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October 29, 2010
The Others Among Us
Shelby Steele: A Referendum on the Redeemer - WSJ.com
Barack Obama is not an "other" so much as he is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new "counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity—and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned—is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture American identity. When he bows to foreign leaders, he is not displaying "otherness" but the counterculture Americanism of honorable self-effacement in which America acknowledges its own capacity for evil as prelude to engagement.
Posted by Vanderleun at October 29, 2010 10:51 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
One of the best columns of the year. Must read material. Yeah, Shelby Steele!
Posted by: Dewey From Detroit at October 30, 2010 4:45 AM