Rice’s anti-Americanism, again, and inevitably

Speaking at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice said:

The United States of America is an extraordinary country. It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that ‘We the people’ is beginning to mean all of us. [Italics added.]

So, until a black is nominated by a major party for president, “We the people” did not mean all Americans. Meaning that the country has been living a lie up to this moment. Only at this moment is it just beginning to cease to be a lie.

As I always say, the more liberal equality progresses, the more worthless the actual America becomes, because under the liberal paradigm, each new advance for nonwhites and women must be seen as an advance over a pre-existing darkness, so that everything in America up to this moment has been darkness—including the previous advances of liberal equality. So that America as a historical country is worthless. If a woman becomes House speaker, we are told that “Only now is America breaking the glass ceiling and realizing its promise.” But then if a black gets nominated as presidential candidate two years later, we’re told that “Only now is ‘We the people’ beginning to mean all of us.” Which cancels out the previous millennial achievement of the woman becoming the House speaker, doesn’t it? And if in the year 2032 an Inuit gets nominated for president, someone will say, “Only now is ‘We the people’ beginning to mean all of us.” Which means that the black being nominated for president back in 2008 did NOT mean that “We the people” was finally beginning to mean all of us. That great happening did not occur until the Inuit got nominated. So the great achievement of the black getting nominated is also canceled out.

Under liberalism, only the ideal of a perfectly equal and inclusive America is good. America the actual country as it has existed up to this moment is no good. It’s found wanting. It’s inadequate. It’s incomplete. It doesn’t come up to our standards. It just doesn’t make it. It has a debt to pay that it hasn’t paid for 232 years. It’s a deadbeat nation. That’s the at least implicitly accepted view today, and not a single conservative other than at this website has ever criticized the vile Condoleezza Rice for using her position as Secretary of State to put down this country and make it seem inadequate in its own eyes.

Finally, what would real inclusion, making America truly true to its ideals, mean? It could only mean an America which equally includes and represents every race and ethnic group on earth. Meaning, it could only be an America that has become co-extensive with all of humanity. Thus the only true realization of America is a single, global,.borderless nation. America, the actual, historical country, is of no value in itself. It is is merely an instrument—a deeply morally compromised instrument—to reach that ideal, and ultimately it must be destroyed in order to reach it.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

Speaking at the State Department, Rice said: “The United States of America is an extraordinary country. It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that “We the people” is beginning to mean all of us.”

She is invoking the Liberal Ideal America, compared to which the real America is a failure. That’s why she uses the weasel words “is beginning.” She’s not saying that we are finally making good on our principles, but that we are just beginning to make good on our principles. And the process will never end, even were a New Guinean cannibal to make it to the White House.

People like Rice are like the waves of the sea, always restless, always churning, always crashing. It seems to me that living in an idealistic society is like living in front of an endless TV commercial. It is to be constantly agitated with the message: “if you would just get this thing there, life would be New! Improved!”

LA replies:

Thanks to Gintas for bringing out a point I didn’t make clearly enough in the initial entry. What she said is even more egregious than I indicated.

According to Rice, prior to this moment, America had not even BEGUN to make good on its principles. Yes, it had “tried” to BEGIN making good on its principles, but it had not succeeded in BEGINNING to make good on its principles. America is so backward, so racist, so dysfunctional, so pathetic, that after two centuries of trying, it had still failed to BEGIN to make good on its principles. That is, until this moment. A black becoming the Democratic nominee is the first event in our history which signals that we are not totally failing to live up to our principles.

Spencer Warren writes:

Terrific post! I noted the use of “beginning” just as you did. She is despicable and no one says boo except you! Further, she exemplifies the abstract view of our country as an idea which most “conservatives” subscribe to. The average “Reagan Democrat” has a truer appreciation of America than these “educated people.” The Reagan Democrat loves America just because it is America. Just as Frenchman should love France, etc etc. Because it is us! The people, the families who came before us, the land, our honored dead, our conquest of a continent, the civilization we have built up.

Kristor writes:

That’s the problem with gnosticism: the perfect drives out the good. The liberal gnostics quite properly hate evil, but are not prepared to admit that, albeit corrupted by evil, the world is basically good. For them, any evil anywhere ruins the whole shooting match. It is the moral stance of the two year old who wants both to keep his cake and eat it. Nothing is ever good enough for them. That is why they have difficulty with any wholehearted allegiance to any concrete entity like America. Their allegiances are to abstract ideas, which by nature cannot ever be perfectly instantiated in the world. They love ideas; they hate the world; and, logically, they would hate any world, because worlds as such are congeries of disparate entities that are forced to reconcile themselves to each other (so as to constitute a world), and thus to compromise on their ideals, and thus to introduce to the world some defect or other in the perfect actualization thereof. This is why there are conservation laws in physics; There is No Free Lunch is the conservation laws of physics at work in society.

None of this is acceptable to the liberal gnostic. Liberal gnostics want all the possible goods, without recognizing that there cannot be such a thing as a world in which all goods are compossible. So, e.g., they want cheap gas, but they don’t want domestic drilling; they want to encourage people to reduce gas consumption and seek alternatives, but they want cheap gas; they want to tax the bejesus out of the oil companies, but they want cheap gas. They want to stop burning coal, but don’t want to build nuclear plants, or site windmills where they might kill some birds. They want the poor to stop being poor, but they don’t want anyone to do well. They want the Grand Canyon to be wheelchair accessible, but they want to reduce public access to the Grand Canyon. They want religious freedom, but they don’t want religion to constrain anything. They want the government to make us all perfectly safe, but they don’t want the government to do anything at all that would interfere with anyone’s freedoms anywhere. The logical endpoint of all this is the destruction of humanity as a blot upon the earth. But that would be evil, too (thus James Taranto’s archetypal liberal headline, “World Ends: Poor Hardest Hit”).

When the liberal gnostics can’t get everything they want, what do they do? They scream at the Daddy or Mommy who is telling them “no.” That’s why the gnostics of the first century were mad at Yahweh. That’s why the liberal gnostics of today hate the mean nasty Republicans, even though Republicans are mostly liberals, too. The difference between the liberal gnostics and the liberal Republicans is that the latter are not gnostics. Liberal Republicans share the liberal goal of perfection: perfect safety, prosperity, health, and so forth, for everyone—but they recognize the limitations of reality. They tend to know something about economics. They are liberals, but they are realists.

The difference between the liberal realist and the traditionalist is that the traditionalist is not interested in perfection in this world; does not expect it; understands that the worship of creaturely perfection is both an exercise in idolatry and simply inapposite to our basic creaturely predicament. To the traditionalist, the limits imposed upon us in this world are instances of Providence, that secure for us the very structure of the world, and, thus, because the world is the platform from which we mount, as rungs to Jacob’s ladder.

The liberal gnostic hates and abhors the limit, and all things subject thereto (thus also himself); the liberal realist recognizes and respects the limit; the traditionalist cherishes and celebrates the limit.

LA replies:

“That’s the problem with gnosticism: the perfect drives out the good. The liberal gnostics quite properly hate evil, but are not prepared to admit that, albeit corrupted by evil, the world is basically good. For them, any evil anywhere ruins the whole shooting match.”

I have no comment on that, I just wanted to quote it because it’s so good.

Also, that’s an ingenious distinction between liberal gnostics and liberal Republicans. Both groups desire perfection, but the former are bent out of shape and furious at the universe at not getting it, while the latter accept the limitations of reality.

LA writes:

Frank at Common Sense Junction has caught the essence of Condoleezza’s remark about Obama. He links this current VFR blog entry, and gives his own entry the title:

Condi’s First Proud Moment?

James P. writes:

According to Condi, nothing America did for blacks before this moment—including the Abolition movement, hundreds of thousands of dead in the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, desegregation, a gazillion dollars in transfer payments to blacks, and affirmative action—represented the beginning of success in making good on its principles. You might think she would at least cite her own experience as a member of the National Security Council staff, as professor and provost of Stanford, and later as Director of the NSC Staff and Secretary of State, as evidence that America had at least begun to live up to its principles. But no, it was all failure until this week.

Condi’s statement should be a warning to all the deluded folk who imagine that Obama’s election will end black claims that America is a racist society and undermine the legitimacy of affirmative action and other special treatment for blacks. If a (supposed) Republican black, who has been given special privileges and advancement well beyond her natural level of competence, is spouting drivel that one would expect to hear from Michelle Obama, do you think black Democrats (who are, after all, the vast majority of blacks) will concede that Obama’s election means that we now live in a colorblind society and that blacks don’t need any further racial preferences? Naturally not. For them as for Condi, Obama’s election can only be the beginning, not the end, of the process of achieving “social justice.”

Carol Iannone writes:

But based on Rice’s reasoning, what will happen if Obama loses? That will mean that the new beginning will have been nipped in the bud, America is still not ready for progress, etc.

LA replies:

Yes, absolutely. One wonders if this has occurred to anyone, not to mention Rice. According to the Republican Rice’s own implied reasoning, the Democrat Obama’s election is a moral imperative.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 04, 2008 02:29 PM | Send