Thread by @drantbradley

Here’s the moral of the #CRT story (again): CRT only gained prominence because it emerged in a vacuum. Had conservatives actively explored how race affects American life since 1965, & provided a better constructive account for actual racism, there be no “banning” of CRT today.

William F. Buckley, whom I admire, took the wrong approach with James Baldwin. It set a terrible precedent. The ensuing “debates” should have been about *how* racism affects Americans# life, not *if* America is a “racist nation” or not.

The focus should not have been solely on rejecting/refuting liberal & progressive arguments but providing a better account of how human moral flaws operate regarding race after the Civil-Rights Act of 1965. Today, throwing Thomas Sowell data at progressives will always fail.

What conservatives need to do instead is offer a better account of why racism exists today, how it may or may not affect American life in the present, with solutions. Progressives see racism everywhere. Saying it’s nowhere isn’t the best response & is nonsensical. Here’s why:

All human beings are morally flawed. Progressives don’t believe this. They don’t believe human nature is naturally oriented toward selfishness & self-preservation. Progressives don’t have a good account for the lingering reality of human evil. They often say it’s “environmental.”

This is why they believe we can “end racism,” which makes zero sense to anyone who takes human nature seriously. Is America a structurally racist, Jim Crow nation in 2021? The data will easily say, “no.” But it’s also true that people & groups of people are still morally flawed.

Progressives seeing the Jim Crow Sasquatch under every disparity rock is a cognitive distortion that obscures the complex ways that humans fail themselves and their neighbors. Conservatives sound stupid when they say, “What racism? I don’t see any.” Come on! Humans are flawed!

Of course racism still exists. We’ll always have it as long as humans exist. The question is the extent to which racism accurately explains any given X or Y, and what solutions look like. This is why the data maters. This is why arguing for the tribe’s righteousness is useless.

What also matters is whether or not racism explains any individual’s station in life. Progressives hemorrhage at the thought that some people’s lives are a mess because of their own unwise/evil decisions. Progressives tend to call this “blaming the victim.” It’s odd anthropology.

People are morally flawed and do stupid things regularly because humans lack prudence, temperance, fortitude, and love. They don’t love themselves or others. And, yes, sometimes this creates a culture that lacks these virtues. Progressives can’t be *this* honest about human life.

Conservatives would have better analysis if they were more open to the fact that people can be victims of other people’s negligence & evil. People also lack ways of knowing what to do. People need help to sort through evil or with being dealt a bad hand. Lots! One-on-one help.

American conservatives often reference Christianity as a framework for Western views of reality but Christianity’s primary contribution to the world is teaching people *how* to properly love. How to properly love God, themselves, and others. Love is the birthplace of all virtue.

So, why don’t conservatives mostly talk about love? If you love America then you’ll willingly listen to Americans telling their stories, so we can have the best information to find the best solutions. Proving the left wrong is not the point. Better solutions is the point.

I recently got an email about how to train people to fight against CRT. What a stupid mission. Tearing town CRT isn’t offering love-driven solutions that takes human flaws & human evil seriously. We need solutions with these realities because progressives have huge blindspots.

They can’t account for the reality of human evil. The social sciences is what they offer which often externalizes responsibility from individual actors. They often don’t take human history seriously enough. We need a generation of conservatives to go AWOL on the “culture war.”

We need constructive conservative solutions directed at promoting human flourishing while being brutally honest about human moral flaws, personal & organized evil, and celebrating what’s working well! Only fighting the left=waste of time. We need more Nozicks & less Limbaughs.

So, yes, CRT spread like COVID. Banging the “CRT bad” drum isn’t progress. We need alternative ways of helping people make sense of challenging social issues based on the Truth about human nature’s moral flaws, motivations, & knowledge limitations—individually & structurally.