Shelby Steele: Of Race and Imagination

Opinion Journal ^ | 12/18/2002 | SHELBY STEELE

[FreedomFlyer]

WOW!!!

Great stuff!

[scouse]

The picture is much more mixed that Steele and others suggest

Mark, I agree 100%. In comparison to 1948 we should ask ourselves if: Our education system is better or worse?: How does the homeless situation compare?: How do our health care systems compare?: Is drug addiction higher or lower?: Also the crime rate, how does that compare?: Etc.

[The Irishman]

In both cases it was a failure of what might be called a democratic imagination.

Steele does not seem to realize that conservatism has never been a worshiper of "democracy" and the Founders feared it and tried to prevent this country from ever becoming a democracy.

The Neo-cons who get most of the media attention in the name of conservatism are big fans of democracy. Democracy is not the friend of freedom historically and the conservatives who failed to support every aspect of every Civil Rights Bill, Goldwater opposed the '64 Bill, supported the goals but not the means because of the extension of central power that they suspected would follow. In my estimation, Goldwater was right.

It's interesting to consider the following in the ongoing discussion of the 1948 American Society and the election of that year. In '48, segregation was Ok in some states, but abortion, illegitamacy, divorce, premarital cohabitation were wrong to just about everyone, everywhere. Now segregation is gone, which is a good thing, but look at all the rot that no politician dares to condemn.

BTW, I worked in Goldwater's campaign but couldn't vote yet. And I'm proud of it. If the country had followed my lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the last 38 years.

Regards.

[KneelBeforeZod]

Shelby Steele Bump... Go Spartans

[A_perfect_lady]

The senator's many apologies--perhaps more than his original gaffe--have revealed him to be a man who has troubled himself very little with self-examination where race is concerned.

I stopped here because I'm TIRED of blacks demanding that whites spend their lives sitting around and examining their psyches for traces of racism. I'm actually growing MORE racist the more I feel like blacks are smugly squirming with the delight of the moral superiority they are obviously convinced they have a corner market on. To heck with them. I think I'm just going to go ahead and accept being a racist, because the kind of groveling butt-kisser you have to be in order to convince them that you are a good little whitey is just not worth it.

[Arioch7]

Well said.

[michaelt]

Mark, I agree 100%. In comparison to 1948 we should ask ourselves if: Our education system is better or worse?: How does the homeless situation compare?: How do our health care systems compare?: Is drug addiction higher or lower?: Also the crime rate, how does that compare?: Etc.

Are you guys actually implying that Shelby Steele doesn't see these problems too?

And what any of it has to do with the issue of what to think and what to do about a mediocre Senate Majority Leader that put himself, his party, his President, and supporters throughout the nation, in a worse position through his own big mouth and small brain, well, I don't know.

It's changing the subject. We don't like it when Democrats change the subject, we shouldn't either.

[michaelt]

Just to revise and extend my remarks, the issue is not if things would have been better if Strom was President, it's not that there is a double standard, it's not that Byrd was in the KKK, it's not about Goldwater and tarring the conservative movement through Lott, or whatever - it is whether this guy should lead the GOP in the Senate. If I ran things, he wouldn't...but it's up to the Republican Senators (and I guess Bush if he is or gets involved). I hope they know what they're doing, whatever they decide.

[baseballmom]

It's a pity you stopped reading. The author makes some excellent points. The excercise of self-examination, on many subjects, is a good thing.

There is racism in this country. It is not limited to white on black racism. There is Black on Asian, Asian on Black, Black on Black, White on Middle Eastern, Arab on Jew, Jew on Arab, you name it, it's there. My own personal feeling is that it exists out of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being different. There are a lot of fears. Examining our own consciences from time to time shouldn't be one of them.

[FreeTheHostages]

Your immediate post after the article should be retracted because you obviously did not have time to understand what he was saying and only felt Goldwater somehow being implicitly attacked unfairly.

