By Shelby Steele,
from The Wall Street Journal,
3/31/19:
Today minorities suffer from underdevelopment, not racism. And here, at last, is conservatism’s great opportunity.
As many have noted, Donald Trump’s presidency is an insurgency. Mr. Trump himself is the quintessential insurgent, doing battle with a disingenuous and entrenched establishment. This was his appeal over a field of more conventional Republican candidates in 2016. But last year’s midterm elections were disappointing, and Mr. Trump has gone wanting for political clout in the immigration fight. His successes—a booming economy, tax reform, low unemployment, increased oil production, the abandonment of terrible treaties, new and better trade deals—have brought him little goodwill even from his own party.
Today’s leftist cultural hegemony squeezes President Trump—and conservatives generally—into an impossibility: No matter what they achieve, they are always guilty of larger sins. Make the economy grow if you must, but you are still a racist.
But today there is a way for conservatism to overcome its vulnerability. The world has truly reformed since the ’60s. Racism remains a dark impulse in humankind, but America has already delegitimized it. Today minorities suffer from underdevelopment, not racism. And here, at last, is conservatism’s great opportunity.
Conservatism is the perfect antidote to underdevelopment. Its commitment to individual responsibility, education, hard work, personal initiative, traditional family values and free markets is a universal formula for success in a free society.
Coming at the end of 60 years of liberal failure, conservatism is now “the new thing” in many minority communities.
Suppose American conservatism begins to argue for progress as the best way to overcome inequality—not to the exclusion of justice, but simply as America’s guiding light in social reform. Progress is possible, measurable and most of all doable. Rather than fight over “microaggressions” and “triggers,” why not, as Booker T. Washington so beautifully put it, “cast down your bucket where you are”?
To put all this on a dangerously romantic level: Why not go back to that perpetually workable thing, the American dream?
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