Morality vs. Privilege--Part I

There's a reason conservatives can't get through to black America, and it's the same reason black America can't catch up to the rest of us. In the name of leftist groupthink, we have seen morality replaced with priviledge, supplanting individual accountability and initiative with standards that depend entirely either on what other people have done to you or how much you identify yourself with the oppressed. Both those who are "saved" by leftist policies and those who do the "saving" by implementing them receive a fundamental satisfaction from this altered ethic. It's about far more than how much we should tax the rich.

The left often criticizes the right for policies they themselves implement selectively. This demonstrates that they don't fundamentally disagree with the effectiveness of the policies in question, they just want them applied differently.

For example, the left often complains that traditional law enforcement methods, namely putting criminals behind bars for a very long time, are simplistic. We need to focus our efforts on addressing the root causes of crime, eliminating poverty and racism, and rehabilitating criminals. Long jail terms don't work as a deterrent.

But, if you attack somebody because of their race or sexual orientation, we need to lock you up indefinitely, because although longer jail terms won't deter the average mugger or gangland murderer, they will somehow prevent hate crimes. Either they believe that harsher sentences actually deter criminals, or they don't and have decided to grandstand. (Perhaps they just care about feelings.)

They often criticize American society for being too judgemental, but when Don Imus or Michael Richards make an ass of themselves it's perfectly appropriate to shame them mercilessly. I could live with this as a societal standard, if they could.

But yesterday, a regular on guest of Opie and Anthony joked about raping Condoleezza Rice, having rough sex with Laura Bush, and the supposed ugliness of Queen Elizabeth II (h/t Captain Ed). If Al Sharpton is asked about this, he will undoubtedly say that he thinks they went over the top, but I doubt he'll launch a crusade to silence them.

I can't read into the minds of our Civil Rights leaders, but I can't help but notice a double standard of sorts. Don Imus is white. Charlie, the guest who joked about "that George Bush bitch," is black (or at the very least he certainly speaks fluent ebonics--I admit I haven't seen a picture). Castigating Imus is of the utmost importance to maintain societal decorum. Castigating Charlie makes sense only if a talk show host calls you on it.

When a genuine hate crime receives publicity, the left spends comparatively little time analyzing the mindset of the perpetrator but instead demonstrates no hesitancy whatsoever to throwing the bastard in jail where he belongs. They quite appropriately subject the Ku Klux Klan and other like-minded groups to ostracism and ridicule. When they truly want something stopped, they become quite conservative in their approach.

This leads me to believe that deep down many of them know we're right about what works, they just want things to work differently. Implementing "an array of taxes" would be a great way to discourage fossil fuel usage, but taxing capital gains has a negligible effect on investment (h/t Jeff Goldstein in an incredible post--in the same article we see the author decry the need for proof before we act against global warming--I wonder if he felt the same way about Iraq's WMD's).

Although much of the left-right debate is over tactics, i.e. how to reduce poverty, maintain security, etc., the real debate is over our fundamental societal vision, for when the left wants something done, it will adopt the policies it decried several minutes ago in a heartbeat. Calling Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the "Axis of Evil" was counterproductive, but calling Bush a Nazi fosters dialogue (or something like that).

This leads me to believe that as much as they want to save us all from themselves, something else is more important. Indeed, the prioritization of motivation is near the heart of the left-right divide, but something else matters more.

I suspect that much of this is a twisted mix of self-congratulation and nihilsim. Whichever it is, it depends entirely on the morality of hierarchy.

UPDATE: Here's the full text of the Opie and Anthony conversation in question. If you found "nappy-headed hos" offensive, you might not want to listen.

On Throwing Bombs

No, I'm not yet at the point of advocating any sort of armed domestic upraising--I'm metaphorically referring to harsh language.

Before I return to topics of substance, I'd like to respond to commenter myofacial release who recently stated, "Good blog though, rare for a conservative to reach out to people instead of creatively insult people." Not to deflect one of the only compliments I've received here on this blog, but I'm not alone. Neo-neocon and Ed Morrissey are two others who spring to mind off the top of my head.

However, the only reason I've refrained thus far from launching verbal assaults is that I've not yet had the need. "[C]reatively insult[ing] people" is a necessary rhetorical tool, although it's one most pundits of all persuasions use too often.