?? Look, I thought your post was interesting and literate and well-reasoned except when it accused Holdonnow's of being less than thoughtful. His was thoughtful too. I am generally loathe to play debate judge, but I'm very interested in this difficult issue. Holdonnow's post was substantial enough for you to want to respond. Holdonnow's been making some very intelligent comments on this issue, as have you in the rest of your post. So enough of the mud and back to the meat of the argument.

[FreeTheHostages]

pinging you to this interesting article

[FreeTheHostages]

This is the principled opposition to your position: those who ask Sen. Lott to imagine beyond his race do not do so themselves is no consolation.

[A_perfect_lady]

I've read a lot of Shelby Steele in general, so I figure I've absorbed a lot of his viewpoint. I've also read a lot of John McWhorter, Ward Connerly, Larry Elder, et al. I was hoping that black conservatives would be the ones who could reach across the divide, but their reaction to the whole Trent Lott thing has been very disheartening. With the exception of our own Kevin Martin, they have been calling for his head even as they state that they don't believe he is racist. They want him cut down anyway, as a human sacrifice to the Sensitivity gods. They judge and judge and judge, but where do they address the very elements you mentioned yourself? Where do they judge their own pathological hatred of Koreans and Jews?

Moreover, I don't think it's fear of the unknown that motivates racism. I think we all know pretty definitively that we do NOT embrace the same values. White Protestant culture as derived from the oldest wave of northern European immigrants (i.e., those who came in the 1600-1700s) is very different from most other cultures. We are individualistic, capitalist, independent, somewhat stand-offish... and every element of that is under vicious attack from the Marxist, Catholic, or Muslim-influenced minorities in this country. And I'm just... getting sick of it. I think many of us have undertaken more self-examination in this matter than most blacks, even Mr. Steele, who seem more interested in examining US than themselves.

[KC Burke]

Young hero, I'm going to have to stay with Shelby on this one. The passage that stirred your blood was, I imagine:
But conservatism is not gaining ground because it is somehow truer today than before. Over the past 40 years it might have been a great bulwark against the decline in values and institutions it now bemoans. But this did not happen, because conservatism, for all its commitment to freedom, did not make itself the principled enemy of racism during the civil rights era. Here was a movement grounded in the principles of classic liberalism and, rather than rush to its support, some conservatives bent the principle of states' rights into a tolerance of segregation while others simply sat it out. The gradual comeback of conservative principles in areas like welfare reform and educational accountability has much to do with the moral authority they gain in application to social problems.

And I have to say he was lamenting the lost opportunity for Whiggish Conservatism and not the lost opportunity for purity of Law.

This is also why a suprising two-thirds of this small forum is soundly disappointed in Senator Lott.

Sure there are some that bear a grudge for percieved failures at the time of the Impeachment Trial. There are some who are probably knee jerk afraid of any call of racism by the race pimps as well. But there are plenty, who see the situation for what it is--failure of a politician to lead.

As a young teenager, I was in the YAF and Rallied for Goldwater. I read the books and saw the promise. But I also, over the subsiquent years saw the most strident were sometimes those whose character and motives were not mine.

I heard the black Republican delegate at the Goldwater nominating convention recount the floor rally marchers that extinguished cigarettes on his suit with the elan of poor winners. And hearing it, I knew it for the truth and a sad truth it was.

True conservatism, the Whiggish Conservatism of Burke and John Adams has little to do with the States Rights ascendancy. Never did, and never will.

The conservatives' love of small, local and decentralized government isn't something that simple.

You must remember that you are so involved in the national political arena that you fail to see it for the collection of striving functionaries that most of us in the bulk of the nation know it to be on its normal course. Rightly composed and faced with the critical moment, it is true that statesmanship can arise, but overall, it is a device to be watched rather than pampered and nurtured.

I'm sorry to have seen this happen to Lott. Few deserve such a sorry capstone to a career. But it did and we need to be honest about it in a way that liberals can't be honest about their own. Whatever the Caucus deciedes is fine with me, but in the mean time, I'll not defend poor vision, even if done from too much good cheer.

[Faeroe]

A bump and kudos to you both.

[KC Burke]

Thank you.