American liberals need conservatives to be racist as justification for resisting change to the status quo of our government in terms of social programs and “entitlement” spending. Does it follow that conservatives must be racist? Funny, I don’t feel racist. What brings this up? At National Review Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg take apart the Sam Tanenhaus piece in The New Republic that is titled “Original Sin: Why the GOP Is and Will Continue to Be the Party of White People.”
Their chosen quote, and I hope you can read it with as much incredulous merriment as I did, “When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s, they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun.”
I read the authors of the modern right back in the day and I say, “What? What? What?”
Ponnuru and Goldberg express similar indignation:
Tanenhaus’s claim that National Review was baptized into the cult of Calhoun rests largely on a handful of quotes from Russell Kirk and James J. Kilpatrick. What results is a distorted picture of Kirk, but a nearly unrecognizable one of NR and conservatism. Neither Kirk nor Kilpatrick had the influence on NR that Burnham, Meyer, Chambers, Willi Schlamm, or Willmoore Kendall did. None of these founding editors of National Review is even mentioned in Tanenhaus’s indictment.
Nor is Harry Jaffa mentioned; Tanenhaus writes with blinders on, unaware of so much of thought on the right that he assumes there must not have been much thought. Just read the whole thing.
I suppose the left needs the right to be attached to Democratic antecedents like Calhoun so they can disallow them, despite an ideology and choice of policies that keep the descendents of American slaves in “safe” Congressional districts in the inner cities, dependent on government whenever possible, and securely in the Democratic voting bloc. Heck, I know I simplify grossly with that assertion, but for all the left has done for blacks since FDR and Johnson, what has changed so much for the better for our black population? With friends like the Democrats, who needs enemies? To slap the “racist” label on anyone who does not agree with the left denies any right to independent thought and to political opposition. That’s the real point, according to Ponnuru and Goldberg.
Perhaps the problem is in the word, conservative. It means someone who wants to conserve, of course, but we all choose the right to conserve what we believe is and was the best of civilization, based on judgement and discrimination. For example, I don’t know any conservative who longs for the good old days of chattel slavery. That “Progress” is inexorable in the left’s direction, which seems to be all about certain types of control and not others, is something any conservative feels free to argue. Tanenhaus seems to think we have no right to make the argument; that such arguments are sin. This is liberality these days. Where do conservatives get off looking at what modern liberalism has done for blacks in America and saying, “There must be a different, better, way to handle this. We have a mess here and it is a mess we cannot afford.”? Who has a vested interest in the racial divide of modern politics? It is not the GOP.
Coda: Apparently, Tanenhaus is working on a biography of William F. Buckley and given what he writes about him in “Original Sin”, God help Buckley’s memory.
March 17th, 2013 | 10:32 am
[...] American liberals need conservatives to be racist as justification for resisting change to the status quo of our government in terms of social programs and “entitlement” spending. Does it follow that conservatives must be racist? Funny, I don’t feel racist. What brings this up? At <a target=_blank Go to the Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
March 17th, 2013 | 1:45 pm
Yeah, Republicans have no problems with race at all, and never have either. No problems there. (Slaves were fed and housed!) There’s no racism here. Except for the actual racists like Barack the Magic Negro. And I’m just terrified that a liberal journalist is going to write a book which makes it look like Buckley ever had anything to do with racists. Because there wasn’t a single word ever published in National Review, let alone in Buckley’s own name, which would support that idea. Poor Buckley, victim of race hatred today – just like he was all the way back in 1963, when “circumstantial evidence” suggested to NR that a “crazed Negro” (or “Communist”) had bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham to “set back the cause of the white people there”. Poor, poor National Review (and white people more generally!), always the victim of race-baiters.
March 17th, 2013 | 4:16 pm
Erskin must be a product of recent trends in the teaching of American history in high schools. He seems to be unaware that when slavery actually existed, Republicans were the anti-slavery party. However misinformed he may be about pre-Civil War America, he is kind enough to take time to instruct us that criticizing Obama’s overtly race-based personality cult is “racist.” Thanks for the tip, pal. And he dredges up Buckley’s half-century-old opposition to the civil rights movement, a position Buckley repudiated long ago. Not terribly relevant to any current issue.