The purpose of this blog is to examine how to reach out to people, most especially those who've either not put much thought into politics but pull the lever for the Democrats out of habit, or those who vote that way because they sincerely believe that Democratic policies will benefit the country. I believe that those who are sincerely mistaken can be persuaded, unlike those who have made leftism an intrinsic part of their identity, most of whom will always disagree no matter what we say or do.

I've spent a great deal of time trolling around websites like The Daily Kos, and I've come to the conclusion that the most effective ways that the left has refuted our points by is distorting or ignoring them. I've also engaged in many debates on comment-boards, in chatrooms, via email, and in person, and rarely have I encountered a proud leftist who deals directly with the actual points I'm making. I've observed the mainstream media simply not report on much of what we have to say.

This has led me to the conclusion that the most effective way for us to persuade the apathetic and sincere lefties is to spread our actual message--if there were effective refutations to what we have to say I would have heard them by now.

This entails several types of persuasion, all of which require that we not allow the opposition to either evade or distort out message.

Those who sincerely disagree ought to be engaged in honest discussion. I consider leftism to be a Lie, but like all effective lies, it's based on certain truths (the poor have an unfair shake at things, healthcare is too expensive, peace is preferable to war, etc.). We need to discover the truths behind their erroneous beliefs, emphasize our agreement with the truths in question, and then elaborate on how leftism will make the problems they (correctly) identify worsen. Yes, minimum wage fails to support a family of four, but no, raising it won't help the poor but will instead increase unemployment.

But we don't always get the chance to do that. If we're up against a representative of the AFL-CIO on Hannity & Colmes, we will likely face an opponent who has no interest whatsoever in exploring Truth but instead has every reason to beat you. In such a case, you can't let him, and that may very well mean "creatively insult[ing]" him. (Understanding why he has supporters can be a great way to make yourself more effective at this, which is why I advocate trolling around on the leftward side of the blogoshpere.) I never engage in a discussion hoping to make somebody look like an ass, but if my opponent insists that one of us looks like a moron, it sure as hell won't be me--any third parties watching are unlikely to find themselves convinced by someone who's just been humiliated.

That said, there's another use for harsh language--the confident affirmation of one's own views. Exposure to the left, which can be quite hard to avoid, can get rather exasperating. After a while, it all starts to sound like this, and it feels good to make fun of it. Even though I'm no great fan of Ann Coulter, it's hilarious watching her castrate Colmes--it feels great to see one of them get what's coming to him. I'm not particularly proud of this, but I am part human.

The danger comes when we replace what feels good for what works. By and large, the conservative movement is full of bomb-throwing pundits (Coulter, Hannity, O'Reiley) and mealy-mouthed politicians and political parties that allow themselves to be routinely mocked while trying to "build bridges" with opponents who have no intention of letting them.

Both groups are one-trick ponies. I have no reason to suspect that Ann Coulter could engage a sincerely mistaken lefty in honest discourse (I've seen O'Reiley try but he's awful at it). No matter what Harry Reid says about Bush, Bush replies rather meekly.

We need to get softer and to toughen up. I've already begun describing how I think this should be done, and I will continue to elaborate as this blog progresses. In the meantime, I can lead by example. Thus far my only critic has been in sincere disagreement, and I've responded in kind. Someday, I'll have an earnest troll, at which point you can see how I think he/she should be disposed of.

And as far as an opponent who's actually right about something...Frankly, I doubt this will ever happen, but if it does, I must keep my future reaction secret so as to keep y'all coming back.

Me me me me me me me And You you you you you you you you

Earlier, I elaborated on some of the root causes of the us-versus-them mentality (which I will now refer to as UVTM) of black America and described why it needs to be overcome. However, I failed to distinguish between the destructive UVTM that haunts the black community and healthier forms needed to replace it.

I suppose it would be nice if we all consistently saw everybody else are part of One Human Family, and in certain respects we both should and do, but I find it entirely unrealistic to expect people not to do so ever. A commenter cited examples of how we do it on the right (O'Reiley's hits on the "secular progressives"), and he's aboslutely correct--we do it all the time. However, there's a fundamental difference between how the left and right categorize, and it's one that must be recognized, for it's a substantial stumbling block keeping the "oppressed" from getting out of life what they should.

