[Roundtable] What is the difference between Liberalism and Civil Rights?

[Jefferis Peterson]

This issue of Books and Culture review has some excellent insights. This
article is on the main difference between modern liberal idealism and the
biblical understanding of human nature evidenced by Martin Luther King, Jr.


In analyzing the current stock market malaise,  I think the prospect of
Kerry as pres and terror attacks are both creating a background of high
anxiety for investors. There is no fix for this situation of possible future
terror and Americans in general don¹t have the patience to wait out a
protracted conflict. That is why they want to go to what appears as a simple
solution - just avoid war at all costs, vainly thinking that a vote for
Kerry will solve this problem.   This naiveté and fantasy is mixed with
idealism not grounded in real understandings of the world around us but
built upon the illusion that everyone really wants to Œjust be nice and get
along.¹  In other words, they have no capacity for understanding or facing
real evil because they deny its existence in the world and in their own
actions. They believe they and that we all are basically 'good'. It is not a
biblical view of human nature, but a utopian one.

In contrast, the Civil Rights leaders recognized the profound evil of human
actions in segregation and oppression. They had felt the sting of this evil
first hand and were under no illusions as to the makeup of human nature.

There is also an article on Gandhi in this issue, which pokes holes in his
sainthood, especially on his dealings with the Nazis.  Non-violence as a
social methodology is extremely dependent upon the context in which it is
used. Sadaam for example would have executed Gandhi before he had a chance
to raise the conscience of the British or the nation. Hitler hung protestors
and labor strikers immediately and without trial in public settings. Passive
resistance doesn't work across borders or against governments without
conscience. 
Here's an excerpt from the King article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2004/004/5.08.html

Hopeful Pessimism
The lessons of the civil rights movement turn out to be quite alien to
liberal pieties.
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese


> This tradition, as King professed, had little to do with facile optimism
> either about people or about prospects for transforming the world. Indeed, the
> black leaders for whose thought Chappell was able to find sufficient
> intellectual records "believed that the natural tendency of this world and of
> human institutions (including churches) is toward corruption." But, like the
> Hebrew prophets, they felt compelled to harangue the world about its failings,
> even when they expected it to revile them for their efforts‹and they were
> determined to do what they could to achieve justice, even as they maintained a
> clear-sighted recognition of human fallenness.
> 
> The white liberals who supported the movement were cut from a different cloth
> entirely. In the first place, they lacked southern blacks' sense of urgency
> and mission. However sincerely they may have opposed the injustice of
> segregation, they had no personal experience of its pains and no passionate
> convictions about the timing of its demise. Believing in the power of reason
> and the inevitability of progress, they were content to await the unfolding of
> appropriate changes. Liberals took pride in having substituted reason for
> blind, irrational faith, although the most thoughtful and intelligent among
> them had a keen understanding of what they had lost...
> 
>   
> Seen through the lens of the leading black activists' view of the fallen and
> depraved character of human nature, liberal optimism seemed more than slightly
> facile, especially liberal views about the natural‹indeed,
> inevitable‹improvement of the position of minorities in general and black
> Americans in particular. Black leaders harbored no such rosy expectations of
> their fellow citizens, yet, as Chappell acutely demonstrates, their very
> pessimism on that score derived from the same faith that sustained them
> through a long and difficult struggle‹the "stone of hope" evoked in Chappell's
> title and King's speech.


~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jefferis Peterson, Pres.
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