Posted by David Bernstein:
Why Conservatives Can't Win With Minorities:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_15-2009_03_21.shtml#1237179868
[1]A provocative column by Shelby Steele. Here's a taste, but read the
whole thing:
When redemption became a term of power, "redemptive liberalism" was
born -- a new activist liberalism that gave itself a "redemptive"
profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism's
classic focus on individual freedom. In the '60s there was no time
to allow individual freedom to render up the social good.
Redemptive liberalism would proactively engineer the good. Name a
good like "integration," and then engineer it into being through a
draconian regimen of school busing. If the busing did profound
damage to public education in America, it gave liberals the right
to say, "At least we did something!" In other words, we are
activists against America's old sin of segregation. Activism is
moral authority in redemptive liberalism....
And here is conservatism's great problem with minorities. In an era
when even failed moral activism is redemptive -- and thus a source
of moral authority and power -- conservatism stands flat-footed
with only discipline to offer. It has only an invisible hand to
compete with the activism of the left. So conservatism has no way
to show itself redeemed of America's bigoted past, no way like the
Great Society to engineer a grand display of its innocence, and no
way to show deference to minorities for the oppression they
endured. Thus it seems to be in league with that oppression.
References
1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123716282469235861.html
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