At least one person in Europe isn't going all soft and misty-eyed for Obama. The irascible Melanie Phillips recently penned a fevered attack against the presidential hopeful, warning that Obama "will take an axe to America's defences at the very time when they need to be built up." While The Spectator may not be regular fare across the pond, equally frenzied denunciations of Obama have become common in the last few weeks in the US. Evangelicals beseech their co-religionists to vote for McCain in order to stave off a "far-left agenda [that] would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently." Elected Republicans try to tar and feather Obama as a radical: "With all due respect," Senator George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio, said, "the man is a socialist." In terms that echo the shrillest of these fear-mongers across the pond, Phillips claims an Obama victory would invite apocalypse.
For a hack who imagines the end of western civilization around every corner, Phillips unsurprisingly finds the most self-destructive instincts of the west in him. "Obama stands for the expiation of America's original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor," she writes. "Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west's fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted."
According to Phillips, Obama is the epitome of the guilt-ridden, multicultural self-hater. His inevitable failures as president would not only be those of diplomatic compromise, but of cultural and historical surrender. Overreaching minorities will be coddled within their obliging societies. Terrorists will become objects of politically-correct sympathy. Iraq and Afghanistan will be evacuated. Israel will be sacrificed to the Arabs. Obama will strip the US - and ultimately, the "West" - of the right to assert its identity and strength. Under an Obama presidency, there will be no safe buffer zone - political and psychological - between the west and the rest.
Of course, Phillips has no real interest in looking at Obama seriously. She only wants him to be a woodcut in her shadow world of demons and angels. So it makes sense that her rant impresses other paladins of the clash of civilisations (see the comments below her piece on The Spectator website). It's as willfully deaf to reality as they are.
Never mind that there are perfectly reasonable, moderate arguments for (a) negotiating with Iran, (b) scheduling withdrawal from Iraq, (c) limiting US support for Israel, (d) searching for non-military solutions in Afghanistan, and (e) rethinking the frame and phraseology of the "war on terrorism".
The fact is that Obama is not a foreign policy sans culotte, hungry to uproot the American interest for the sake of global common good. A casual glance at his platform, his team of advisers, and his speeches throughout the campaign (notably the one given before AIPAC, the pro-Israel pressure group) show that Obama is far less ideological in his world view than John McCain, and certainly less so than the Bush administration. His cool temperament is matched by an equally cool appraisal of America's role in the world. Even "defenders of the West", like Phillips, should welcome the arrival to Washington of his style of pragmatism.
But what I find much more worrying about Phillips' piece is how she understands Obama as a symbol. She claims that "Obama stands for the expiation of America's original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor." This is a remarkable inversion.
Obama does indeed "stand for" something larger in the racial history of the United States: its transcendence. His sober and moving speech on race asked all Americans to both recognise and overcome the past; it did not demand "white guilt". Were Obama to reach the White House, he would "stand for" the traditions of openness, possibility and innovation that have, in large part, made America the superpower it is today. Obama's story is a quintessentially American one.
It's telling that Phillips spins this glowing narrative into one of benighted minorities and the "third world" lording it over the feeble west. Perhaps Phillips is stuck in a peculiarly bitter, European understanding of belonging and identity, one that is too narrow to accommodate the American significance of Obama's rise. Surely, the prospect of a black president of clearly moderate political bent need not plunge conservatives like Phillips into such gloom. But it seems for her that the line between miserablism and racism is quite thin. I'd rather she stayed miserable.
Comments
Well said. These people live off their twisted hatred. Your calm rebuke is in what should be the spirit of our age. Here's hoping.
excellent post.
thanks.
I agree, a very good post.
However, I think it is a loss of important distinctions to call MP a conservative. Here is her own - conceptually fascinating - account of her progressivism:
"To reject the barbarisms which are flowing so strongly from this reductive view of progress is not to be illiberal or reactionary. On the contrary, to resist them is to be progressive because a forward-thinking world view is one that genuinely cares for individual human beings."
