Keyes on color/re Obama

A friend passed me the response of Alan Keyes, to whom he had made an inquiry about the response of black Americans to Barack Obama’s election. I supported Keyes twice as a Republican. I remember in Keyes’ campaign in 1996 a few reports had broken out about Keyes’ handling of campaign personnel. Now in terms of trustworthy testimony and documentation, such reports were no more reliable than the detestable smears seen recently about Sarah Palin, now identified as falsehoods. Those Palin reports were accounted to “anonymous” sources within the McCain campaign, though it has been speculated that another potential 2012 Republican candidate might have motivation to drop such slander in the Palin pool. I can tell you that Mike Huckabee would not stoop to such a thing.

Anyway, at the time I said that you can be perceived as inflexible when you almost always think you are the smartest person in the conversation. In Keyes’ case, people might respond negatively because he almost always actually is the smartest person in the conversation. I sorely regret that Keyes was repeatedly spurned by a feckless Republican Party even while he maintained his fidelity to the party (actually its founding ideals) after I had abandoned the party in exasperation, finally in his 2004 campaign for the US Senate from Illinois against Barak Obama, where the Illinois Republican Party establishment that had invited Keyes abandoned him for the tall grass after media labeled him extreme. This year, The Republican Party nominated a demonstrable Republican apostate in John McCain, who has opposed the majority of the party any number of times, often holding out his “independence” as a virtue. Ironically this year it was Keyes who finally resigned the party while I returned after an 8-year absence. I supported McCain not because of his consistency (I have often called him “philosophically incoherent”), but because he has been historically strong where government has been weak all of my lifetime, even in The Republican Party after it gained complete control 8 years ago: on outrageous spending and government expansion.

I foresaw this failure when Bush was first nominated. I live in Texas, where he was governor. When Bush was elected in 2000 I said “Leviathan gets a night manager.” It surely did. Bush and a Republican Congress grew government at the steepest rate since Lyndon Johnson and The Great Society in the 60’s. Did this make him liked better by Democrats? Of course not: to them he’s evil. Some even called him an ideological extremist; a laughable proposition. Notwithstanding McCain’s infidelities, I also saw him as a decent and noble man. He was also pro-life. I questioned the stoutness and clarity of Bush’s weakly confessed pro-life confession: “I prefer life.” That suspicion was affirmed when, with a Republican Congress, two judges were put on the court that defended a partial-birth abortion ban as not violating a legitimate Roe v. Wade.

After his long experience of Republican abuse, Keyes employed his rhetorical skill to become increasingly shrill, even losing the nomination of The Constitution Party to Chuck Baldwin who is no mental match for Keyes. That’s not a knock against Baldwin as much as an acknowledgment of Keyes’ unique facility. Keyes finally accepted the nomination of the newly organized America’s Independent Party. I haven’t looked, but he surely finished 6th or worse with a vote in the tens or low 1000 thousands. One of my favorite talk show hosts, Michael Medved throws Keyes in with the rest of the third-party clowns, mocking his fervent style of speech. It’s very sad. Keyes fervency is genuine. So is the perplexity with which the general public meets it. In retrospect, I think even his high-flying rhetoric shot over the heads of the great majority of the public. But if The Republican Party had seized on the opportunity of a brilliant and articulate black man, Keyes probably would have maintained his feet and the first black president might have been a Republican 8 or 12 years ago., in which case, this past week’s potential disaster for the unborn, the economy and defense of America and its values might have been averted. Keyes wouldn’t have needed 96% of the black vote. 15 or 200% would probably have been adequate and just as decisive. Would Jesse Jackson have cried, then?

Keyes’ response is below.


Barak Obama is black like me only in the sense that we both have dark skin- I.e., a purely physical characteristic. To expect me to identify with him on that basis would require that I validate the concept of race ( i.e., grouping people based on physical characteristics). I have written and said over the years that I reject this concept, and that the only way to overcome racism is to reject the concept of race.

