Posted on 05/23/2008 4:20:42 PM PDT by mojito
When did "liberal guilt" get such a bad reputation? You hear it all the time now from people who sneeringly dismiss whites who support Obama's candidacy as "guilty liberals." There are, of course, many reasons why whites might support Obama that have nothing to do with race. But what if redeeming our shameful racial past is one factor for some? Why delegitimize sincere excitement that his nomination and potential election would represent a historic civil rights landmark: making an abstract right a reality at last. Instead, their feeling must be disparaged as merely the result of a somehow shameful "liberal guilt."
If you Google "liberal guilt" and "Obama," among the nearly 32,000 hits you get are a syndicated Charles Krauthammer column under the headline "Obama's Speech Plays On Liberal Guilt"; a Mark Steyn post on the National Review Online that describes "a Democrat nominating process that's a self-torturing satire of upscale liberal guilt confusions"; a column by self-styled "crunchy con" Rod Dreher, who suggests the mainstream media coverage of Obama indicates that "liberal guilt will work [on them] like kryptonite." Even liberals make fun of liberal guilt. A couple of years ago, Salon coyly proposed supplementing the Oscars with the Liberal Guilt Awards and awarding political dramas with "Guilties."
Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it's shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime? Not one of us is a slave owner today, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and there are fewer overt racists than before, but if we want to praise America's virtues, we have to concede—and feel guilty about—America's sins, else we praise a false god, a golden calf, a whited sepulcher, a Potemkin village of virtue. (I've run out of metaphors, but you get the picture.)
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
They fool no one but themselves.
Camelot II. Brought to you by the people who gave you "Just An Honest, Straight-Shootin' Senator From Hope, Arkansas." Bookmark it.
I’ve got liberal guilt for all those years we denied women the right to vote. That means I must vote Hillary. On the other hand, I’m feeling kinda guilty about slavery, so that means Obama’s my guy. Wait a minute! Obama is only half black, so that means he only gets 1/2 my guilt vote. Gosh! This voting liberal guilt thing is tough!
I don’t have a shameful racial past.
I refuse to accept the “original sin” of slavery.
Both are only half-black so that makes them still white enough to be acceptable. And once Barry has been nominated, the RATS won't have to even contemplate nominating a black (half or otherwise) for another half century.
That being said, I know the RATS are going to make race the issue if McCain dares to poll better than Obama so I would absolutely love it if McCain would pick somebody like Michael Steele to be his Vice-President.
Obama's Kenyan ancestors were never enslaved, at least by Americans. The only thing Obama has in common with Black Americans is the color of his father's skin. How would electing him redeem anything about America's past sins? If liberals want to redeem their own racism, they can apologize to Clarence Thomas. Until they do that, they can STFU.
Considering that the Democrat Party, historically, has been virtually completely responsible for perpetuating slavery, implementing Jim Crow, birthing the KKK, and largely opposing Civil Rights legislation up to and through the early 1960s, I would say they have a lot to be guilty about.
But that’s no reason to saddle the whole country with a President whose single “qualification” is his blackness.
Personally, I think the Democratic Party should just empty its coffers and pony up reparations, and put their whole shameless history to bed.
What a silly column by an unserious writer.
He pretends to be serious but fails to analyze the most obvious and significant point: “Liberal guilt” is subject to ridicule when it is excessive and/or mis-directed and/or absurdly histrionic.
Sure, it is morally appropriate (and important) to feel guilt or shame when you do something wrong - more important still to do anything within your power to correct or make amends for your mis-behavior.
However, no one living now or in recent generations bore ANY responsiblity for slavery, and no one living now or in recent generations suffered any enslavement (speaking of the USA, since of course there are some Arab/Muslim areas in Africa and the Middle East that HAVE had slavery very recently).
Conservatives get sick of “liberal guilt” because it is a crude bludgeon used to try to force contemporary and future society to bear responsibility for long-ago historical injustices that WE did not commit and are not responsible for. MY family on both sides only came to the USA in recent decades from extremely modest, simple circumstances in countries that had nothing to do with American slavery. Even if I were responsible for my ancestors, and I am NOT, they had nothing to do with it.
Also, the idea of voting for OBAMA as some kind of expiation of liberal guilt, a man who does not descend from anyone who was enslaved in America, who in fact is a child of privelege whose upbringing was quite pampered compared to my own, is absurd. Obama’s life has in every way been quite comfortable and priveleged. Voting for him solely because his genetic father (the reckless philandering sperm donor who abandoned him by age 2) happened to be from Kenya, as a way to salve the guilty conscience of American liberals about American history, is absurdity piled upon absurdity.
Look, if someone thinks he has the best ideas and is the best potential president, those are reasons to vote for him..... but to vote on the basis of his skin color (either for or against) is absurd and foolish.
Guilt is shameful when you make a STUPID decision based on PERCEIVED guilt that you are wallowing in, to atone for a sin that isn’t YOURS and that was atoned for long ago and far away. By others. In the Civil War.
Obsequious pandering, assuaging guilt by voting ‘correctly’ — it is your (the liberals’) religion. It is not true guilt. It is not true atonement. And it makes YOUR problem MINE, buddy. Because if BO is elected President, so that YOU feel better, I will feel worse. And then I will have to work MY feelings out on you liberals. And you will not like it.
Ron Rosebaum
Liberals hate minorities they don’t feel superior to.
There is a good chance that the day after Obama is nominated, when the Republican desert him, his poll numbers will drop between 10 and 20 percent overnight.
However, they will continue on a downward slope, because Democrats just plain don’t like minorities, culminating on election day, when the poll watchers will be shocked, shocked!, that non-black voters will say they have voted for Obama, but will instead have voted for McCain.
The only question now is if they will bother to go to the polls at all.
It isn't guilt. It's a form of appeasement. It's not possible to have genuine guilt for something you did not do. Liberal whites want to appease envious blacks. Not only is appeasement shameful but it doesn't work.
Dear liberal, I didn’t do anything to anyone, I don’t feel guilty for anything I haven’t done. Sane people do not feel guilty over things they have not done. It is the insane, the liberal, the dope, who feels guilt over things out of their control. I suggest you pray to God, through Jesus Christ for wisdom and guidance.
So then what does he do not only about his own white guilt (via his mother, whose ancestors actually did own slaves) but his father's Arab guilt?
This could get pretty complicated. I vote we ditch the whole thing, except for people who actually were slaves or slaveholders.
OK, it’s wrong to vote against Obama just because he’s black. I can buy that.
Then tell me why it’s not equally wrong to vote for him for the same reason? Oh, it must be those outstanding qualifications for the job. /s/
>> voting this way proves I’m really not such a bad person, after all
Nah. “White guilt” is the ultimate liberal wet dream. Nothing more.
If it exists at all (other than in the fever swamps of Ron Rosenberg’s pea-sized brain), it’s only in places like the SanFranCrisco Gay Area, Portland, Seattle, Vermont, New York... places that already will vote obamalama.
It does NOT exist in:
Ohio
Florida
Pennsylvania
Colorado
New Mexico
Virginia (except around DC)
Michigan
Indiana
Kentucky
...and so forth. The swing state voters will laugh and mock this idea of Rosenfairy’s that they ought to feel guilty.
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