A Defense of Liberal Guilt

[Puppycow]

This thread didn't necessarily have to go in this sub-forum, but since this article is partly about the current campaign, I decided to put it here.

I ran across this defense of liberal guilt by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate. What do you think?

Some highlights:

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don't suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness, you have—in the case of America's history of racism—historical awareness.

. . .

This is what I don't understand about the conservative attacks on "the '60s." They willfully ignore, in their rote denunciations of the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll aspect of that decade, the great movement of moralists known as the civil rights movement. The movement that brought deserved honor and pride to America. The movement that may well have been motivated (among whites participating) by liberal guilt. But so what! The guilt was justified. The truly guilty were the ones who didn't feel guilt. Such as the conservative movement of the day that largely stood on the sidelines making carping augments about states' rights that were a shamelessly transparent defense of institutionalized racism. Where's the conservative guilt about that? No wonder they ignore the civil rights movement, one of the great epochs in American history, when they demonize "the '60s."

 

[Texas]

This thread didn't necessarily have to go in this sub-forum, but since this article is partly about the current campaign, I decided to put it here.

I ran across this defense of liberal guilt by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate. What do you think?

Some highlights:

I see your thread kinda died so I'll bump it to say that I don't believe it is guilt. I think it is just patting themselves on the back.

 

[Travis]

I see your thread kinda died so I'll bump it to say that I don't believe it is guilt. I think it is just patting themselves on the back.

I agree. I think people from the sixties often spend too much time talking up how good they were. I mean if they really did help the various progressive movements of that era (civil rights, womens rights) then they do have something to be proud of. If all they did was go skinny dipping and take drugs then all they did was a lot of self indulgent hedonism. Certainly one has the right to do so, and the right to mistakenly think they should be proud of it, but that doesn't mean I should be respecting them for it.

What a lot of people gloss over is that the roots of those progressive movements were grown in the hard work of people in previous decades. Its not like no one was arguing for equal rights and all of sudden in the sixties everyone had an epiphany and it originated right then and there. Who forced Little Rock High to desegregate? Old fuddy duddy Eisenhower that's who.

 

[Dr Adequate]

I see your thread kinda died so I'll bump it to say that I don't believe it is guilt. I think it is just patting themselves on the back.

Liberals do, I grant you, have a lot to be collectively smug about, but that all lies in the past (one cannot feel smug about what one has not yet achieved).

Individually, liberals feel guilty about whether they're doing enough about the future.

I doubt that you will be able to understand either emotion.

 

[Puppycow]

I think it is just patting themselves on the back.

Do liberals pat themselves on the back more than conservatives? From the same article:

People who lack guilt also lack humility, which is another one of those virtues conservatives are always flogging (although not with a lot of humility).

I'm always amused, listening to the Sean Hannity radio show, how the host and caller frequently salute each other with the phrase: "You're a great American." (There's humility for you!) What's so great about being "great" if it depends on historical ignorance or denial? Again, to love America truly, one has to love the America that is and was, not a fantasy America free from flaws.

To be a truly "great American," one doesn't have to be a guilty liberal, but one has to know guilt.

So liberals pat themselves on the back for having a conscience while conservatives pat themselves on the back for, what, being "great Americans"?

 

[ConspiRaider]

I agree. I think people from the sixties often spend too much time talking up how good they were. I mean if they really did help the various progressive movements of that era (civil rights, womens rights) then they do have something to be proud of. If all they did was go skinny dipping and take drugs then all they did was a lot of self indulgent hedonism. Certainly one has the right to do so, and the right to mistakenly think they should be proud of it, but that doesn't mean I should be respecting them for it.

What a lot of people gloss over is that the roots of those progressive movements were grown in the hard work of people in previous decades. Its not like no one was arguing for equal rights and all of sudden in the sixties everyone had an epiphany and it originated right then and there. Who forced Little Rock High to desegregate? Old fuddy duddy Eisenhower that's who.

