But in the end a man cannot be redeemed by a moral equivalence. That those who ask Sen. Lott to imagine beyond his race do not do so themselves is no consolation. The senator is probably a more moral man and thus a better conservative today than he was two weeks ago, but moral calculus is more forgiving than political calculus. He is now so politically compromised that in his Black Entertainment Television interview he declared "across the board" support for affirmative action, vowed to rethink his support for Judge Charles Pickering, and agreed to a "civil rights tour" with Rep. John Lewis.
A vacuum of white guilt as wide as the Grand Canyon has opened in him, and he will never again see civil rights, welfare, judgeships or education with a clear eye. He will now live in a territory of irony where his redemption will be purchased through support for racialist social reforms that make a virtue of the same segregationist spirit that has now brought him low. "
I like this website because I do feel a good space with people with whom I have a broad general agreement.
I do say the following with the feeling that I am talking to a friend who I see as making a mistake and nothing more hostile than that.
What I have come to detest on the Free Republic are comments like yours, after an extraordinary comment from a poster or article, which offers a thin "things are not as simple as that" quip made from an all-knowing face designed to mask an unwillingness to come to terms with a real challenge and statement of truth, as Steele offers in this article.
Read the article again, especially the quote I excerpted above. You have to had missed its meaning completely, to then go out and dismiss it like you did. If you want to uphold what you identify as Goldwater principles, then you should admit that something more should have been done to show that the Southern strategy was not simply writing off blacks as a lost cause. I think they were written off as a lost cause and I think that the reason was not malice but a practical sense that for the foreseeable elections back then, there was not much of a payoff to be seen in revelaing the incohate compassionate conservatism in our opposition to quotas and setasides and all the rest of the left's misguided policies that served to divide our country.
But what Steele is saying here about the imagination that is needed for true political freedom in a society that goes beyond mere indivdualism [as much as individualism is not unimportant and is indeed a prerequisite] is indeed a wonderful insight that should be deeply considered. It is that insight that is need for the GOP or at least for conservatives tonow speak from their principles without apologizing to anyone about their morality and compassion. Lotts' comments and smallmindedness blur all that and make it too easy for the left to make their false charge against us seem plausible.
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. Please read the excerpt above again. Thank you.