[1] Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1944), Vol. I, ix
[2] Ibid., xliii.
[3] See, Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism (ISLET 2022), 57.
[4] Myrdal, An American Dilemma, Volume II, p. 586: “But as yet we have not discussed the most powerful rationalization for segregation, which is the fear of amalgamation. It is this fear which gives a unique character to the American theory of `no social equality.’…The kernel of the popular theory of `no social equality’ will, when pursued, be presented as a firm determination on the part of the whites to block amalgamation and preserve `the purity of the white race.’…” Such a comment can only be properly understood as Americans desirous of avoiding a fusion of nations for any of a number of different reasons. Racial segregation has been approved by Catholicism if it allows social peace in society.
[5] Myrdal, An American Dilemma, Volume II, p. 746: Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) “denounced practically the whole Negro leadership. They were all bent upon cultural assimilation; they were all looking for white support in some form or another; and they were all making a compromise between accommodation and protest. Within a short time he succeeded in making bitter enemies of practically all Negro intellectuals. Against him were mobilized most leaders in the Negro schools, in the Negro churches, the Negro organizations and the Negro press. He heartily responded by naming them opportunists, liars, thieves, traitors and bastards….Over their heads he appealed to the common Negroes….”
[6] Ibid., 749.
[7] Myrdal, An American Dilemma, Vol II, 999.
[8] See, “How Carnegie Corporation Helped End `Separate But Equal,’” May 17, 2014, Carnegie Corporation of New York, https://www.carnegie.org/news/articles/how-carnegie-corporation-helped-end-separate-equal/ accessed July 17, 2023.
[9] See, Lee Rainwater, William L. Yancey, ed., The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy
(The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1967).
[10] Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America (Encounter Books, New York, 2021), ix-x; for the previous paragraph see pp. 10-11.
[11] Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (Avid Reader Press, New York, 2021), 46-47.
[12] Myrdal, 998.
[13] These are a few of Justice Thomas’ comments: “Justice [Ketanji Brown] Jackson then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to `experts’ and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the innocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will `tell us [what] is required to level the playing field’ among castes and classifications that they alone can divine.” (pp. 51-52); “History has taught us to abhor theories that call for elites to pick racial winners and losers in the name of sociological experimentation.” (p. 54); “The panacea, she [Justice Jackson] counsels is to unquestioningly accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society’s riches by racial means as necessary to `level the playing field,’ all as judged by racial metrics….I strongly disagree.” (p. 49).
[14] Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard etc., 56.
[15] “The Thirteenth Amendment, without more, failed to equalize society. Congress thus went further and embarked on months of deliberation about additional Reconstruction laws. Those efforts included the appointment of a Committee, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, “to inquire into the condition of the Confederate States.” Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, S. Rep. No. 112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1866) (hereinafter Joint Comm. Rep.). Among other things, the Committee’s Report to Congress documented the `deep-seated prejudice” against emancipated Black people in the Southern States and the lack of a “general disposition to place the colored race, constituting at least two-fifths of the population, upon terms even of civil equality.’ Id., at 11. In light of its findings, the Committee proposed amending the Constitution to secure the equality of “rights, civil and political.” Id., at 7.
“Congress acted on that recommendation and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. Proponents of the Amendment declared that one of its key goals was to `protec[t] the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man.’ Cong. Globe,39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2766 (1866) (Cong. Globe) (statement of Sen. Howard). That is, the Amendment sought `to secure to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations [was] held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.’ Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 555–556 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted).
“To promote this goal, Congress enshrined a broad guarantee of equality in the Equal Protection Clause of the Amendment. That Clause commands that `[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ Amdt. 14, §1. Congress chose its words carefully, opting for expansive language that focused on equal protection and rejecting “proposals that would have made the Constitution explicitly color-blind.” A. Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution 69 (1992); see also, e.g., Cong.Globe 1287 (rejecting proposed language providing that `no State . . . shall . . . recognize any distinction between citizens . . . on account of race or color’). This choice makes it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose a blanket ban on race-conscious policies.
“Simultaneously with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress enacted a number of race-conscious laws to fulfill the Amendment’s promise of equality, leaving no doubt that the Equal Protection Clause permits consideration of race to achieve its goal. One such law was the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, enacted in 1865 and then expanded in 1866, which established a federal agency to provide certain benefits to refugees and newly emancipated freedmen. See Act of Mar. 3, 1865, ch. 90, 13 Stat. 507; Act of July 16, 1866, ch. 200, 14 Stat. 173. For the Bureau, education `was the foundation upon which all efforts to assist the freedmen rested.’ E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877, p. 144 (1988). Consistent with that view, the Bureau provided essential “funding for black education during Reconstruction.” Id., at 97.
“Black people were the targeted beneficiaries of the Bureau’s programs, especially when it came to investments in education in the wake of the Civil War. Each year surrounding the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bureau `educated approximately 100,000 students, nearly all of them black,’ and regardless of `degree of past disadvantage.’ E. Schnapper, Affirmative Action and the Legislative History of the Fourteenth Amendment, 71 Va. L. Rev. 753, 781 (1985). The Bureau also provided land and funding to establish some of our Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Ibid.; see also Brief for HBCU Leaders et al. as Amici Curiae 13 (HBCU Brief ). In 1867, for example, the Bureau provided Howard University tens of thousands of dollars to buy property and constructits campus in our Nation’s capital. 2 O. Howard, Autobiography 397–401 (1907). Howard University was designed to provide `special opportunities for a higher education to the newly enfranchised of the south,’ but it was available to all Black people, `whatever may have been their previous condition.’ Bureau Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Sixth Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen60 (July 1, 1868).1 The Bureau also `expended a total of$407,752.21 on black colleges, and only $3,000 on white colleges’ from 1867 to 1870. Schnapper, 71 Va. L. Rev., at 798, n. 149.
“Indeed, contemporaries understood that the Freedmen’s Bureau Act benefited Black people. Supporters defended the law by stressing its race-conscious approach.”
[16] “22. Finally, We cannot pass over in silence those whose long-continued unhappy lot implores and demands succor from men of apostolic zeal; We refer to the Indians and the negroes who are to be found within the confines of America, the greatest portion of whom have not yet dispelled the darkness of superstition. How wide a field for cultivation! How great a multitude of human beings to be made partakers of the blessing derived through Jesus Christ!” Longinqua Oceani; From Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899): “From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name.”
[17] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1937.
[18] Catechism, 1938, 1947.
[19] “You shall not steal.”; Catechism, 2437-2449, 2461.
[20] Catechism, 2438.
[21] James Brown Scott, The Catholic Conception of International Law, (The Lawbook Exchange, LTD., Clark, New Jersey, 2014), xi.
[22] A “Nation implies a people united by ties and traditions that come by birth. Inherited character, customs and language, constituting so coherent and powerful a culture that they can not only be passed from generation to generation but can attract and assimilate other families and individuals…” (p. 258) Nations are a community and they come about “in part the consequence of logical and physical requirements in part the outcome of an act of human will…..consanguinity, which is descent from the same grandparents or great-grandparents, is a distinctive bond of unity…A natural association, both physical and spiritual, exists between those who have descended from the same progenitor. It is not necessary to seek in this, the quintessence of racial origin, the sole or even the main basis of society….” (p 348)
[23] See, Eppstein, 396-397.
[24] Ibid., 256.
[25] Ibid., 400.
[26] Code of International Ethics, Section 230.
[27] Ibid., Sections 231-232.
[28] See, Eppstein, 397-398.