Black UVTM stems from the white UVTM of the old South. Whites largely stood by each other and allowed race and class to trump justice far more often than they should have. Blacks therefore came to view institutions like the legal system and business as tools of oppression instead of institutions of achievement, economic development, and justice.

However, as understandable as the causes may be, we're left with people seemingly categorizing themselves according to race. When confronted with this accusation, the left cites the shared experiences of minorities and tells us that there are things that all of them have endured that the rest of us have not, that it's not ultimately about race, it's simply more comfortable to spend one's time with those who've suffered what you have. Again, this is understandable.

Nevertheless, I would argue that this is a reactive form of self-categorization, for that which leads us to wish to sit together in the cafeteria is not what we've accomplished, what we stand for, or what we wish to become, but instead what was done to us. Even if it's not based on skin-color like the right alledges, it's still ultimately letting them categorize you. After all, aren't you excluding yourself because they excluded you first?

The ultimate danger of such groupthink is that it trains us to think reactively. Even if the upper classes view the son of a plumber as little more than the son of a plumber, to become class-conscious, the plumber's son must agree with the upper-classman's fundamental assessment of him. He would undoubtedly disagree with a rich snot's belief that being a plumber's son indicates any inherent inferiority, but he still bases his fundamental self-image on things over which he has no contol, namely, that his background is what really matters. (Likewise, a spoiled rich kid who thinks of himself as superior because of his powerful dad plays the same game and limits himself accordingly--albeit with different consequences. Modern white supremacists merge the groupthink of race-superiority with class-consciousness to allow themselves the status of perpetural "victim-superiors"--but they and the rich snot are for another post)

However, in a free-market society such as ours, social class is fluid, for we can always transcend our socioeconomic backgrounds. The son of a plumber may become president of a bank (yes, I know it's an uphill struggle, but it happens a lot), the daughter of a coal miner can sell millions of records. In regards to whites, the left's categorization of us is transient (if we don't buy into Lennon/Lenin's view of things).

But you can't make yourself un-black, not even if you're Michael Jackson. You can break through nearly every chain set before you, you can straighten your hair and listen to heavy metal, but your skin will still be darker than that of most of your countrymen. If you've bought into leftist groupthink based on class, you can change external circumstances enough to unbox yourself. If you've bought into leftist groupthink based on race, you're stuck, forever, no matter what you do.

Such emphasis on the external has had a devastatingly powerful effect on the black community. "You will always be one of us, for the white man sees you differently than he sees himself."

How white people, rich people, the cool kids, or whoever they may be matters; it would be foolish to assert otherwise. However, one of the fundamental differences between the right and the left is that we believe that under most circumstances, what they do to you matters less than what you do about it.

Again, I don't deny that injustice exists, I just believe that after we've established relative equality under the law that we need to shift our focus to individual initiative. The quest for cosmic justice emphasizes the external, conflating that which should be with what is. Individual initiative emphasizes the need for individual accomplishment within the actual parameters of the here and now, not necessarily waiting for them to get it right before one makes something of oneself.

I know that civil rights leaders sometimes discuss the latter, but they held Don Imus (the establishment, the underlying environment of hostility, the white man, etc.) to a far higher standard than they hold Snoop Dogg, an individual member of the black community with a considerable amount of influence over young people. They may complain about rap lyrics, but I've yet to see any prominent boycotts. I know that in one of my college linguistic books (Chaika's Language: The Social Mirror), black misogyny was explained away and blamed on the oppressors.

The UVTM of black American initially mirrored an UVTM of justice, for blacks were universally and unquestionably oppressed. Even if a black stole something, it could very plausibly be argued that he had so many strikes against him that he deserved shielding from the police. Since then, much progress has been made, but UVTM still defends the likes of OJ Simpson and gang members who terrorisze their own communities.

I remember seeing a Chris Rock stand-up routine in which he lamented that black people were too happy about the OJ Simpson verdict (this may or may not be true, but I was out of the country at the time so I'll have to take his word for it). However, he later said that if Jerry Seinfeld or another white celebrity suffered the same fate that white America would have acted the same way.

