The choice
If Obama becomes president, the country will be thrown into a circumstance unprecedented and unimagined in its experience, being presided over by a nonwhite leftist messiah figure in the White House, with his angry America-hating wife by his side. The very strangeness of the situation, and the need to resist it, will stir conservatives to life. If McCain becomes president, with his dead brain and his reflexive siding with liberals, and with conservatives’ reflexive need to side with the Republican president, conservatives will be dead.
Anguished, traumatized life with Obama; death with McCain. That’s the choice we face.
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Ben W. writes:
You present the “life with Obama” vs. the “life with McCain” conundrum.
With respect to Obama, isn’t the U.S. in the position of a person who has been delaying a visit to the dentist hoping the toothache will go away somehow? The visit to the dentist is inevitable—if not today, then tomorrrow. If not tomorrow, then next week.
At some point in American history the event of a black candidacy for the presidency is inevitable. The black race is and has been a part of American history, American politics and American citizenry. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next year. At some point Americans have to face the inevitable—the prospects of a black candidacy for the presidency and the prospect of a black president.
Too many conservatives feel as if this thing can be delayed—not in my lifetime, somebody else’s. OK so now it’s here. It’s tooth extraction time; we’re in the dentist’s office. It’s happening now, in our lifetime.
I personally do not like the idea of a black man as president because I cannot accept blacks in leadership roles in Western civilization. But since this race of people is a part of the American fabric and no one has legally mandated that they cannot run for office of the presidency, then that day would come. It is now here.
Blacks should either be told that the presidency is not theirs to have directly and point blank or we face the inevitable. At some point in our history, the statistic and cultural odds are that we will have a black presidency. And it is now staring us in the face!
The real opposition to Obama is not that he is empty but that he is black. But no one wants to utter the truth—either the presidency should not be available to blacks, or if it is, then we face at some point a black presidency. Painting Obama as being an empty leftist is a cop-out.
LA replies:
Ben is confronting a salient instance of the basic contradiction of liberalism. Our ideology tells us that race is completely irrelevant to our country’s identity. Our experience tells us that it is not. But our experience, since at least the mid 20th century, has had no explicit rational arguments backing it up. Our unstated resistance to the idea of a black president (or a Hispanic president or a Chinese president or a Muslim president) has been an unprincipled exception to our liberalism; and all unprincipled exceptions eventually get rolled over by principled liberalism. The only way to stop liberalism is to have a principled position against it. That’s what traditionalism is about: it’s about articulating a principled position against liberalism.
In this connection, see my discussion of “Lincoln’s unprincipled exception to racial equality.”
Larry T. writes:
Your article reminded me of a great Woody Allen quote:
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
I’m afraid some dismal days are ahead.
Steven Warshawsky writes:
I do not share your apparently sanguine view that electing an utterly terrible president, Obama, somehow would be good for conservatives or for the country. I cannot think of a single concrete issue on which Obama would be a better president than McCain. Yes, there are some issues on which he probably would not be a worse president. But overall, when one considers the full panoply of issues—taxes and spending, Supreme Court appointments, foreign policy, immigration, “life” issues, and so on, not to mention race relations—an Obama presidency for 4-8 years would be an utter disaster. In my opinion, the election of Obama would represent the final and irreversible transformation of the country from an Anglo-American country into a multicultural country. How would conservatives ever again be able to argue persuasively that we need to preserve our white, European ethnic and cultural heritage, when the country just elected someone who represents the exact opposite? McCain is a deeply flawed candidate, no doubt, but I do not see how his presidency has anywhere near the potential downside as Obama’s. I’d rather muddle through with McCain, then try to pick up the pieces after Obama.
LA replies:
You regard my view as SANGUINE??? Please.
However, I cannot dismiss your substantive point that the election of Obama would so transform the self-understanding of America that it would be very difficult to go back.
Paul Nachman writes:
Is Obama’s blackness the problem?
I don’t think so. It’s his emptiness—or if he’s not actually empty, his expectable hidden agenda.
Note what Jared Taylor says, as reported by Jonathan Tilove in the Newhouse papers:
“It depends on what Barack Obama does,” Taylor replied. “I mean his blackness in and of itself would not necessarily be a handicap. I’d vote for Thomas Sowell (a conservative economist at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, who is black) over just about any white candidate likely to come up.”
I agree wholeheartedly about Sowell—or Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas.
LA replies:
I tend to agree as well. I’ve been looking at this through the particular filter of Obama and his multicultural ideology. I was very much impressed by Alan Keyes in 2000 and sent money to his campaign.
What I’ve just said indicates that I do not have a principled position against a black U.S. president. It’s not an issue I’ve ever thought through, because we’ve never confronted it as a possible reality. If there was an outstanding right-wing black running against a leftist and not pushing any idea of changing American identity, then my first tendency would be to vote for him. However, I’m also open to the argument that electing any nonwhite as president would so change America’s self-understanding, from a basically Anglo-European country with nonwhite minorities, to a full-fledged multiracial multicultural country, that it would become impossible to salvage or recover our traditional national identity. And once you change something that fundamental about a country, that country is doomed, whether in its European form or its successor, multicultural forms.
LA continues:
By the way, I have to point out how remarkable it is that Steven Warshawsky, a strong and determined supporter of Giuliani for president, wrote this:
“How would conservatives ever again be able to argue persuasively that we need to preserve our white, European ethnic and cultural heritage, when the country just elected someone who represents the exact opposite?”
It’s remarkable because we would not expect a Giuliani supporter to be an open defender of white European America. How many such people are there in the U.S., I wonder?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 27, 2008 08:12 AM | Send