1 May 2008
An Obama Presidency Will Radicalize Conservatives
Posted by Mr. Roach under Black Nationalism, Campaign, Culture, Election, McCain, Politics, Primary, Racism, Reverend Wright, obamaIf you think America is fine alternating between corporatist Democratic Presidents and semi-socialist, open borders Republicans, then what I’m about to say will make no sense. But if you think America is on the wrong course, that its people are demoralized, that its schools are corrupt and ineffective, that its people are more and more indebted and unrealistically materialistic, that mass immigration is fracturing our identity, that Christianity is wrongly marginalized in the culture, and that crime, disorder, incivility, and servile habits of every kind are getting worse with each passing year, then you recognize something extreme must happen. There must be an awakening. Conservative minded and patriotic Americans must be pushed to the brink, abandoning their false hopes, and approach politics in the future on the basis of hard-headed appraisals of reality. And a big part of that reality is that America is changing, its demographics engineered by mass immigration, its minority communities resentful and alienated, and the pride of its white majority sapped by a constant drumbeat of lies and exaggerations about the past under the rubric of “multiculturalism.”
Many Americans have no idea how much rage, resentment, and racism exists in America’s Hispanic and black communities. The Reverend Wright episode has allowed the general public to peer into this malevolent universe. This glimpse has frightened people that grew forgetful of why they or their parents left cities for orderly and gated suburban communities. Four years of an Obama presidency will be the best possible thing for honesty and clarity to return to America’s public life. Consider how much more forthrightly mainstream conservatives are talking about Obama and his line of bulls**t about his reverend of 20 years.
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg–not exacly a man living in Jared Taylor’s universe–had the following to say:
I am so sick of hearing talking heads saying that Wright’s sermons are nothing unusual in black churches as if that somehow makes what he says ok. It’s as if something disgusting and untrue is outrageous if one person believes it, but it’s suddenly respectable if lots of people — or lots of black people — believe it. Hogwash.
Michelle Malkin took things a step further. She mocked Obama’s campaign as the “Jive Talk Express” and said the following:
It was just this March, in his Philadelphia racial reconciliation speech, that Obama was urging us not to dismiss Wright as a “crank or a demagogue” and protesting that he could “no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Now, realizing how gravely his self-serving association with Wright has wounded his campaign, Obama himself has attempted to do both those things — and expects the American public to believe him when he weakly and belatedly asserts that “when I say I find [Wright's] statements appalling, I mean it.”
As those of us with non-European brains might put it: You be trippin’, Barry.
The formula of race relations since the 1960s goes something like this: when blacks misbehave, the source must be found in white racism. The worse the behavior, the worse whites must be. Black rioting in New Orleans after Katrina . . . George Bush’s fault, plus decades of “white” neglect. L.A. Riots . . . 12 years of neglect. O.J. Simpson kills two white people . . . Mark Fuhrman made racist remarks and framed O.J. Crack-powder cocaine disparity . . . whites are guilty of “institutional racism” by punishing blacks harshly who try to get rich quick in the drug trade.
This is all nonsense. There are many causes of black misbehavior and failure, but racism is no longer a significant factor in minority failure and hasn’t been for over 30 years. In spite of this, black resentment is at an all time high, inflamed by agitators like Reverend Wright. Limited government conservatism requires whites to reject this formula. It’s no longer accurate, and it’s exacerbating black failures that could be reduced by white and black elites standing shoulder to shoulder and providing moral leadership. This new generation of leadership won’t emerge, so long as whites demur to black leaders, their lame leaders consist chiefly of useless demagogues like Sharpton, Wright, and company.
It’s good that mainstream conservatives are speaking plainly about Wright, black racism, and the various lies used to support the superstructure of “white guilt.” It’s good they’re calling McCain out on pulling punches in the face of this nonsense. Four years of this trend will propel someone like me well into the middle of the conservative mainstream, and that would be a good thing. Obama’s presidency will stress and purify the conservative movement, leading to clarity on issues of culture, the welfare state, demographics, and racism that it has lost in the fog of “compassionate conservatism” under President Bush.
1 May 2008 at 4:16 am
I agree. Wouldn’t that be something, to wake up and find out that your middle of road? Imagine the degree of transformation that must occur in the current make-up of liberal America. I don’t know if 4 years is long enough for 300 million, like a Texas-sized heard of Buffalo, to stop, change and move in another direction.
1 May 2008 at 1:27 pm
I generally agree with you that the black community’s “blame it on Whitey” routine (or perhaps as Obama might say, the “Original Sin” of America) is tired and out of touch with the real root causes of black underperformance.
I also agree with you that white majority racism is probably at its lowest ebb in our country’s history; undoubtedly racism still exists in some form, but for the most part, it is gone from housing, employment, education, etc.
