Chalcedon Blog

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh, the self-proclaimed "Truth Detector," fell over himself in near worship of the "intellectual power" of Shelby Steele after reading Steele's Opinion Journal piece "White Guilt and the Western Past: Why is America so delicate with the enemy":

"He's exactly right, folks. It's a brilliant, brilliant piece. He has nailed it....here are many facets and characteristics, but I've always told people that at the foundation of it is guilt, guilt over so many things. I just never had the intellectual power to express it as powerfully here as Shelby Steele has."

Wow. It's not often that you'll ever hear Limbaugh consider another's intellect as greater than his own. But, just what exactly did Shelby Steele "nail" so precisely? He argued that the alleged anti-Americanism of both the European and American Left are the result of an ambiguous "white guilt" -- that America is reluctant to exercise its full military force upon enemy nations because it fears the stigma left behind by historic white imperialism. As a result of this guilt, Steele declares that American posturing in modern war is now confined by minimalism and restraint:

There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II. For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight....Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

Steele decries this present restraint of American power as the sole evidence of the "world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty." This white supremacy, according to Steele, had once "organized the entire world," but was now "a cloud over white skin."

I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

They struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with. When they behave in ways that invoke the memory of those sins, they must labor to prove that they have not relapsed into their group's former sinfulness. So when America--the greatest embodiment of Western power--goes to war in Third World Iraq, it must also labor to dissociate that action from the great Western sin of imperialism. Thus, in Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past--two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation.

Steele's article is one of the worst examples of neoconservative propaganda I've read in some time. This "straw man" he props up hides such obvious and gross assumptions that I'm astonished the illustrious Limbaugh was so thunderstruck. Actually, I do know why. Limbaugh is a pill-popping fraud that along with Hannity, O'Reilly, and Savage makes himself grand by pontificating upon his bully pulpit. Logic is absent in such non-objective entertainment enterprises.

What Shelby Steele portrays as "white guilt" is actually disgust and outrage by a thinking U.S. population that is fully aware our present wars are based upon questionable justifications. There is no shame because of past imperialism -- there is resistance to present imperialism. Steele argues sophomorically that America's most important objective in the Iraqi war is legitimacy:

In fact, legitimacy may be the more important goal. If a military victory makes us look like an imperialist nation bent on occupying and raping the resources of a poor brown nation, then victory would mean less because it would have no legitimacy.

God forbid our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq is ever granted legitimacy! We did invade Iraq on false pretenses. We did secure their resources. And, we are currently occupying the country while building more than a dozen permanent military bases, and constructing our largest embassy to date (6,000 employees). What legitimate cause is Steele referring to? And, how can this be deemed legitimate in terms of the one missing item from his entire diatribe -- the Constitution.

No state shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement of Compact with Another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. (Article I, Section 10, U.S. Constitution)

The War in Iraq is completely illegitimate despite Steele's covering of the facts. There was no imminent danger, nor were we invaded. This war is unconstitutional, and since it was established upon false premises it smacks of blatant neo-imperialism of the grossest kind. In this instance, Steele goes even further by suggesting the present argument of "spreading democracy" is merely compounding evidence of atoning for our white guilt:

Because dissociation from the racist and imperialist stigma is so tied to legitimacy in this age of white guilt, America's act of going to war can have legitimacy only if it seems to be an act of social work--something that uplifts and transforms the poor brown nation (thus dissociating us from the white exploitations of old). So our war effort in Iraq is shrouded in a new language of social work in which democracy is cast as an instrument of social transformation bringing new institutions, new relations between men and women, new ideas of individual autonomy, new and more open forms of education, new ways of overcoming poverty--war as the Great Society.

This is a ridiculous notion. The Bush administration's incessant propaganda for spreading democracy in Iraq is not intended to cover our previous imperialistic sins. It's intended to justify our present imperialism. The original suggestion was that Iraq had clear ties to Al Qaeda -- for this reason millions of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9-11 attacks. We then witnessed Colin Powell before the U.N. displaying satellite photos of mobile weapons labs that turned out to be ice cream trucks! Now, the reasoning is the overturning of a dictator and the establishment of democracy as a means to establishing American security. None of these "reasons" for war were ever intended to cover for our past sins. They were justifications for invasion. But, for Steele, U.S. invasion of a sovereign nation is routine:

This does not mean that President Bush is insincere in his desire to bring democracy to Iraq, nor is it to say that democracy won't ultimately be socially transformative in Iraq. It's just that today the United States cannot go to war in the Third World simply to defeat a dangerous enemy.

This last sentence should cause each one of us great alarm. It is also a blatant contradiction. How can a Third World country EVER be a dangerous enemy or imminent threat to the United States? By definition, a Third World country can't manage it's own resources let alone threaten a world super power thousands of miles away, and protected by two oceans.

In addition, how can Iraq be labeled a "dangerous enemy" since Saddam's regime was toppled within such a short period of time? If it takes me only two jabs and an upper-cut to knock you out, you were hardly a worthy opponent. We should have never been in the ring together.

Steele belabors this point by suggesting that terms like "power" and "victory" are being shunned because anti-war advocates have repositioned them as imperialistic:

Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today's atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so.

Steele seems astonished that anyone would deem victory by the West against a Third World country as oppressive. In terms of nations, is there another example of oppression? Again, the key descriptive Steele uses here is "Third World." This sense of injustice is displayed daily on playgrounds as children respond to bullying with the familiar refrain, "pick on somebody your own size!"

If this isn’t enough, Steele has the audacity to write, "Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism." How does victory over a secular Arab state equate to defeating "Islamic extremism?" Steele is simply disingenuous to suggest the invasion of Iraq related in any way to Islamic extremism. Besides Saddam, no other Arab political leader could boast of an equal track record of suppressing Islamic extremism or terrorism. Not even Israel could control such violent fundamentalism within its borders as the Butcher of Baghdad.

The War in Iraq has nothing to do with Islam, and has nothing to do with white guilt. The war is not an American effort. It is the pursuit of a select cabal of industrial, military, political, and financial elites with the academic assistance of Jewish, neo-fascist, Straussian intellectuals at the Project for the New American Century. Resistance to this wicked effort should not be slandered as a desire for atonement on the part of whites. Steele is simply ignorant of white concerns:

Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant.

The issue here is not white supremacy, but the acknowledgment, celebration, and preservation of the white population and its corresponding culture. This is not "morally repugnant" to whites as Steele suggests. Nor is moral repugnance the reason that no "serious advocates" are making their voices heard. Whites are restrained more so by the aggressions of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center -- not the guilt regarding their own culture. Granted, there are some who may bear a surface guilt, but it is only the result of social intimidation and racial conditioning.

Mr. Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently published the book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Don't let these credentials fool you. Steele is a propagandist. To label anti-war advocates as suffering from white guilt is no different than the administration's slanderous claim that its political opponents are aiding terrorists. Arguments like these remind one of Goering and Goebbels, not Thomas Jefferson. By such an elaborate endorsement Rush Limbaugh has secured his place among the ranks of America's domestic opponents. They are dazzled by the neoconservative rhetoric that beclouds clear thinking about American foreign policy. They are driving our Constitutional Republic into a dystopic, military state ruled by Straussian philosopher-kings.