The Fake Thesis, etc.

The background to this post is here.  The comment thread begins a discussion about "redistributive justice" and what this means about Barack Obama's attitude towards capitalism.  I think it has less to do with capitalism, per se, than race relations and justice.  Here are my thoughts:

I heard Rush reading from the supposed thesis yesterday, and listened long enough to hear that he got it from Michael Ledeen.  Instinctively,  I turned off the radio muttering, "This is stupid."  In the nanosecond it took for me to come to that conclusion, I think I processed various ideas like, "Sounds abysmally childish" and "He was an International Studies major: why would his thesis be about the Constitution?" and "Sounds like that stupid NPR interview."    Your point, CK, is well-taken.

Nevertheless, the comment thread on CK's post led me to jot a few thoughts.  Here goes:

Can we have a point of clarification?

Is "redistributive justice" code for reparations?

I'll answer my own question: yes.

For decades now, racial justice has been defined in terms of structural changes external to black society itself, with the quick fixes of affirmative action and reparations (the payback that dare not speak its name) being the principal mechanisms. But in order for true repair to take place, internal change must happen. It's a fact, however, that the middle-class values that would lead blacks out of the wilderness are widely disparaged by popular black culture and by the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, who are, ironically, the examples ne plus ultra of the dogged embrace of those values.

In his autobiography, DOMF, BO discusses the dynamic within the black community and disparages the middle class blacks for looking down on and being judgmental of others in the community who engaged in antisocial behavior. For him, the good Marxist, solidarity is the thing, the way the group is going to get "theirs."  His path to success depended on two things: his own self-created solid family life and work ethic (you don't have to agree with the work to know that he has discipline and talent) and the reinforcement of the destructive and dysfunctional status quo for the vast majority of his community. It was in his own best interests as a politician to not truly address the degeneracy of the crime-ridden poor neighborhoods but to maintain that external factors, especially racism, were the first causes and beyond the control of the group.

Michelle, for her part, straddles the divide between personal conduct and political ideology with a brazen panache that is, IMO, the product of blissfuly ignorant hypocrisy .  On the one had, she wants everyone to eat vegetables and she makes her kids go to sleep at 8:00 p.m.  On the other hand, she childishly explains the economic pie as something that most people are happy to have a tiny sliver of, and her husband is going to take from those greedy people who want too much and give to those who need just a tiny bit more to be content.  Meanwhile, she's against vouchers and her kids go to Sidwell Friends where they spend an hour on Wednesdays thinking about ways to "give back."

A part of the destructive pathology of the black community is that they are conditioned to look for a messiah, someone who will facilitate reparations in whatever form.  This is the self-reinforcing mechanism for the promulgation of adept, shallow, charismatic leaders who bubble up from that community who never really help.  It's not in their interest.

Comments

[aelfheld]

While I may give credit to Pres. Kindle and the First Tricoteuse for discipline and talent (misguided though it be), I see their situation more as a skillful adaptation of the camouflage of middle-class values and the successful gaming of the racial dispensations prevalent in academia and politics.

BTW, I believe it is Sidwell Friends.

[bbmoe]

Ack. I keep doing that. There's a prominent family here and I've made this mistake a jillion times already.