Pace Mr. Rock, he was dead wrong about this. I believe that Mr. Rock, like many blacks, thinks we're more race-conscious than we are. Very few of us (fortunately) retain a race-based UVTM. For the most part we have adopted an UVTM based on values. (Yes, lefties, I recognize that we whites don't have to look at the world through the prism of race because we've created the prism and all, but keep in mind that it was whites around the country who saw other whites treating blacks like crap on their televisions and decided to help the blacks they saw as heroes do something about it, thus "turning against our own" for the sake of "social justice.")

I think Rosa Parks was a hero and Ted Bundy was a thug--any me-versus-you going through my mind has much more to do with what somebody stands for and does about it than menalin content or the need to protect "my people." I think both Joshua Lawrence Chamberain and the Tuskegee Airmen were greater men that I will ever be (in large part because I'm a rabbits [sic]). I consider "my people" to be those I respect and admire, and "they" are those I don't.

Not to place myself on a pedastal here, but when most of us of all races look at things this way we'll be much better off. Yes, I know that most black people hate the thugs that make their lives hell, but (and I've seen this happen firsthand) if a white person criticizes the same lowlifes, many blacks start defending the lowlifes. I've watched public access cable shows that white people never watch and seen the black hosts and black callers rip "urban values" to shreds. I've seen those same hosts later tell whites that they have no right to criticize anybody, that we have no right to judge. Race groupthink trumps values groupthink, meaning values groupthink can't ever win, for there's always a white person around somewhere to inspire the need to circle the wagons.

From here I could go into how leftist UVTM ultimately rejects values, the way leftist UVTM inspires a class of annointed who feel like they're doing the right thing and don't notice the harm they do, or perhaps the two groups of semi-heroes who are inches away from being the very types of people who could inspire "oppressed" America to accept and live the American dream, but I haven't decided. Feel free to make a request.

The Eggman Cracks

Although I told you all that I was about to explain how we could get through to black heroes in my next post, I realized that I don't know how to do that yet. There's obviously more to it than going up to a black guy who's made a great life out of nothing and saying, "You epitomize Republican values and should therefore join us!" I'm not saying this approach won't ever work, but I doubt it will very often.

Not only do I think we need to explore the left's view of heroism in a bit more depth before we can proceed, I also know that I failed to cite specific examples of the leftist take on heroism. In order to help me rectify this, Green Day has just released their own version of John Lennon's "Working-Class Hero." I have had the fortune of hearing the new rendition of this "classic" on the radio twice today and found it disturbingly illuminating.

I realize that neither John Lennon nor Green Day are in heavy rotation on many urban radio stations, but what I see in this song is an attempt to get working-class white America to look at the world like most blacks do already. It also does so within the context of heroism, a concept I've already described as essential to the recovery of black America (and frankly, the rest of America, too). I'm sure that many lefties perceive this song as an homage to the poor guy who's never had much of a shot at life. I see it as an ugly attempt to degrade humanity far worse than anything by Nine Inch Nails or AC/DC (and I'm holding neither Lennon nor Green Day responsible for the typos).

As soon as your [sic] born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till [sic] the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be.

The first lines of the song refer to an unnamed, amorphous, villainous "they" out to get you. Immediately, the victim in the song is described in terms of us-vs.-them, and the motives of whoever "they" might be are nothing short of pure malice. The setting of the song is one of futile struggle against an undefinable enemy, not unlike the pointless lives of poor black kids hopelessly struggling against a system thoroughly poisoned by the racism of the White Power Structure.

Not only that, they potty-train you and teach you how to speak when they should be letting you have all your time to yourself.

This comes right before a call to be a "hero."

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till [sic] you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be.

Yet more exemplification of a can-do attitude! Not only are working-class kids the only ones who suffer such injustices, studies show that anyone who has ever been "hurt...at home" has no chance whatsoever to make anything of themselves, ever. And even if they don't actually hit you at school in the literal sense (I have no idea of the state of corporal punishment in British schools when Lennon wrote this song, but I know for damn sure it's not allowed in America around the time of the Green Day version), you're undoubtedly a victim of metaphoric violence, which smarts even more considering what you're going through with Mum and/or Dad. "They" are probably driving you "crazy" intentionally so they can keep you out of the way. You have everything stacked against you, even more than India's untouchables. If you're smart you'll just present a threat to "their" power, and if you're dumb it will only prove that they're right to look down on you. So be a hero.

