I Was a Free Man in Paris

Texas

"What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good. It could be above moral vanity. And so it made no special promises to me as a minority. It neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other -- two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior. The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity. ... In a liberalism that wants to redeem the nation of its past, minorities can only be ciphers in white struggles of conscience."--Shelby Steele

"I think we're going to get a lot more of this stuff in the future because it is the logic of identity politics. It is where identity politics leads. It is about ultimately the dehumanization that attends identity politics. The minute you have identity groups – the minute you have identity politics - that what matters is whether people are black or white, gay or straight, transgendered or cisgendered, Muslim or infidel – then you do not see the humanity in your fellow man. All you see is the disfavored group and eventually you end with what happened in this situation. There will be more of this in the future as long as the left is invested in identity politics as the organizing principle of society. Identity politics is a polite word. The actual term for what it is is a return to tribalism where you don't see people as individuals equal before the law, free-born citizens, the co-equals of others. What matters more and more is what group you belong to. This crime is ultimately where identity politics leads."--Mark Steyn , on the Chicago torture incident CBS tried to re-write to blame Trump.