Barnes: whites must not oppose Obama, but defer to his moral authority
(Note: in a
follow-up entry, a reader challenges my interpretation of Fred Barnes, and I reply.)
American Cassandra writes:
It is, of course, not news that Fred Barnes is a useless hack, and I probably shouldn’t have been at all surprised by this quote, but I still was when I happened upon it:
For the foreseeable future, attacking Obama will be counterproductive for Republicans. He’s both enormously popular and the bearer of moral authority as the first African-American president. So the idea is for Republicans to make Obama an ally by using his words, from the inaugural address and speeches and interviews, against Democrats and their initiatives in Congress.
Wow: he actually said it straight out: Republicans cannot attack a black president because as a black man, he has moral authority over white Republicans.
Barnes is very much like those “conservatives” who say that it’s really the liberals who are out of touch with Martin Luther King’s vision. How did the canonization of MLK work out for conservatism, exactly?
LA replies:
So here is a “conservative” saying that a black has superior moral authority, simply by virtue of his nonwhiteness, and that whites are morally inferior, simply by virtue of their whiteness. Barnes has gone beyond Horowitz and Noonan’s celebration of race-conscious nonwhites. In principle, his position is indistinguishable from Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology, which says that whites embody the principle of evil and blacks embody the principle of good.
You mention Martin Luther King, but the significance of Barnes’s remark is that the neocons are beyond that now. I think we may now state that the sacred MLK/neocon credo, “Judge men not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” has been murdered by its own votaries and replaced by, “Judge men as morally superior by the color of their black skin, and as morally inferior by the color of their white skin.” To which the former votaries add: “That stuff about race-blindness that we fed to white America for the last 45 years was just a ploy to fool whites into letting nonwhites take over. Now that it’s served its purpose, we’re dropping it. The real America, the nonwhite America, the America where morally tainted whites bow down to morally superior nonwhites, begins now.”
- end of initial entry -
American Cassandra writes:
Wow—that’s an impressive summation of what’s going on. This really does seem to be more than just isolated “conservative” reaction to Obama’s election. You could almost hold a contest.
No wonder we feel so demoralized at Obama’s election. It really seems, symbolically, to be the passing of the guard, and now liberals/neoconservatives feel that it is safe to be open about their views, because they think it is too late for us to do anything about it. (For instance, the article in the Atlantic called the End of White America and the earlier article in a paper I forget which said that Obama’s election would have been impossible without the 1965 Immigration Act). Even worse, for those of us who have been hoping for an awakening, a large majority of the American people seem to be more entranced than ever.
But that is why I appreciate your blog so much, because you never despair. That aspect of your blog is just as important to me as the quality of the writing and the analysis.
And I still hope that the awakening will come, it will just take time. It’s only been a little more than a week, after all.
Richard W. writes:
Your excellent insights into the new moral order were made explicit at the inauguration in the closing prayer.
While this was extremely offensive to the few thinking people* out there, it has become a popular theme with Obama followers. It is available on t-shirts, coffee cups, posters and has many web links celebrating it.
A few people noticed, and objected to, the closing lines of the prayer which were delivered in rhyming hip-hop verse. Sadly, many other parts of the prayers were equally or even more objectionable, but were for the most part unremarked on.
The common thread joining together the different themes in the prayer was the exact sense of moral superiority you note in your article.
I have never seen the inauguration turned into yet another campaign stop, much less a chance to bash the vacating occupant of the White House. It is surely unprecedented, and completely tasteless, for the closing prayer to stoop to Maureen Dowd style invective. But it did.
Among other things he says:
“For we know that, Lord, you’re able and you’re willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.”
The clearly stated belief here is that Obama is a Moses-like figure who has delivered America from the evil exploitation of the poor by former President G.W. Bush. This is an amazingly rude comment to make, especially in a forum where the person being accused is, by tradition, expected to stand quietly in dignified observance.
No doubt to a 20 year veteran of the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright this didn’t even strike an odd note to Obama. [LA replies: That’s it.]
And of course the very final thought of the entire ceremony was a plea to God himself that soon: “white will embrace what is right.” Up until now, whites have, in the eyes of Obama and his followers, embraced what is wrong. We are a fallen people, incapable of righting ourselves without the help of a morally superior black leader. Obama is that man. He knows it, all blacks know it, implicitly, and “right thinking” whites know it.
Watching all this I fear that both you and your critics will be proved right. That is: Obama will provide the object that helps Republicans focus on what is really important, and revive the Republicans as a useful opposition. But also: the nation will suffer greatly under the new president, who has a strange view of morality that is twisted by his immersion in Black Liberation Theology, now apparently our national religion.
(* I hesitate to use the term ‘conservative’ any longer for fear of being lumped in as some sort of combination Rush Limbaugh / Bill Kristol / Peggy Noonan follower.)
Paul Gottfried writes:
Your point is well taken. Unfortunately Fred Barnes is not alone in the neocon camp when he makes adulatory statements about the black president on the basis of his father’s race. Krauthammer, as I show in two pieces posted last week on takimag, has gone crazy ascribing epiphanic qualities to King and Obama as the “fulfilment of our history as a nation.”
David writes:
I just saw your post about how Fred Barnes says that white people must not oppose Obama. Barnes has been wrong in his political predictions for as long as I remember. One example is predicting a Democratic presidential victory in early 1988. In the 1992 primary season, he predicted that Bill Clinton could not win if nominated. I don’t have to tell you about his Bush-worship. If I were an Obama supporter, I would be worried. If Fred Barnes says you are going great, you are in trouble.
LA replies:
I think it would be generous to call Barnes a mediocrity. He never has anything insightful or worthwhile to say. And what about that “Beltway Boys” show he does with Morton Kondrake? These fellows aren’t that old chronologically, but they look and sound like two broken-down geezers—their faces squinty, their voices strained, their demeanor agitated and restless.
Fox: the station of geezers and blond bimbos.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 30, 2009 02:41 PM | Send