When they've tortured and scared [sic-it's sung "scarred"] you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be.

If the childhood of a typical working-class kid is replete with "torture," no wonder these folks go ballistic over Guantanamo. Not only that, you're supposed to get a job?! Anyone looking for the "root causes" of the mentality that causes endemic poverty in Harlem or Soho need look no further. Those tough-looking dudes you see who obviously spend a lot of time at the gym aren't academically disinclined, violent, or sexually irresponsible, they're just "full of fear." Emphasize with the deep insecurities that manifest themselves as the overwhelming need to violently impress the neighbors. Perhaps you should enhance their deflated self-esteem by prostrating your wallet before them as well.

By the way, you're supposed to be a hero, even though John's making it seem damn near impossible to even fill out an application at Burger King, much less make it through the interview with all that "hurt" and "fear" floating around in the back of your mind.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be.

Here the powerful description of lament segues into Marxist terminology, telling the poor "fucking peasants" that they can't be "free" because they still consider themselves "classless." Some might even argue that this passage reflects condescension towards the poor, but we know that John Lennon and Green Day care way too much to ever consider such a thing--John must have been showing the "peasants" what other rich people think of them.

By the way, be a hero! But how? It's all so hopeless!

There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be,
A working class [sic] hero is something to be.

Unfortunately, some of the "peasants" listening to this song might still think it's possible to succeed--they might have heard of, or maybe even actually know a fellow "peasant" who is has become one of those "folks on the hill." Not to worry, just assure them that getting a good job is to "learn how to smile as you kill." If despair can't get them, maybe guilt will. Furthermore, for those who've already bought into the bit about how impossible it all is, this gives them even more reason to hate those who have exploited them by creating their televisions.

So where do we go from here? We've been made "to feel small" by being given "no time," felt "pain so big" we've become numb, "hurt," "hit," either "hate[d]" or "despise[d]," driven "so fucking crazy" we can't make sense of it anymore, "tortured," "scarred," been expected to find a job even though we're "so full of fear," and "doped with religion and sex on TV." You may already be enlightened, but as for me, I feel overwhelmed. What should I do, John?

If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

Ahh, so that's it--if I want to get by in this scary world, I need to let you tell me what to do, to follow your example. I'm not really sure if you're encouraging me to lie in bed all day in the front window of an apartment store with my ugly wife, waltz around the room to "I, Me, Mine" with my ugly wife, do a lot of drugs, write cryptic lyrics, neglect my firstborn child, pose naked in a fetal position for the cover of a magazine (also with my ugly wife), or just wear round glasses, but you're obviously much more enlightened than a "fucking peasant" like me so I suppose you know far more about how I should run my life than I ever could.

I know that Mr. Lennon doesn't speak for everyone on the left, but this does epitomize the attitudes that they utilize to score political points, and he does happen to be one of their icons.. If you don't believe me, simply observe how much feeling they put into "Imagine" as they sing along "living for todaaaaaaay" while intoxicated. Green Day is one of today's most popular cultural opponents of the "redneck agenda" of the average "American Idiot."

Therefore, Green Day deserves our gratitude for resurrecting this song and ensuring that kids across the globe will be hearing these wise words repeatedly on the radio day after day!

But false class consciousness remains. Despite the unrepresentative distribution of ethnic minorities in the National Basketball Association, several prominent black basketball players have resisted the attempts of a pair of academics to portray them as victims.

If only our oppressed masses could transfer the ethic they bring to math class to the basketball court our society would be much healthier.

Everyday's Hero

Not much has happened in the racial cultural wars since my last post--the Duke rape case is fading down the leftist memory hole and Hillary was unable to score political points against Imus. However, you can rest assured that we'll be back here again with the next slip of a prominent tongue (unless it's Robert Byrd's).

Still, I want to address my first commenter who stated that perhaps conservatives "should phrase it this way: don't ignore the past, rather honor it. Honor their sacrifices by using that freedom to live the kind of life they hoped their descendants would have."