She believes in progress and calls herself of progress. Her objections to "progressive" education are, at least ostensibly, objections of fact -- it does not work in its own terms, she claims. This is a far cry from Tory conservatism, for which the order given by tradition is good and needs no further justification.
To lose the distinction between the 2 too easily risks applying the wrong rhetoric to each.
Tony
tony, yes and no. i agree that the term "conservative" is probably mis-applied in the strict sense to her. she and others (cohen, hitchens, etc) have come into this from very unconservative backgrounds. but i do think that it's fundamentally conservative to make the "west" your "standpoint" - if you will - to peg your colours to mast of the enlightenment as if it remained some kind of self-evident defining marker in the 21st century. how is that not traditionalist?
well, of course, there is a tradition of progressivism by now - if that's what you mean :)
but i think you use conservative in a different sense - yes, it is an attempt to preserve power relations as they were to "take the west as your standpoint". But many conservatives don't, and many who are not conservatives do. Cultural conservatism seems to me to be as genuinely present in non-Enlightenment forms in modern Japan, amongst many religious thinkers in various religions, and no doubt in many non-Western particularisms as it is in Western thinkers - like Oakeshott, say. Neo-connery has more neo than con, I think.
Tony
"well, of course, there is a tradition of progressivism by now - if that's what you mean :) but i think you use conservative in a different sense - yes, it is an
attempt to preserve power relations as they were to "take the west as
your standpoint"."
not quite what i meant... what i'm suggesting is I think Traditionalism (to slip into academic orthography)... which is more to question the coherence of a tradition, its self-evidence in the modern age, its sense of continuity. but this is another discussion for another time, totally unworthy of a sophisticate like Phillips :-)
Please ignore Melanie Phillips.
Rob, a Brit.
The thing to do with any piece by Melanie Phillips is to take the strength of each adjective or adverb in the piece and divide it by ten, then choose a word or words which will represent that reduced strength and replace, so for example: 'profoundly' becomes 'moderately significantly', 'astronomical' becomes 'quite high'. Then re-read.
And she'll still be wrong.
I do feel sorry for her in a way, she used up all her superlatives years ago and now has nothing left.
No I don't!
All you have to do is look at one or two subjects she's opined on (eg global warming, MMR vaccine) and thereafter you can't but disbelieve anything she says.
"Obama does indeed "stand for" something larger in the racial history of the United States: its transcendence."
I'm not here to defend Mel on this, but I do wonder about your characterisation of Obama as a post-racial healer.
Have you read his autobiography, subtitled 'A Story of Race and Inheritance' ? Have you taken a look at the 'liberation theology' of James Cone, preached at the Rev Wright's church, which Obama attended for 20 years, apparently with his eyes and ears shut ?
"According to Cone, "when white do-gooders are confronted with the style of Black Power, realizing that black people really place them in the same category with the George Wallaces, they react defensively, saying, 'It's not my fault' or 'I am not responsible.'" But Cone insists that white, liberal do-gooders are every bit as responsible as the most dyed-in-the-wool segregationists. Well before it became a cliche, Cone boldly set forth the argument for institutional racism--the notion that "racism is so embedded in the heart of American society that few, if any, whites can free themselves from it."
The liberal's favorite question, says Cone, is "What can I do?" He replies that, short of turning radical and putting their lives on the line behind a potentially violent revolution, liberals can do nothing. The real liberal question to blacks, says Cone, is "What can I do and still receive the same privileges as other whites and--this is the key--be liked by Negroes?" Again, he answers, "Nothing.""
Now that obama has become the president, do you think he should be asked to help the palistinians get some semblance of dignity?
There was a report on tv about some palistiian children in a school, they were around 8 - 10 years old, sitting at their desks, and suddenly they were being shot at by isreali soldiers. There have been images of israeli tanks, killing children playing. As obama has been a recipient of consideration by another people and race, should he be asked to show some of the same to the palistinians, and help them get some kind of future for their children? Or is he simply a aipac stooge, with a special deal that if he suppports israel without question, he will be given the presidency?
Post new comment