-Alas, the Scientific American! From Darwinian Conservatism: Was Edward O. Wilson a Racist? Monica McLemore’s Fraudulent Claim. I expect such ignorance and radicalism, as well as more knowledgeable disagreement to occur, but just not to be given a voice in the Scientific American.
It is a failure of stewardship.
–
As to Islamic terrorism: The same problem regarding FBI policy moral equivocation (it’s all terrorism and who knows what Malik Faisal Akram’s motives were?) could lead to an uncomfortable question: What institutional downsides have come through doctrines of social change?
My skepticism in electing Obama came from what I regarded as the illusion that electing someone with African ancestry would actually bridge our history. Was our political apparatus and political class up for such a task? I don’t know another, better way, around this especially difficult problem, but here we are.
The views of the old Civil Rights Squad, from my point of view, are understandable, emerging from long history and direct experience. The injustice is bone-deep, and one need only read a little of the Harlem Renaissance, on civil disobedience, or listen to a majority of American popular music to share in it enough to generate understanding and fellow-feeling (you know, some of what a good humanities education is for). Such injustice creates pain, loss, anger and despair. Radical doctrines create promises of healing, belonging, targets of resentment and hope/purpose/explanations. Radical doctrines also mobilize this sentiment into direct political action.
The success of these ideas, and all ideas, really, should be judged on results, not intentions. Over-promising and under-delivering usually leads to more suffering. The poorest and weakest among us will generally suffer the most. Such ideas will be followed to their logical conclusions until enough people get tired of such reality, and make different choices.
Many wrongs, piled together, don’t necessarily make rights. These are deeper problems.
—
Here’s a poem that’s stayed with me all these years:
The Bean Eaters
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering …
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