I agree that this is essential, but to do this successfully, we need to address a fundamental aspect of leftism that would undermine this strategy.

The left often has trouble differentiating between what is and what ought to be (we do as well, but less pervasively). It is perfectly normal and acceptable to hope for the best, if one recognizes it as hope and not a description of what will invariably occur.

The Iraq study group claimed that Iran and Syria should want stability in Iraq. Employers should hire just as many people after we make it more expensive to hire them by raising the minimum wage. Workers should work just as hard even if they know it's almost impossible to get fired. The rich should spend just as much money investing in new businesses even if we tax away all their profits. Criminals shold stop stealing and raping once the harm they're doing others is adequately explained to them, we give them greater economic opportunity, and after somebody shows them how much they care. If I had all day, I could make this paragraph into an absurdly long one.

This clouds their view of all injustices, both past and present. For example, most of us agree that Jackie Robinson was a hero (and if you don't think he was a hero, this isn't the blog for you). Mr. Robinson endured some horrible injustices, but he also overcame them. The left's preoccupation with "should" emphasizes the former part of that statement, the right accentuates the latter.

Jackie Robinson should not have had to endured death threats, catcalls from the Phillies, and segregated hotel rooms. He should not have had to know in the back of his mind that every time he struck out or made an error that it would serve as an excuse for bigots to continue believing that his people were inferior. Mr. Robinson should not have even had to be a pioneer in the first place, for baseball should have already been integrated.

Unfortunately, Mr. Robinson had to endure hell to make what should be into what is. He could have decided to stay in the Negro Leagues where he could play baseball in peace. After he went 0-for-3 his first day with the Dodgers, he could have blamed the pressure and given up. He could have told the bigots exactly what they deserved to hear his first year and frightened reluctant whites into feeling even more threatened by him. He could have lobbied Congress for more legislation or sued Major League Baseball for creating a hostile environment (well, in 1947, maybe not). He probably wanted to rip off certain people's heads, and I don't think any of us could blame him.

Instead, Jackie Robinson decided to become a hero. Despite injustices that probably rattled him to his core, he did everything he could do (play baseball really well), didn't try to do what he couldn't (change bigots minds by yelling back at them), and transformed society.

Although it would be unfair to accuse the left of belittling Mr. Robinson's character, I find that they too often emphasize that which he should not have had to endure over that which he did about it. This is an important yet very fine distinction--after all, it was the filth around him that let us see his greatness.

We should not have needed a hero like Jackie Robinson, but we did. Today, poor blacks should not have to fight so many aspects of American culture to succeed, but they do.

Unfortunately, there will always be things that shouldn't be--terrorists, cars flying into lakes, screaming kids and bills we can't afford. We should rectify this as much as possible (kill terrorist, pay attention on the road, etc.), but no matter what we do, some degree of injustice will remain.

But the left seems to perpetually overestimate what's possible in the realm of eliminating injustice while underestimating the ability of individuals to overcome it. They seem to have unlimited faith in the ability of government to eliminate poverty while simultaneously thinking that an individual born into poverty is doomed to get pregnant at fourteen and sell crack.

Obivously, kids born into poverty are more inclined to act certain ways, largely because certain people will always tend to succumb to injustice rather than overcome it. However, without heroes willing to take responsibility for the harshness that confronts them, humanity would probably stll be living in caves. We are able to live in relative peace and harmony because farmers, philosophers, scientists, soldiers, and parents decided to ignore what was understandable and chose heroism instead.

This will always be the case, but will always be the case for some more than others. However, it is through accepting what is with the desire to make it what it should be that transforms lives: the role of circumstance is secondary. I believe that few of us want to have to be Jackie Robinson, but that a part of each of us would like to be him if we had to. Unfortunately, many of us do have to, but answering that call is what makes us alive.

Instead, the left continually tells us that things should just be better and that the government can make it that way. The government can do certain things (maintain equal justice under the law, enforce individual rights, etc.), but it can't make you approach your life productively. It can, and should, guarantee aspects of your right to the pursuit of happiness, but happiness is up to you.

