When I encounter a brilliant mind, a brilliant insight into the social forces acting on my/our lives, I am compelled to let the good people around me know about it.
That mind is Shelby Steele’s. He is at the Hoover Institution, as he should be. The book is Shame; How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country.
Steele repeats the litany of the 1960’s. The American recognition of our past civil rights failings; the emergence of the hippy generations' attack on our hypocrisy and the sense of American failure. The tumultuous era included the killing of Jack Kennedy, his brother, M.L.King Jr, urban riots and the emergence of us hippies. He points to the environmental awakening about our pollution guilt. The new feminist anger and explosive sexual freedom with a response that later included gays coming out of the closet. The full scale rejection of America’s global military role with massive weekly marches.
Steele sees it as an era of historic rejection of the greatness of America.
That view is still loudly broadcast by the Left as anti-Americanism; total disdain for America as the world’s great exceptional nation. Everything about American greatness is rejected. We have a president who proclaims America's guilt. The core university curriculum is called ‘Old White Men’, the society of commerce and industry is derided as White privilege.
The Left sees redemption in electing a half black man who hates America, blames all ills on the evils of American history and racism. Endless blaming of racism. Perpetual denial of the great edifice of freedom in America by attacking it with a phony construction of women’s studies, gender studies, black studies and small group victimization cohorts.
The Left is filled with shame about the American past and the ‘white guilt’ has brought us to this polarized precipice.
Steele doesn’t take us any further. That is where we stand today.