March 17th, 2013 | 5:50 pm
Don’t know the story here, but my sense is that WFB Jr. blew it on the civil rights issue in the formative years of NR conservatism. MLK Jr. met with VP Nixon, you know, reflecting the fact that circa 1920-1965 the black vote was not definitely tied to the Dems.
But count me pretty uninterested in figuring out exactly HOW tempted by and guilty of the sin of racist politics NR white conservatives were in the 60s and 70s. Of course some of them were… But they weren’t the only ones. I would never begrudge a sincere liberal their admiration of LBJ or FDR just because someone could show that at some time they had indulged racist politics.
Not that you can learn much of anything from someone with the spirit of Tanenhaus. erskin, consider your spirit well… …and visit the Booker Rising site for Ben Carson’s speech.
March 17th, 2013 | 6:24 pm
Djf’s schooling, whatever that may have been, evidently shortchanged him on basic reasoning and reading abilities. So his comments had to halves: the second half blames me for bringing up facts that are a “half-century-old”; the first half blames me for allegedly nor knowing something over a century old. So, per djf: 50 years ago – to old to be irrelevant; 100 years – very relevant. Irrespective, there’s no reasonable way for djf to have determined what I do or don’t know about the issue which he blames me for, since I wrote nothing about it. As for Buckley’s position, it remains relevant because it is essentially also Kate’s position: there is no racism, but if there is, it’s only victims are white people. Same basic position. Of course today it looks a little unseemly to be drooling about how the real victims of church bombings must be whites targeted by Communists or a “crazed Negro”, so Buckley had to be repudiate some of his specific claims. But the basic logic is is unchanged: there is no racism, but if there is, it’s only victims can be white people. (Incidentally, maybe Buckley “repudiated” his position, but did he ever produce the claimec “evidence” which led him to immediately respond to a church bombing that killed children by blaming it on Communists or a “crazed Negro” out to hurt the white population of Alabama, suffering as it was from the awful racism of “crazed Negros” at that time. And if he had no such evidence, why would someone who imagined such an idiotic and malevolent conspiracy and saw fit to try and influence public policy light of it, ever become an icon of any respectable movement?)
March 17th, 2013 | 6:44 pm
Too bad that in order to repudiate that position Buckle had throw several NR pundits to the racial grievance wolves. That’s why I never much respected Buckley it was clear the whole patrician act was alot more sailing and contrived accent and alot less class and nobility. More arriviste than aristo.
March 17th, 2013 | 7:16 pm
Buckley was opposed to the Civil Rights Act because of the federal government dictating relationships between people — he thought it really wouldn’t work. By the time I was reading NR, he was saying that he had been wrong, that the Civil Rights Act had done far more good than harm. What do you guys want to say? Shame on him for changing his mind after the Act was enacted? Shame on him for worrying about extending federal government power in 1964? He was arguing against people in the Republican Party, like Everett Dirksen, who knew that the party was still the party of Lincoln. The Civil Rights Act would not have passed with out the majority of Republicans in Congress voting for it. Too many Democrats were against it.
Erskin, you really do not understand my position and clearly not Buckley’s either. Actually, you guys prove my point, that folks on the left will say anything, distort anything, to confirm their deeply held prejudices.
March 17th, 2013 | 7:53 pm
I only engage in exchanges with civilized people.
March 17th, 2013 | 8:15 pm
Great thread; better then reruns of DA!
I’m with the pre-equivocating Buckley on the question of the right of association. It just ain’t the gummints bidness.
March 17th, 2013 | 11:36 pm
So for 75 years after the civil war the bloody shirt was waved in the name of both the Lost Cause and the Treasury of Virtue, as Robert Penn Warren put it. So now the bloodied, knocked skull which led to the Civil Rights Act must be bandied about by the likes of Sam Tanenhaus in order to besmirch the likes of Bill Buckley and modern day conservatism.
