No more Mr. Nice Guy -- let's talk about progress of human race

Published in The Orlando Sentinel, April 16, 1998

Multiculturalism, as Dr. Sam Francis has pointed out, is a tactic, not a legitimate field of study. So, too, is political correctness.

If you have the stomach for it and can plow through the theorizing of the old and the new left, you discover that they think the road to seizing political power is to overthrow the culture. That's the tactical purpose of multiculturalism. The tactical purpose of political correctness is to silence the truth in order to protect the lie.

Recently when I wrote a mild-mannered and polite column about my own Anglo-Celtic culture, I got the usual blasts from the multiculturalists. OK, let's not be polite. Let's deal in stone-cold, naked facts.

The progress of the human race is entirely the result of Asian, Mediterranean and European people. Period. When the Europeans landed in North America, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand and sub-Sahara Africa, it was as if they had embarked in a time machine and landed in the New Stone Age. There is not one intellectual advance that can be found in any of those pre-European civilizations that was not already millennia old in Europe, the Mediterranean and Asian civilizations.

In most cases, the Europeans found no archaeological evidence of anything beyond a Stone Age existence; where they did, the ruins or structures reflected a primitive level of culture. When the Europeans confronted the Aztecs and Incas in the 16th century, those people, despite their empires, had not discovered the wheel, much less any kind of more advanced technology. That's why they so easily collapsed.

Let me give you a list of inventions or achievements that date before the birth of Christ and the places where they originated: the potter's wheel, 6500 B.C., Asia Minor; woven cloth, 5000 B.C., Mesopotamia; copper-working, 4500 B.C., Yugoslavia; wheeled vehicles and gold mining, 3500 B.C., Sumer, Syria and Mesopotamia; irrigation, 3150 B.C., Egypt; silk production, 2640 B.C., China; ox-drawn plow, 2500 B.C., Egypt; cotton production, 2500 B.C., India; musical notation, 1300 B.C., Syria; geographical and star charts, 570 B.C., Miletus; gun powder, 221 B.C., China; mechanical lifting device, 200 B.C., Greece; stone bridge, 100 B.C., Rome; wheel bearings, 100 B.C., Europe; seed-planting machine, 85 B.C., China; and rotary-winnowing machine, 40 B.C., China.

By the time the Europeans discovered the primitive cultures of the Western Hemisphere, sub-Sahara Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the Europeans, Mediterranean and Asian people already had mastered and invented the following:

Paper-making, rotary fan, wheelbarrow, watermill, iron-chain suspension bridge, windmill, porcelain, moldboard plow, canal locks, rocket, paper mill, magnifying glass, gun/cannon, 360-degree compass, belt-driven spinning wheel, eyeglasses, metal cannon, automatic striking clock, mechanical clock, wire, perspective views, printing press and cast-iron pipe. All that was done before Columbus sailed from Spain. Before the Jamestown settlement in 1607, the following had been invented: pocket watch, spirally grooved rifle barrel, portable shotgun, artificial limbs, the pistol, screwdriver, wrench, enamel, dredger, graphite pencil, screw-cutting machine and ornamental lathe, time bomb, hosiery-knitting machine, flush toilet, compound microscope and wind-powered sawmill.

And all of the above is far from a complete list of the accomplishments of the people of Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe. To my knowledge the list of original inventions and new scientific discoveries of other peoples prior to their contact with Mediterranean-Europeans or Asians is: zero. If I've overlooked one or two items, please let me know.

Multiculturalism is a political tactic but otherwise a load of horse apples.

[Posted 04/15/98 8:55 PM EST]