Hey Trav -

You're either/orring a bit here, that's a bit simplistic. You're saying people in the 60s either advanced people's rights, or drugged out buck nekkid. The kids who were shot near my home - at Kent State U in Ohio on May 4, 1970 - that was not a bunch of hedonists on that day. And what was Woodstock? Lots of drugs and nekkid bods.

Not sure if it's such a great idea to grandstand for Ike on the rights bit. Remember McCarthyism? Blacklisting? HUAC? The film Spartacus, for example, was hit with the blacklisting madness, where Stanley Kubrick offered to be the "writer" in place of the real one (was was blacklisted). Ironic, since Spartacus was an allegory about freedom of thought and action.

 

[Brainster]

If there were any sense that liberals were feeling guilty about the things they personally did versus the things they did not do but their ancestors or their neighbor's ancestors or somebody who looks a little like them's ancestors did I might congratulate them.

Instead, liberals feel guilty about things they never actually did and wouldn't dream of doing. They feel guilty for slavery, and for the potato famine in Ireland. They feel guilty for oppressing women and gays and lesbians and transexuals. They feel guilty for leaving out bisexuals in that last sentence, because bisexuals suffer twice as much. Or something.

 

[Dr Adequate]

If there were any sense that liberals were feeling guilty about the things they personally did versus the things they did not do but their ancestors or their neighbor's ancestors or somebody who looks a little like them's ancestors did I might congratulate them.

Instead, liberals feel guilty about things they never actually did and wouldn't dream of doing. They feel guilty for slavery, and for the potato famine in Ireland. They feel guilty for oppressing women and gays and lesbians and transexuals. They feel guilty for leaving out bisexuals in that last sentence, because bisexuals suffer twice as much. Or something.

Liberals do, I grant you, have a lot to be collectively smug about, but that all lies in the past (one cannot feel smug about what one has not yet achieved).

Individually, liberals feel guilty about whether they're doing enough about the future.

I doubt that you will be able to understand either emotion.

You know what? We have two diametrically opposite views of what liberals feel here, and one of them was written by a liberal.

 

[Brainster]

You know what? We have two diametrically opposite views of what liberals feel here, and one of them was written by a liberal.

And one of us actually read the article before commenting. The idea that guilt is about not doing enough for the future is not a major theme:

But what if redeeming our shameful racial past is one factor for some?

Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it's shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime?

Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness, you have—in the case of America's history of racism—historical awareness.

"Liberal guilt" isn't a reason one must automatically support a black candidate, but that doesn't mean that liberal guilt—better defined as an awareness of the need to contend with, and overcome, a racist past—shouldn't be a factor in politics.

(Bolding added for emphasis)

 

[Travis]

Hey Trav -

You're either/orring a bit here, that's a bit simplistic. You're saying people in the 60s either advanced people's rights, or drugged out buck nekkid. The kids who were shot near my home - at Kent State U in Ohio on May 4, 1970 - that was not a bunch of hedonists on that day. And what was Woodstock? Lots of drugs and nekkid bods.

I didn't intend for it to be an either/or dichotomy. Certainly there many who did great things and indulged in wanton hedonism. I was merely remarking on those who speak of the grandeur of the mythical sixties that, in reality, had nothing do with any greatness it may have had.

Not sure if it's such a great idea to grandstand for Ike on the rights bit. Remember McCarthyism? Blacklisting? HUAC? The film Spartacus, for example, was hit with the blacklisting madness, where Stanley Kubrick offered to be the "writer" in place of the real one (was was blacklisted). Ironic, since Spartacus was an allegory about freedom of thought and action.

I'm not going to defend everything Ike did or allowed to happen. But, my point, was that the sixties civil rights movement had its origins in the work, and sacrifice, of people in the preceding decades.

 

[Dr Adequate]

And one of us actually read the article before commenting.

I was speaking for myself, is that OK?

The idea that guilt is about not doing enough for the future is not a major theme:

The "redeeming", the "contending", the "overcoming" --- this is not something he proposes that we should do by going back into the past with a time machine, right?