This is mostly a long rambling article on why Trent Lott has to go, but there's one section that I think is particularly good on its own:
Sometimes I think we should get back to some basic truths when we talk about race and civil rights. Instead we talk past each other.
A lot of liberals harp on the subject of race, and they do it in a way that gives more attention to hatred for racists than love for equality. They can't make or buy enough movies with names like "Ghosts of Mississippi," which illustrate how terrible white people are, were and probably will be again if we don't pass more laws. (White Southerners are and historically have been particularly demonized by liberals.)
The liberals' sin is a mindless race obsession that keeps them from seeing clearly. But conservatives have a sin too. A lot of them become deaf when the subject is race. All their lives they've heard the long 40-year rap about how wicked America is, how hateful, and along the way they just stopped listening. Which left them unable to hear nuance, and slow, if you will, to hear the music of a great movement.
All this is part of the kabuki that happens when you take a great moral movement like civil rights and turn it, as it is inevitably turned, into a political movement. Sides get hardened and sides get stupid. It's a little like the debate the past few years about obscene art. In that particular kabuki liberals get off on their faux courage, making believe it takes guts to create a painting of the Madonna smeared with feces. In the world we live in that takes no courage, and they know it. If they had guts they'd do a beautiful painting of the Madonna and accept the price: marginalization and dismissal by the art establishment. At the same time, conservatives in these battles get off on faux outrage. They stand up, shake their fists and say they're outraged that someone would desecrate the Madonna. And some are. But some in their hearts know it's all nonsense that means nothing, and what they really feel is delight that the left has once again done something ugly and stupid, and in public.
