The Reparations Movement

...is a symptom of the fact that the civil rights movement is intellectually bankrupt. They are old, they are out of date. They haven't got any ideas left, and yet they are desperate for attention.

The civil rights movement made progress mainly because a lot of whites agreed with them back in the 60's. On the reparations issue, there is no agreement, therefore it will not happen, nor will it even get close to happening.

Actually, whites are the least of the reparations advocates' troubles. The reparations people can actually sell that stuff to at least some whites. It's the other ethnic groups that are rabidly opposed to it. No evil genius of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy(TM) could possibly have come up with a better plan for wrecking the Democratic Party coalition.

If it is the aim of black civil rights leaders to be totally marginalized and politically irrelevant they could not have dreamed of a better idea.

Right Wing Envy

From an article in Slate:

The LA Weekly's astute John Powers, a self-described economic lefty, expresses his envy of right-wing journalism in his column this week. Powers celebrates the Weekly Standard, which "woos you by saying, 'We're having big fun over here on the right,' " over The Nation, which he mocks as "a profoundly dreary magazine" that is as "gray and unappetizing as homework."

...How the anything-goes drug-and-sex party that the cultural left threw in the '60s segued into an Amish wake featuring stern readings from the joyless work of Barbara Ehrenreich, the scoldings of Todd Gitlin, and the catechisms of Richard Goldstein is anybody's guess...

No mystery here. Back in the '60's the stern reactionaries were on the right. Now they're on the left.