The left implicitly denies this. For example, although I agree with the left's assertion that today's drug laws are unfair to minorities and believe that we have a duty to rectify this, I also believe that crack users would be unlikely to succeed even if crack were legal and free. The external injustice is real but secondary to the internally flawed behavior pattern. Perhaps we shouldn't be putting black crack users in jail, but people shoulnd't be doing crack, either.

Despite instinctually understanding most of this, black America has produced heroes who support the Democratic Party, a party that undermines the very mindset that makes heroism more difficult. I will explore this phenomenon in my next post, for these are the folks we need to reach first. We need to "[H]onor the sacrifices of the past" through honoring the sacrifices of the present. and reaching black American heroes is the ideal, but exceptionally difficult, way to do this.

Not Gone Yet

I apologize to my burgeoning fan base for my recent dearth of posts. This will cease tomorrow. Things have come up that bode very well for me, but they've taken time from this blog.

However, I am happy to report that my first prediction looks like it was rather off base. We're not responding quite like I hoped we would, but the response has been far from impotent.

I hope I get such egg on my face more frequently.

This Is Why I'm Not Hot

All of us fall into the trap of me vs. the world. On a day when your boss unjustly yells at you, your suit comes back from the cleaners with a hole in your pants that you notice right after your wife takes the car, and your puppy gets diarrhea, you might find yourself tempted to think that the world is ganging up on you. Despite the painfully obvious fact that your puppy has never met your boss (and neither know what cleaners you frequent), both might become part of an amorphous "they" that's oppressing you. However, eventually the day ends, and you realize how ridiculous your thoughts were, or at least forget about them.

But you don't have a political movement continually reminding you to keep thinking that your puppy is in league with that rude Chinese lady. Blacks do. When the world is viewed through the lens of Power Narratives, slights by every "oppressor" and nearly every injustice one encounters that can't be directly attributed to a fellow victim are all connected by the Racist Power Structure. It matters not if you have never personally encountered a single specific instance of the racism that your forbears encountered daily--you know that they're just hiding it, and the proof is in your rotting neighborhood.

As I've discussed before, as difficult as it may be to believe, many injustices against blacks were rectified in the 1960's. Things weren't perfect, but a lot changed, and it became a crossroads for the black community.

I would compare this to the moment when a formerly abused child recognizes that it isn't his fault that his father abused him. After being victimized by forces beyond his control and taking the first steps to rectify that which he can, he can either heal the pain and take responsibility for his life, or he can remain bitter and make his father the permanent reason he can't succeed.

Freedom is both wonderful and horrifying, and as the War on Poverty failed to eliminate ghettos, it succeeded in altering the definitions of "freedom" and "justice." Things didn't seem to be getting better fast enough, and if you finally get the freedom you always wanted and still find yourself going nowhere, if you're not especially courageous it's perfectly natural to claim you're not really free yet.

At this juncture the Civil Rights establishment could have attempted to inspire its followers to appreciate their new found freedoms (which by definition contained some pitfalls and was always going to be far from perfect) but instead chose to make itself more indispensable through enumerating new needs. Gradually, the new grievances became more amorphous, and therefore more insurmountable.(for an in-depth discussion of this see Shelby Steele's White Guilt

As "racist" became a label almost nobody wants ascribed to them its definition changed. Since white people wrote the dictionary, simply viewing somebody as inferior because of their race no longer suffices. Racism is now either prejudice mixed with power or a system that keeps racial hierarchies in place. As blacks became less likely to point to specific incidents of racism, to keep the nightmare alive racism had to become something even more insidious, and something that can never be wiped out.

It's much easier to confront Don Imus is he's just an arrogant windbag. If you see him as landlord/cop/corporation/low-paycheck/expensive-groceries/doctor-bills he's a bit more formidable, and almost as bad as a slave driver.

Hence the new Power Narrative, only one more similar to the Vanguard of the Proletariat. People fail, and other people tell them that there's so much stacked up against them that failure is all but inevitable. Even those that succeed are reminded that they should not have had to have been so exceptional.

In one sense, this is true, but in another sense, it's most definitely not. In my next post I hope to contrast the liberal inability to distinguish between "should be" and "is" with the more productive conservative perspective.

Heroism, the only remedy to our predicament, can grow under either set of assumptions. However, only through conservative values can it spread.