National Review on Race

Obama has been praised to the high heavens the last few days for his speech on race. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Washington Post heaped approbation on the speech, noting especially Obama's declaration that the idea that racism is "endemic" in America today is "profoundly distorted."

Praise from liberal newspapers is par for the course for Obama, but this time around he's picked up a few unlikely fans: columnists for the conservative rag National Review. Indeed, Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a book which argued Black folks are genetically inferior to whites, described the speech as follows: "As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols." Abigail Thernstrom, who gained fame in the 1970s attacking the Voting Rights Act, was right on Murray's heels. National Review, remember, was a journal started in the 1950s to provide intellectual support to the terrorist campaign of massive resistance in the South.

For decent analysis of Obama's speech, check out Prisoner of Starvation, Lenin's Tomb, and Once Upon a Time...