The Reactionary Utopian
                      June 29, 2006


MY ILK AND I
by Joe Sobran

     Have you ever noticed that there is no such thing as 
honest and rational disagreement? Your own opinions are 
grounded in reason and truth, of course, but people who 
hold different opinions are stupid, dishonest, paranoid, 
or otherwise irrational. Their motives are evil, too. 
(The people who agree with you are generally a decent, 
sensible lot. No need to delve into their motives.)

     Take me, for example. Having recently published a 
book on the Shakespeare authorship question, I'm 
discovering how crazy I am and how dark my motives are. 
As some of my readers may recall, I believe the real 
author of the Shakespeare works was the wayward 17th Earl 
of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

     But the orthodox reviewers -- those who believe that 
"Shakespeare is Shakespeare" -- insist that there's 
simply no room for honest doubt. So, rather than 
discussing the evidence on its merits, they feel 
compelled to explain why I, and others of my ilk, won't 
admit a truth that is so radiantly clear to them. (Notice 
that nice people don't have ilks. The moment someone 
refers to your "ilk," you know you're in trouble.)

     One academic reviewer calls my views 
"multiculturalist" and "Marxist" (and these terms aren't 
meant as compliments!). He adds that the 
anti-Stratfordians -- those who question Shakespeare's 
authorship -- usually have "an ax to grind," adding that 
"English upper-class snobbery fuels the questioning of 
Shakespeare's authorship." I didn't realize I belonged to 
the English upper class. In the future, I'd appreciate it 
if you knaves out there would address me as "my lord" or, 
better, "your lordship."

     It isn't just me. The defenders of Stratford's son 
think the anti-Stratfordians in general have a thing 
about aristocrats. A British professor finds 
aristocrat-worship an American trait: "Over the years 
more than a dozen Elizabethan aristocrats have been 
dusted down and presented to the public as the true 
author of the plays. Americans have been especially 
fascinated by this bizarre pseudo-mystery. Perhaps 
because the only two things that the British have got and 
the Americans have not are Blue Blood and William 
Shakespeare, it has proved all too tempting to suppose 
that Shakespeare was an aristocrat in disguise."

     Another Stratford partisan surmises that we 
anti-Stratfordians are self-deluded pseudo intellectuals: 
"I believe that a large number, if not a majority, among 
our best and brightest secretly or not so secretly 
imagine themselves to be intellectual Columbuses.... Many 
of these would-be conquistadors have sought their El 
Dorado in an ironclad proof that William Shakespeare's 
works were written by someone other than [the Stratford 
man]."

     A Texan professor offers another psychological 
explanation: "Part of the anti-Stratfordians' appeal is 
the anti-establishment cachet that goes with belonging to 
an exclusive group. As such, their purpose is not so much 
to expose the truth as it is to propagate an unpopular, 
often irrational, belief, rather like those who believe 
that behind every political assassination lies a 
conspiracy or that the Holocaust is a lie." He calls the 
anti-Stratfordian position "a product of paranoia and our 
rampant culture of conspiracy."

     Oh, man! I'd better dial 911 and get a psychiatrist 
here, pronto! I'm a self-deluded, paranoid snob, the 
equivalent of a Holocaust denier, with no real interest 
in exposing the truth!

     I knew I was a sinner, but until I questioned 
Shakespeare's authorship I had no inkling of the true 
depths of my depravity. That goes for the rest of my ilk 
too. A bad lot!

     Never mind who wrote Shakespeare's works. The 
interesting thing here is that the orthodox reviewers 
can't make their case with rational, impersonal argument. 
They feel compelled to adopt a tone of haughty scorn, 
making irrelevant ad hominem charges against large 
numbers of people they have never even met. Without these 
tactics, they seem to have no way to defend their 
position.

     I've always met the same tactics in political 
debate. The defenders of an exhausted establishment can 
be relied on to attack their critics, accusing them en 
masse of evil motives, rather than to refute their 
arguments. So when people you disagree with have to smear 
you, take heart: It probably means you're winning the 
debate.

[Originally published by the Universal Press Syndicate, 
July 15, 1997]

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