White Liberals Are SO Stupid
Funny man and shock jock Howard Stern used to have as a frequent guest Daniel Carver, A Ku Klux Klan member from Georgia whose explicit racism made for some damn funny radio. When people would call-in and take issue with the nonsense coming out of Carver's mouth, Stern's reaction was generally "What do you guys expect? This guy's in the KKK!"
I'm at the same point with white liberals. What can one expect from silly white liberals at this point, so many of who are so obsessed with race that they've become parodies of themselves. Half the criticism I've read concerning the alleged racism of Tea Partiers and grassroots conservatives recently, read like scripts for Saturday Night Live and I have to constantly remind myself that these people are not kidding. And they're not.
This story from Friday's National Post "White & guilty: ‘Whiteness’ workshop helps expose your inner racist," by
Johnathan Kay is a perfect example of this silliness, and though it might be considered a bit extreme even by some liberals, this really is exactly how these folks think. Writes Kay, who attended a class called "Thinking About Whiteness and Doing Anti-Racism":
I felt sympathy for just about everyone in that class. In private conversation, they all seemed like good-hearted, intelligent people. But like communist die-hards confessing their counter-revolutionary thought-crimes at a Soviet workers' council, or devout Catholics on their knees in the confessional, they also seemed utterly consumed by their sin, regarding their pallor as a sort of moral leprosy. I came to see them as Lady Macbeths in reverse — cursing skin with nary a "damn'd spot." Even basic communication with friends and fellow activists, I observed, was a plodding agony of self-censorship, in which every syllable was scrutinized for subconscious racist connotations as it was leaving their mouths.While politically correct campus activists often come across as smug and single-minded, I realized, their intellectual life might more accurately be described as bipolar — combining an ecstatic self-conception as high priestesses who pronounce upon the racist sins of our society, alongside extravagant self-mortification in regard to their own fallen state.
As I watched, I tried to detach myself from this spectacle, and imagine what this unintentionally comic scene — a group of students sitting around, self-consciously egging each other on to be ashamed of their skin colour — would look like to, say, civil rights protesters from a half-century ago. If the instructor and her students ever allowed themselves to laugh, they might have found it funny.
Race—like sex, age, gender and geography—matters. Yet, the older I get the less I think it matters, and I find writing about this immutable fact of life to be extremely boring. I've admired thinkers who thought race was a pretty big deal, and have even been guilty of some of the white guilt nonsense so common amongst liberals, particularly in my teens.
Yet when I find myself addressing the issue of race these days, it is almost always attacking liberals and their skewed perceptions of what is and isn't "racist." Like Daniel Carver, race colors so much of what liberals think about themselves and their fellow Americans—and to such a ridiculous degree—that it's often hard to take them seriously. That so many do take the Left so seriously, I suppose, keeps me employed.
Still, it's hard to deny that the two groups most obsessed with race today are genuine racists ala Daniel Carver—and white liberals. At this point, having a conversation with either group is comedic, at best.
Are Tea Partiers Racist?
Posted by Jack Hunter on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 7:39 AM
Imagine that after many months of watching the evening news, you declared that black people were malicious or sinister based purely on the criminal coverage that constantly flashed across your TV screen. Predictably, you would be called “racist,” and accused of drawing erroneous conclusions based on your own deep-seeded prejudice.
Writes Washington Post columnist Colbert King:
“Today’s tea party adherents are George Wallace legacies… The angry ’50s and ’60s crowds threatened and intimidated; some among them even murdered. That notwithstanding, Americans of goodwill gathered in the White House to witness the signing of landmark civil-rights laws. Schoolhouse doors were blocked, and little children were demeaned. Yet the bigots didn’t get the last word. Justice rolled down like a mighty river, sweeping them aside. They insulted, abused, lied and vandalized. Still, President Obama fulfilled his promise to sign historic health care reform into law by the end of his first term. Those angry faces won’t go away.”
It seems King has drawn his own erroneous conclusions based on his own deep-seeded prejudice about white conservatives — and that’s an understatement.
Anytime grassroots conservatives become politically active, liberals always blame it on “racism.” Over the years, conservative complaints about forced busing, affirmative action and illegal immigration have all elicited such charges, and now, resistance to national healthcare. At least with busing, affirmative action and immigration, liberals could at least feasibly concoct some nonsense about race being a primary motivator for conservative outrage. But healthcare? Really?
Aha, but of course! The president is black! This is the sad, stale and empty premise on which King and other Leftists have rested their case against the Tea Parties. Liberals like King view grassroots conservatives much like some old, white man who concludes that black people “just act like that,” after watching a parade of dark-skinned criminals on the nightly news. In terms of condescension and stereotyping, King’s view is actually far closer to the prejudice prevalent in the ’50s and ’60s than any behavior the Tea Partiers have exhibited. By and large, grassroots conservatives really don’t care that the president is black, even if insulated, elitist liberals can’t fathom middle class whites caring about anything else.
