[MD] Steele meets Pirsig on common ground

[craigerb at comcast.net]

Platt,
Great quotes.  I'll take them with me the next time I go to Europe.
Craig

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Platt Holden" <pholden at davtv.com> 

> Hi All, 
> 
> In a WSJ editorial recently, Shelby Steele, author of "White Guilt," 
> wrote the following: 
> 
> "Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by 
> the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the 
> imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that 
> America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The 
> Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization 
> campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American 
> in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy 
> and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as 
> President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers 
> of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula 
> is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. 
> Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more 
> appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or 
> effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past." 
> 
> The description, "requires no sacrifice or effort" parallels Pirsig's 
> condemnation of Rigel like morality: 
> 
> "There are so many kinds of problem people like Rigel around, he 
> thought, but the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost- 
> free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any 
> expense to themselves." 
> 
> Regards, 
> Platt 
> 
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