It’s been a pretty depressing week for Democrats, watching their supposed leaders turn into lumps of useless jelly because they are actually supposed to do something instead of just talking about doing something. Then along comes NRO’s Mark Krikorian to remind us that, yes, Republicans are worse.
Today, Krikorian is arguing against the U.S. taking in more refugees because “there are many countries poorer and more screwed-up than Haiti,” despite the fact that he is generally opposed to accepting any refugees from even the most “screwed-up” countries. However, Krikorian hit a new intellectual low yesterday when he suggested that the reason Haiti is “so screwed up” (though apparently not screwed up enough), is because it’s home to a “progress-resistant culture” that simply “wasn’t colonized long enough”:
My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough…But, unlike Jamaicans and Bajans and Guadeloupeans, et al., after experiencing the worst of tropical colonial slavery, the Haitians didn’t stick around long enough to benefit from it. (Haiti became independent in 1804.). And by benefit I mean develop a local culture significantly shaped by the more-advanced civilization of the colonizers.
Yes, if only those benevolent slave holders had just stayed longer to give help to the natives…