The shapeless liberalism that calls itself conservatism

Rod Dreher calls himself a Crunchy con, but it should really be Mushy con. A while back this self-described hard-liner on immigration stated that he personally supported the Dallas Morning News’ designation of illegal aliens as the “Texan of the Year,” meaning essentially that illegal aliens in Texas should be declared en masse to be Americans. And today at Dreher’s Crunchy Con blog, someone named Erin writing under Dreher’s name and Crunchy Con logo (I initially thought the blog entry was by Dreher, until I noticed the name “Erin” in parentheses) reduces the Henry Gates situation to these alternatives:

So, is the Gates case a clear example of racism on the part of police [meaning Dreher thinks that that’s possible], or is it an unfortunate example of the power police officers have to make us identify ourselves to them even if we are only behaving “suspiciously,” and haven’t committed or been involved in any criminal activity—which, while deplorable, isn’t really the fault of individual police officers?

Erin is thus open to one of two possible conclusions: that Officer Crowley is a racist who was singling out Gates because Gates is black, OR that a police officer should not have the power to demand the ID of a man he encounters in a home where a reported break-in has occurred. The possibility that Crowley was properly and lawfully doing his job of protecting persons and property from criminals does not seem to occur to Erin.

Furthermore, Gates, of course, was not arrested over any ID issue. He was arrested for his continuing disorderly behavior both inside and then outside his home.

Not only is there nothing remotely identifiable as conservative in the writer’s thought process as applied to the Gates story, but she (I assume Erin is female) doesn’t know the most basic facts of the case.

And the majority of her commenters are equally ignorant and liberal-sounding, automatically accepting the mainstream media’s and Gates’s version of what happened. Such is the “conservative” response to one of the most blatantly false charges of white racism we’ve ever seen.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 23, 2009 02:22 PM | Send