I disagree with your statement that “black resentment is at an all time high, inflamed by agitators like Reverend Wright.” Not that I have a ton of black friends upon which to make this judgment, but just anecdotally, in my 20-some years as an adult, race relations today feel much better than they did in, say, the mid-1980s.
I had hoped that the “new leadership” of the black community would be more inward looking and self-critical, and would reject the 1980s/90s race-baiters. Maybe I’m naive; if the good Rev. Wright truly exemplifies the black church in America, I sort of feel like that whole community has drunk the kool aid for too long and has basically brainwashed itself into a state of learned helplessness.
And you know me; I tend to give blacks and hispanics the benefit of the doubt, rather than assume the worst.
1 May 2008 at 2:01 pm
I tend to agree that an Obama presidency would have this effect. However, don’t you think he is almost certain to lose in November, seeing how far to the Left he’s revealed himself to be?
1 May 2008 at 2:12 pm
It’s hard to say. A lot can happen between now and then, but I do think it’s more uphill than before. The swing voters will be working class white males. How quaint.
1 May 2008 at 2:39 pm
Poke-salad prophets like Wright and Sharpton didn’t invent multiculturalism. That was the brainchild of the cultural left, and its intent is to destroy traditional white culture and institutions in this country, and in the western world at large. It is a stealth toxin that corrodes from inside-out, and derives its virulence from a self-acclaimed, phony moral providence; since human nature craves righteous superiority - and the authority it assumes - well-meaning (but pompous) suckers fall for the spiel every time.
What Wright said this week is little different from the malarky we’re force-fed every day in American media. We are taught by rote, almost in sing-song, that the multicultural ideal is not only wondrous, but inevitable. America must turn away from its evil, honkey past - including the noisome nonsense like democracy and judicial relief - and lionize every two-bit, tinpot tribal chieftaincy crapping in the woods. We’ll know we’ve arrived when our daughters and wives wear sacks from the tops of their heads, to the tips of their toes.
But don’t blame Wright, or Jackson, or any of the sharp-suit sages. This New Reality came from our own foundations and schools, from our own media and politicians. It came from folks who dress, eat and drive better than us - and intend for themselves top spots in this new Melting Pot Eden.
Interestingly, the most outrage over Wright - in the mainstream media, at least - seems to really center around his association with Farrakhan.
Hmm. What can that mean?…
1 May 2008 at 2:55 pm
Good points Curt. It’s undoubtedly the case that multiculturalism had a vanguard, and that vanguard consisted of various talented, alienated, angry individuals and minority groups that resented the old WASP power structure. Its cadres were mostly Jewish, some Catholics, many blacks of talent, various alienated urban individuals, and the elites among recent immigrants. But black society seems to have its own power structure, this structure sometimes resents well-meaning (or enlightened and self-interested) Jewish attempts at common cause, and the Farrakhans and Wrights of the world seem to have strayed off the Kumbayah everyone-but-the-WASP multicultural bandwagon.
1 May 2008 at 5:00 pm
Mr. Roach,
Agreed – with the proviso that any real, existential threat to our American project originates with the traditional, cultural left, and not so much with organ-grinders like Wright. And yes, the intellectual fuel for this counter-system specifically sprang from the urban Jewish left, with some of their social critique insightful and pertinent. But while their immigrant forebears may have had reason to hold suspect any gentile community, it’s difficult to understand the reflexive animosity of many contemporary Jewish intellectuals toward traditional WASP establishment: Few Yankee Cossacks have chased them down Fifth Avenue, and we’d be hard-pressed to find that many anti-Jewish movements in America - and NONE of any significance. Even Charles Krauthammer, no foe of the open-borders end of multiculturalism, admitted this is the most philo-Semitic country in history. There has been no discussion of this apparent disconnect, since anything focusing on Jewish political participation is relentlessly attacked as “Nazi” and “anti-Semitic”; these hysterical charges have been successful in their intent - to stifle open debate on this now-critical issue.
So… what’s the beef? What is so endlessly. uniquely evil about this country’s history and traditions? Compared to what – all the “perfect” societies? How much of ourselves, and who we are, can we afford to throw away?
After all, ideas like free press, female suffrage and participatory government didn’t come to us from… Surinam…
And these questions must be asked as well: How much is present in “multiculturalism” of an economic component, i.e., introduction of cheap labor? With regard to this ethnic urge to tear down and remake - are we addressing “self-preservation”… or “self-interest”?
Where is the line between “survival” and “dominance”?
And when, in this bastion of liberty, which so values free and open exchange of ideas, can we talk about this stuff?
1 May 2008 at 5:11 pm
I prefer my historical determinism in much smaller bites.
