These Gymnasts deserve 10s

From Victor Davis Hanson at NRO's The Corner comes this:

If you're African-American, then it's OK that you express racial solidarity and vote for Sen. Obama by margins approaching 90 percent — while at the same time white males must prove that they are not racialists by having the courage to 'do the right thing' by likewise voting for an African-American. That apparently would make Michelle Obama proud of her country for the first time in her life.

Hanson goes on to make the same point about sexism and Hillary Clinton. The mental gymnastics required to believe that only white people can be racists or only men can be sexists transcends sport and vaults into the realm of art. One can see the beauty as the tumbler asserts that only those with power can be racists.

The illogic of that idea is astounding, especially when used as a means of achieving power. For the instant at which such a non-powerful person expressing ideas which would be termed racist in the powerful achieves power, they must renounce all of the ideas which would be termed racist in the powerful which brought them to power, or they would be racists by their own definition. So either the people expressing ideas which would be termed racist in the powerful are liars (because they express but do not believe the ideas which would be termed racist in the powerful) or they are liars (because they express but know they cannot implement the ideas which would be termed racist in the powerful once they themselves achieve power). Or perhaps, like all racists, they are too stupid to understand the stupidity in it all.

But Barack Obama's appeal is not simply racial, for if it were he's chosen the wrong demographic. No, he is a symbol, which is why it is vital for him not to say anything substantive. As a symbol he is Dr. King, JFK, Booker T. Washington, and Malcom X, all rolled into one. When he starts to talk specifics, he'll be seen as just another liberal trying to mandate our way into Happiness instead of allowing us to Pursue it.

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