Because human beings are not stones, but persons, our communities are not the result of merely physical characteristics. The very idea of race in this sense is a modern lie tied to the dogma of evolution. I believe that human communities reflect the moral nature of our humanity. They are formed therefore by adherence to common moral principles, as that adherence is developed and reflected in the course of shared historical experience. Understood in this proper sense, Obama and I are not part of the same ethnic group. My heritage includes the experience of slavery, the moral sensibility to injustice and to the importance of respecting the premises of human dignity and freedom. Obama looks back to a heritage that probably includes forbears who were part of the Afro-Islamic groups of Africans who were active in the slave trade. By itself that might be of only superficial importance, but his views on the fundamental moral issues of the day (like the taking of innocent human life) mean that he rejects the premise of God-given moral equality for all men that I hold to be the true soul of the black American identity. The notion that I should take special pride in the election of such a man simply because of his skin color implies that I put the false and humanly contrived category of race above the category of common moral principle that is the true basis for human community. I do not and never will.

The tragic irony is that people whose feelings and reactions are shaped by racial solidarity implicitly validate the concepts that were the basis for racist views and discrimination. They implicitly reject the hope that Martin Luther King expressed that someday people would be judged for the content of their character not the color of their skins. As they do so, they destroy the moral substance that is the true and righteous legacy of the black American heritage in order to revel in the triumph of the very racism that was used to justify the enslavement of my ancestors. This is a desperately sad self-contradiction. I will be no part of it.

This quiet validation of the premise of racism is far from being a good thing . It betrays the suffering and nobility of all those black Americans who fought for justice not only for themselves, but for all, by appealing to the truth of the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence. This betrayal tips the scales of history back in the direction of regimes based on inequality, elitism and oppressive abuses of power.

I have by the way made these points many times, starting with the Senate race in Illinois.

Godspeed,
Alan

FOUAD AJAMI - Obama and the Politics of Crowds/Turnout and Competition on Tuesday

I’m still working on filling out my top (so far 14) reasons why an Obama presidency, particularly in conjunction with a Democrat Congress would do grave and likely permanent damage to America. I need to hurry with only a few days left. But for now I should post this:

Fouad Ajami is an Arab American who sees a familiar phenomenon in the crowds that gather (and the vicarious hordes of media spectators) to revel it the Obama redeemerhood, with the multitudes of Arabs who have persistently vested their hopes in Arab saviors posing but never delivering. I encourage you to look at Hungarian-born Jew Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power” to which Ajami refers in this article. Many have recalled Hitler’s mesmerization of the WWI-broken German public. A few days ago, I heard a European journalist who observed the media distortion and public enthrall in America that seemed even to exceed what was common to the establishment of European social democracies. Others have referred to Obama’s presentation of a Rorschack Test. Ajami calls him a “blank slate” that “devotees can project onto him what they wish.”

Actually, I expect his article was written a few days ago when pessimism about averting an Obama election was rife. Today, only a few polls do not reflect a tightening of the race. And frankly, I wonder if the typical Republican showing which substantially outpaces the polls, might not be even greater this year. Many conservatives have said that journalism died this year, with traditional media not merely favoring but fairly fawning and swooning over Barack Obama. It may also turnout that the art of polling will be uncommonly discredited this year. The world is changing. Many no longer have time to trifle with telephone or even exit polls, anymore. They don’t have time and they trust pollsters and media less. I expect it will be close and that one side or both will challenge the results. Republicans will suspect (not without cause, I think) voter fraud, especially in Ohio and Missouri, particularly St. Louis. Democrats will charge voter suppression if Obama loses, in which case the “crowds” will be heartbroken and probably scandalized and infuriated. I hope there would be no violence.

Particularly among African-Americans and as always – will it actually materialize this year? Maybe – the young, turnout for Obama is expected to be intense and high. I expect it will be. But, it better be. I expect a record turnout on both sides. Traditional direct mail campaigns highlight what some fear as the worst elements of the opposition. This is how passions and donations are generated.

For conservatives in terms of turnout, Barack Obama will act as a walking direct mail piece. Had Democrats nominated a relatively moderate Bill Clinton/Mark Warner type candidate (Heck, even Hillary Clinton the heretofore conservative bogey-man…er…woman), they might have fairly waltzed to the presidency. But, no. In a favorably Democrat year, the dogmatic liberals wet themselves and nominated the most liberal member of both The Senate and party history. And, picked another extreme liberal as his running mate.

Upon his nomination, John McCain’s Republican support was dubious and fragmented. Sarah Palin provided some help in that regard, but I think Barack Obama has mostly put that to rest, I’m guessing. Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin may pull a percent or two. But more than demonstrating purity of some sort, most conservatives will want to STOP OBAMA! Republican turnout will be fervent and high. If the surprise is big enough, McCain could not only win, but unexpectedly comfortably.

Ajami’s article was published today in The Wall Street Journal: