The secretary of insiderdom

In an unusually biting column in the New York Post, Richard Lowry analyzes the modus operandi of Mr. Conventional Thinking himself, Colin Powell, as seen most recently in his endorsement of Obama.

—end of initial entry—

Jason writes:

Good evening sir,

One of the things I have enjoyed about View From the Right over the past year is some education about race in this country and how it relates to politics in general. I have not always agreed with all of it, but I always thought it was great information. However it appears that more of it is true now then ever before. I just do not understand how the Powell endorsing Obama has happened.

A few of my black co workers who know how conservative I am asked me what I though about the Powell thing, I said I did not get it. They said it was a “black thing” and I would not understand.

My thoughts were of course not my response because I did not want to get fired. But these two men are so 180 degree polar opposites (or so I thought) I just do not get it.

While in his twenties, Colin Powell was in Vietnam defending his nation, while in his twenties Barak Obama was a community organizer for a voter fraud felon group called ACORN. In his later years Colin Powell became a four star general and head of the joint chiefs of staff. Barak Obama became another slip & fall trial lawyer who used got elected to the State Senate in a gerrymandered district and then won an unopposed US Senate seat.

Is it also a “black thing” to be totally disloyal. I do not mean the country but to the people who helped you get where you are. Reagan gave Powell his fourth star, George HW Bush made him Joint Chief’s chief and GW Bush made him fourth in line to the Presidency by making him Secretary of State. The way he repays the Republican party is to endorse Barak Obama!?

I guess they are right, I do not get the “black thing”. What is do get is a man I used to admire I am not loathe to even mention.

The USA is in serious trouble. Sorry to be a downer.

Jason F.

LA replies:

It’s really not a mystery at all. Since he first came out politically, around 1993-94 when he was considering a presidential run and annnounced he was a Republican, Powell has always been conspicuously NOT of the Republican and conservative camp. There was great interest in Powell at that time, he was a highly popular figure. But then he gave a TV interview, and make it clear he was a liberal on key issues. The Republicans and conservatives immediately lost interest in him, and the presidential talk about him ceased.

When at G.W. Bush’s invitation he gave the keynote address at the 2000 GOP convention, he essentially called the delegates racists for not doing enough for blacks, for not supporting enough affirmative action. They sat there and took it, but nobody liked it. Bush picked him for Secretary of State anyway. There was a special standard for Powell. He could openly express his disdain for the GOP, and still be favored. Then as Secretary he always made very clear his distance from, and his moral and intellectual superiority to, Bush. However, I guess by 2004 his welcome had finally run out, and Bush dropped him for the more loyal Rice.

So there is nothing new or surprising here. Powell’s presence in the Republican party was always marginal.

LA continues:

And on the black thing, both Rice and Powell made a show of being transracial circa 1990, but it wasn’t deep. As the years passed, they both became more and more publicly identified with blackness.

October 22

Duncan H. writes:

Colin Powell fit the bill as a well-behaved, politically moderate black general during the years when domestic integrationist mania dovetailed with the Cold War’s internationalist “Soviet Man” enemy. However, Powell’s race-based rise carries with it considerable costs. The bill: Colin Powell with his laurels stripped away is nothing more than talented foreign mercenary who made his way to high office while still being somewhat alienated from and somewhat hostile to the Traditional Americans he was hired to defend. His rise to high office in the first place is part of the miasma that sickens the Western world in general and the GOP in particular.

While Colin Powell is no Black Panther, his racial concerns bleed through in his autobiography and his musings show he used his powers as an officer to advance black interests throughout his career. Powell focuses on racial issues in nearly every chapter. Of particular concern is just how much Powell built up and supported the Equal Opportunity bureaucracy while contributing very little to prepare the Army for conflicts like they are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The enormous resources spent on racial integration after the 1960s may be one reason why the Army didn’t bother (or couldn’t afford) to develop any well understood counter insurgency doctrine based on the lessons learned in Vietnam. Additionally, Colin Powell’s support for black advancement at any price is likewise troublesome. The racial policies are a long-term drain on the military. When I was in the service, I saw, with striking regularity, black officers who were promoted above their moral and intellectual level.

The defection of Powell at the first sign of a pending full fledged Black Power administration should tell the Republican Party—increasingly the party of the Traditionalist Americans—that they cannot expect full loyalty of non-whites. Now that the Republicans have been visibly betrayed, the consequence of the GOP’s moral illness regarding the reality of racial conflict is manifest. With racial issues casting increasing gloom over the future of America and the West, and all of our foreign policy clashes coming from the Third World in the foreseeable long term, can we be sure that future generals of Third World ancestry will really defend whites?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 21, 2008 09:26 AM | Send