This is one of those "read it all and just understand" columns, so just go do it. (the link is a double bump off Real Clear because of WSJ paywall vagaries).
I've weakly attempted cover this issue, but the genius of Shelby Steele as well as the moral authority of a black man on the topic makes a much stronger case than I am able to. I pray he is right -- the rise of Trump means the end of this sorry chapter in our history. Creating a morally bankrupt nation where young black men kill each other by the thousands every year while our children are taiught to hate their own nation has produced nothing but destruction and despair.
Let’s stipulate that, given our history, this liberalism is understandable. But American liberalism never acknowledged that it was about white esteem rather than minority accomplishment. Four thousand shootings in Chicago last year, and the mayor announces that his will be a sanctuary city. This is moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism. Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.
Just in case you don't follow my advice and go read it (it is not long), there is this important point.
It is also the heart and soul of contemporary liberalism. This liberalism is the politics given to us by white guilt, and it shares white guilt’s central corruption. It is not real liberalism, in the classic sense. It is a mock liberalism. Freedom is not its raison d’être; moral authority is.I grew up with this. It is religious fundamentalism ... the kind that gets you "shunned". The kind that doesn't let you visit some people because they are "worldly". It is the "safe spaces" and the
"I can't talk to them anymore, they voted for Trump" of today. It is the politics that makes me cry.
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