If I were a Republican strategist, which I’m pleased to say I’m not, I would pay especial attention to Shelby Steele’s op-ed “Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism” in the August 27 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Toward the close of his article, Steele writes that “the great problem for conservatives is that they lack the moral glibness to compete with liberalism’s ‘innocence’ ”—innocence, in this case, from the evil of racism and social injustice generally. Steele then goes on briefly to suggest that “reality” should be the “informing vision” of conservatism.” By “reality” I take him to mean more than arguments countering the unreality of the empty utopianism of much liberalism.
What Shelby Steele holds in his op-ed is that liberals have a story and conservatives do not. The liberal story is an old one, in many ways a false one, but it works for them, and, as he points out, they are adamantly sticking to it. Their story—nowadays the approved word is “narrative”—is one of impressive simplicity: They hate social injustice in any form, despise capitalism for its selfishness and blame it for the despoiling of the environment and the planet generally, and cannot find an ethnic or sexual minority they don’t wish to help. Through this program, they have, or at least feel they have, cornered the market on virtue. To put the liberal story in two words: They care. This has left conservatives in the unattractive position of not caring.
