You’ll remember that in the twenty years before the 1960s black poverty declined by 50 percent. You’ll remember that crime was down. You’ll remember that unwed births were down. You’ll remember that more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Acts in Congress.
Then why, as Thomas Sowell reports, could a liberal colleague of conservative writer Shelby Steele have a such an emphatically different opinion?
"Damn it, we saved this country!" he all but shouted. "This country was about to blow up. There were riots everywhere. You can stand there now in hindsight and criticize, but we had to keep the country together, my friend."
Now there are many of us who, while conceding the importance of the civil rights revolution, recall that many things got worse in the 1960s: crime, violence, education, dependency. It goes on and on.
Then why would liberals insist that they saved the country?
This is a vision of the world more precious than gold. To those who believe it, this vision is a treasure beyond price because it is also a wonderful vision of themselves.
Liberals came into the 1960s believing that they needed to rescue the country, and nothing is going to change their minds that the country needed changing or that they succeeded in rescuing it from a fate worse than death. Nothing can be allowed to shatter “the beautiful picture of themselves as wise and compassionate saviors of society.”
Remember this, and keep it in a special place in your mind, for use in emergency. If liberals ever came to doubt their role as saviors in the 1960s it would kill them.
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