Tanenhaus has a pretty superficial understanding of Calhoun. He nowhere mentions the “compact” theory of the Union and the “concurrent majority.” No doubt, these ideas were brought up to defend slavery, but they had their origins in Jefferson and Madison’s VA and KY Resolutions–let alone the Hartford Convention (which Calhoun attended).
So Tanenhaus raises the “bloodied skull” of the civil rights movement to taint modern conservatism with racism. Yet what does he say to the various entho-racist minority vetoes he would like to institutionalize in decent political discourse?
Tanenhaus neither understands the history of American politics, nor does he understand the role of minorities in American politics. I think this makes him a racist. His speaking in terms of the common good is too inflected by the defense of his own, viz. silly right minded New York Times intellectuals like himself.
This guy is a racist!
March 18th, 2013 | 12:03 am
I think Buckley designated Tanenhaus as his official biographer. Apparently, the Civil Rights Act wasn’t the only thing Buckley was wrong about.
March 18th, 2013 | 7:26 am
Tanenhaus is writing a biography of WFB for Random House. Official? If official, is it a final act of intellectual fratricide by Buckley’s son, Christopher? Aside from the initial press release, I see this which is an interesting and more honest Q&A with Tanenhaus. Further, I find that WFB’s papers are at Yale at his son’s bequest. But I only know what I read on the screen. Is it usual to seek an unsympathetic official biographer?
March 18th, 2013 | 10:39 am
Well, Tanenhaus wrote a sympathetic biography of Chambers, so, at the time WFB died, he might reasonably have been thought not to be entirely hostile to conservatism. Perhaps he has moved further left since the advent of the current president. There is tremendous pressure on mainstream intellectuals these days to denigrate any existing opposition to the “progressive” project and to claim that the left is the rightful successor of reputable conservative leaders and movements of past generations. Hence, Eisenhower becomes a forerunner of Obama.
March 18th, 2013 | 10:46 am
I took a look at the Q&A with Tanenhaus to which Kate links. Many of the questions are moronic, in the way to be expected of credentialed but close-minded and shallow leftists (e.g., how could a devout Catholic be a Republican?).
March 18th, 2013 | 1:26 pm
[...] Must We Be Racist - Kate Pitrone, First Things [...]
March 18th, 2013 | 1:40 pm
djf, the prejudices of the left, as evidenced both in that Q&A and in the couple of notable comments above, always seem moronic to us. It is the grand disconnect, which is not only incomprehensible but even worse, apparently impossible to repair. Catholics have to be Democrats. Conservatives have to be racist. Any political opposition is the moral equivalent of war. Anyone against abortion must be so for selfish reasons. Who creates these received truths?
March 18th, 2013 | 1:42 pm
Kate: This guy ‘creates these received truths..”
http://cdn.clashdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Screen-Shot-2013-03-18-at-9.45.42-AM.png
March 18th, 2013 | 3:29 pm
Good one, Robert!
March 18th, 2013 | 4:58 pm
Don’t know the story here, but my sense is that WFB Jr. blew it on the civil rights issue in the formative years of NR conservatism.
The 1957 editorial on events in Little Rock was wrong (and disputed in the pages of National Review by Brent Bozell. Russell Kirk’s assessment of segregation – a fancy that it embodied long tradition instead of a set of social practices and legal ordinances put in place between 1877 and 1914 – was wrong. Legislation on ‘public accommodations’ did work better than Goldwater and others anticipated.
What was not wrong was the assessment by Gottfried Dietze and the young Robert Bork that important principles of social and political life were being sacrificed in the enactment of aspects of ‘civil rights law’. What they did not anticipate was the metastatic quality of employment discrimination law and the dispositions which went into it, to the point that impersonal assessment of applicants by large employers is now difficult to impossible and to the point where important actors (e.g. college deans) no longer understand the concept of free association.
Buckley and associates made reference in that 1957 to circumstances when “what the majority wants is socially atavistic”, which proved false with regard to the Little Rock schools system but not with regard to the municipal government of Detroit. Carl Rowan used to deride quondam ‘racial moderates’ on occasion, but
March 18th, 2013 | 9:43 pm
Thanks Carl! I had an epiphany!
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