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Sunday, December 15, 2002
I actually enjoyed most of a Jonah Goldberg column. Of course, that can't mean that I've changed, so it must mean that he's changed, at least somewhat. His nearly-cogent column argues that conservatives aren't all racists just because Trent Lott is. Correct. He then rightly notes that "southern conservatives...have some serious baggage."
He then goes on to compare politicians' more popular positions with their less-popular ones: Fulbright down on Vietnam, up on segregation; Wilson anti-Semite and racist, moralist on foreign policy. But first he lists Thurmond: "Strom Thurmond was for a strong national defense in 1948. Does that mean it's racist to be for a strong national defense?"
No, but it does mean you had to be racist to support Thurmond in '48, because his number one issue was segregation. He might have had dozens of policy proposals that were agreeable -- but he wasn't really running on them, they were just rounding out the slate.
Take Clinton: he didn't fully integrate the military to gays and lesbians, but that wasn't his main issue; the economy was.
Bush: the war on terrorism may or may not be going well, but he ran on missile defense.
But choosing one position over the other is precisely what Lott's rhetoric is claiming to do: Thurmond on national defense, not segregation; Jerfferson Davis on states' rights, not slavery. Why can't he just say that Bush supports states' rights, he's the Republican president, and have that be the end? It is precisely because one chooses one's associations that one can be held responsible for them. It's obvious to Lott -- as it is to those to whom he's pandering with these comments -- that Jefferson Davis stands for something more than states's rights as the leader fo the Confederacy. It's unspoken for Lott, but more verbal for Southern Partisan Magazine and its supporters. That nod-nod, wink-wink, we-all-know-what-I'm-really-talking-about pandering to racists makes him a questionable figure because he respects their language and their ideas and never takes them to tasks for the parts that he should find objectionable. His associations are problematic, and others' are, too -- see John Ashcroft. And we should seriously question the conduct of senators in response to this scandal...why weren't Dems more outspoken instead of reining in their comments to gain political capital?
I made a post a few days ago talking about how much baggage boomers bring into the present day. I don't doubt for a second that a kid my age can be conservative and not racist -- at the same time, I've known dozens who are -- but I really do question that about people older. You're talking about people who tacitly accepted segregation, on both aisles, in both camps, all over the country. What an extreme minority it was that actually did something.
So, the problem of association with segregationists and racists is seen as inevitable -- indeed, Goldberg, takes this to the extension in which the whole world is racist. But that is not a logical extension. We can differentiate between those who make racist pandering their priority and those who don't. We can differentiate between those who really hate everything that segregation represented and those who don't. The problem is not that we make that indictment too broad, it is that we make it too narrow, singling out men like Trent Lott when there are likely dozens of Senators who, by the same standards, must go as well.
Steven I. Weiss 1:39:00 AM
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