Criticizing liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who pretty much has the same opinion of the Tea Partiers as King, Real Clear Politics’ David Paul Kuhn writes:
“Gratuitous charges of racism are no sideshow. They capture an enduring mistake of modern liberalism… Whites are not upset about healthcare or even policy. Their issue is the browning of America, Rich argued… Disregard centuries of furious debate over the role of government. Disregard the Great Recession, historic economic anxiety, this hyper-partisan era, or the comparable vitriol Bill Clinton knew. Disregard white working class skepticism of liberalism since the Great Society, when liberal policy became less concerned with them. Disregard the average man today who sees rich guys and poor guys getting the big breaks from big government. No, Rich explains, it’s all about whites who want to ‘take our country back’ from a black president.”
Do some Tea Partiers hold up crazy or inflammatory signs? Sure. Are protesters sometimes visibly angry? Of course. Have some emotion-driven conservatives uttered racist language? Perhaps, but for argument’s sake, let’s just say some definitely have. When real people form genuine grassroots movements sometimes they can, and do, get a little out of hand. Almost by definition, this is part of what makes such “grassroots” movements “real” in the sense that the activists involved are not being handled or choreographed from above. Such genuine displays of populism are something the Left has historically encouraged-warts and all-so long as it was minorities or white liberals who were the activists and not conservatives.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Jack Hunter Hosting the Mike Church Show, April 1 and 5
Posted by Jack Hunter on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 4:09 PM
Not an April Fool's joke, I promise. I will be guest hosting the Mike Church Show on Sirius satellite radio Thursday, April 1 and Monday, April 5, from 9 AM to 12 PM EST, live from Charleston (Patriot Channel 144 on Sirius and America Right 166 on XM). Like me, Mike is a libertarian-leaning, traditional conservative and I'm more than glad to fill-in in his absence. Give me a call toll free at 1-866-95-PATRIOT begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-866-95-PATRIOT end_of_the_skype_highlighting and if you don't subscribe to Sirius (I do, for both Mike's show and Howard Stern), you can listen online with their free trial.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Dangerous Rand Paul
Posted by Jack Hunter on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:42 AM
Rand Paul’s race for US Senate in Kentucky has quickly come to exemplify everything that is right — and wrong — with the mainstream conservative movement. Let’s start with what’s right: as the son of the outspoken, anti-establishment Republican Congressman Ron Paul, eye surgeon Rand Paul entered a daunting GOP senate race promising to shake things up on Capitol Hill, quickly won the support of grassroots conservatives with his earnest limited government message, and now has a substantial lead in the polls over his more established opponent, Trey Grayson.
Now for what’s wrong with the mainstream conservative movement — or as former Vice President Dick Cheney announced earlier this month: “I’m a lifelong conservative, and I can tell the real thing when I see it. I have looked at the records of both candidates in the race, and it is clear to me that Trey Grayson is right on the issues that matter.”
Cheney is a Bush Republican and as such, it might be first worth noting what issues don’t matter to him — exorbitant government spending, TARP bailouts, amnesty for illegal aliens, massive entitlement expansions of Medicare and increasing federal control of public education through programs like No Child Left Behind. Bush grew government more than any president since Lyndon Johnson, doubling the national debt, something Cheney famously dismissed by saying “deficits don’t matter.” Trey Grayson, whom Cheney considers the “real thing,” is a former Democrat who voted for and supported Bill Clinton in 1992, and though his former party affiliation has been of some concern to Republican voters in Kentucky, it doesn’t seem to faze Cheney, who still insists Grayson is right on the “issues that matter.” What the former vice president neglects to mention is that for “conservatives” of his stripe only one issue matters.
Reported The Politico earlier this month: “a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul. ‘On foreign policy, [global war on terror], Gitmo, Afghanistan, Rand Paul is NOT one of us … It is our hope that you can help us get the word out about Rand Paul’s troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.’ ”
What are Paul’s “troubling” and “dangerous” views on foreign policy? Like Republican Congressman Walter Jones; GOP Senator Tom Coburn; the late editor of National Review, William F. Buckley; and a majority of Americans, Paul regrets the U.S.’s decision to invade Iraq. Like conservative pundits Pat Buchanan and the late Robert Novak, Paul says he would have opposed going into Iraq in 2003. Like John McCain, Paul has concerns about Gitmo, but unlike his father Ron, son Rand does not believe its prisoners should be tried in civilian courts. Like conservative columnist George Will, Paul has serious reservations about President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Like Dwight Eisenhower, Paul fears government waste, particularly as it relates to what Ike called the “military-industrial complex.” Paul also believes all wars should be declared by Congress, that the most important task of the federal government is national security and that defense should be the largest part of the national budget-albeit a much smaller national budget.
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