Therefore, I feel a lot more comfortable predicting that our most liberal and defeatist senator will be do significant damage to the country as president than I do predicting that he will induce a dramatic reversal of our national mores and values.
You know I respect your outlook, but I think a lot of this is simply wishful thinking, searching for some glimmer of hope that things can be turned around and that old-fashioned conservative views can be preserved as something more than the opinions of a tiny minority. But the reality is that we are just fighting a holding action, and electing a president that will pursue surrender abroad and government activism at home will only accelerate the decline.
1 May 2008 at 5:17 pm
Well, we know what happens with Bush. And we know after Carter we had Reagan, who was on net much better. So I’m feeling like taking my chances this time around, and I have not love whatsoever for McCain and think his very presence in the White House will damage conservatives worse than anything, because I think he more than Obama or Clinton has a real chance at making amnesty happen. And this would be a death sentence on traditional America.
1 May 2008 at 5:25 pm
The higher likelihood of amnesty argument is the only one I find truly compelling.
And I still think Bush was better than the alternative.
1 May 2008 at 9:35 pm
There are always dangers in the worse-will-ultimately-be-better strategy. Inoculation of a disease so that the body can build up resistance works as long as the dosage is carefully calculated; too much and it kills, not cures.
Under ordinary circumstances, an injection of Obama’s loony left, racially aggrieved mentality into the highest office in the land would be too risky. Four years is time to do an incredible amount of damage.
Yet, as you say, the situation is now so extreme, the country in such a state of subservience to cultural Marxism, rapidly being turned into an overpopulated Third World dump via invited colonization, that to carry on as we are offers no hope of amelioration.
Almost any other Republican candidate might have offered a less ominous alternative to Obama. But John McCain may be even more dangerous than Obama, simply because (to those who aren’t paying close attention) he seems to offer a more “normal” path. In reality, his thinking (if you can call it that) isn’t significantly different from Obama’s, and he’ll take us in the same direction, while claiming to be a Republican or even conservative.
The flap over Reverend Wright has already forced some to become conscious of what they were determined to ignore, the widespread social pathology and racism among a segment of the black population. An Obama presidency would place the whole spectacle of identity politics, double standards, and political correctness center stage day after day in a way that even the liberal media mind-control apparatus would be unable to suppress.
2 May 2008 at 12:05 am
“Under ordinary circumstances, an injection of Obama’s loony left, racially aggrieved mentality into the highest office in the land would be too risky. Four years is time to do an incredible amount of damage.”
Bad policies can be rolled back when sanity returns. The Red Guards of the cultural Marxist vanguard will go nuts during an Obama administration. This will be independent of any government program, it is the nature of the beast. Look for all sorts of triumphal rubbing it in for openers. The reaction to this (if it comes) will be worth the price. I don’t see a downside, frankly, if there’s no fight left in the America I was born into I’d just as soon have it ended swiftly.
2 May 2008 at 5:09 pm
You guys forget that most conservative backlashes don’t roll anything back, they just slow down the bleeding for a while.
When Obama leaves office, we’ll still be left with a nationalized health program, at least one more lost war, and one or two radical Supreme Court judges.
And don’t forget that economic performance is about more than government policy. It is entirely possible that we will have good economic years under an Obama presidency, despite damaging new policies. There is no guarantee that people will look back on Obama years as a dismal failure. With a moderately decently performing economy, and a steady drum-beat of positive media spin for the new Camelot years, we could very well end up with a population far more supportive of the downward trends you hope to turn around.
2 May 2008 at 9:07 pm
“There is no guarantee that people will look back on Obama years as a dismal failure.”
This assumes that the hard left will be able to resist the “call of the wild”. Obama will have to restrain the people that put him into power. The Ayers’ and Wrights and community organizers ad nausium. His own administration will be packed these types.
Most of them will be vicious if not stupid and in most cases both. Think of Jimmy Carter with a cabinet drawn from the ranks of the SDS, Weather Underground and Yippies. Imagine barely restrained corruption and profiteering paired with humorless, doctrinaire, Marxoid, enablers.
The economy is in poor shape right now and it is not a transient phenomena. It is beset with deep,structural problems which will only worsen in the next four years. None of the candidates will be able to rectify the mess we are in and in fact they will all see it as an opportunity to increase the power of the state for the benefit of their clients. Let Obama hold the bag and the left with him.
7 May 2008 at 1:57 pm
[...] The people who make up the political class are never going to change. For example, Chris Roach has cited statements that would seem to indicate some change on the part of Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin. But [...]
7 May 2008 at 4:00 pm
Maybe we should stop putting all things into either a Conservative or Liberal context. Maybe thigs should be argued from a standpoint of whether it is objective and honest or whether it is plainly factually wrong. Drop all labels and just pove somebody wrong on facts. It should no longer be us vs them.