The funny thing is that the system of apartheid also tried to justify itself by saying that it stood in opposition to Communism.
I see somewhat of a parallel here.

* One more Update: And right here in the USA. The Civil Rights Movement was, and is, only interesting to leftists to the extant that it can be used to bash conservative whites. Once the "rednecks" were gone, the fun was mostly over. Festering problems within black communities, such as corrupt politicians, crime, poor work and study habits, and anti-white racism are not priorities. If the choice is between fixing inner-city schools, and placating the teachers' unions who bankroll the Democrat Party, the pickininnies get tossed to the sharks every time.
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Agreed except for one thing:

Where have the rednecks "gone"?

Many conservatives keep making these claims without evidence. Do you think that as soon as the Civil Rights legislation was signed, and the ink dried, that the odious racism that was everywhere in the South just evaporated?

Did all the Whites just "see the light" and suddenly love blacks? The next day?

So, Pee-Wee, er, I mean, John, will you now proceed to defend 'Progressives' who support the teachers unions while poor black kids get no education in major cities? Otherwise you're missing at least one half of your tu quoque argument, I think.

You're a striking example of how my father defined 'liberal' back in the '60s. "A conservative, upon seeing a drowning man 100 feet from shore will throw the man 50 feet of rope and encourage the man to swim the other 50 himself. A liberal will throw the man 150 feet of rope, then let go of his end to go do another 'good deed'."

After all, its all about the feelings and not about actual accomplishment, right? 'Liberals' and 'Progressives' no longer justify the means by the end but now justify the means by the good feelings they have about the end.

I live in TX, considered part of the South by some folks, and only at the age of 25 did I actually meet someone I could describe as racist. And it wasn't a particularly harmful kind of racism (i.e. not acted on except for rude comments and being a general asshole).

So I don't know where the "rednecks" went other than maybe your vision of "rednecks" is a little off.

The racist rednecks in the South got a heapin' helpin' of Schadenfreude when the South Boston schools were integrated (late 70s/early 80s?) The holier-than-thou Northerners didn't want their kids in integrated schools either.

The super-progressive Northerners who are so in favor of integrating everything do whatever it takes to make sure that they live in a "safe" neighborhood and that their kids go to "good" schools. And those schools and neighborhoods that they choose are never more than 10% black.

When integrated schooling comes to their own neighborhoods, it doesn't take long for the ultra-liberals to decide to take a look at Catholic and Episcopal schools for their own precocious darlings (while maintaining their own agnosticism, of course.) In the case of one Episcopal school that I know of, the Jews gradually reduced the Christian content of the school program until they had the numbers and the power to control the school and make it "non-sectarian." The Episcopalians who gave the original money for the campus and buildings must be spinning in their graves.

50% of kindergartners are now minorities. It is going to be harder and harder for anybody to find a public school that is 90% white/Asian. Once a school has a substantial black/Hispanic population, the white kids start getting beaten up every time they try to use the rest room.

Very few whites are trying to make life tough for minorities. But most whites want their kids to get a good education and to be free from fear while at school. As the public schools get scarier, the white enrollment drops. The funny thing is when middle-class blacks move to the whitest possible school district. If whites are such dangerous racists, why would blacks want to put their kids into a virtually all-white school? Why are BLACK people scared of having their children in a school with too many other black students?

"Where have the rednecks 'gone'?"
I'm going to have to say, "The Nursing Home".
They're, what, 60+ years old now?

John Weidner - fair points all in your post.

But speaking as one who demonstrated against apartheid back in the day, allow me to inject my own recollections of the then conventional wisdom:

It wasn't "white conservatives" that were the issue - hell, most of my family and many of my friends were "white conservatives" then.

It was that the Africaaner government was based on an odious, racist, supremacist ideology which did not recognize the rights of blacks. Full stop. Anyone who truly believes in "all men are created equal" and the rest of the American civil canon was right to be appalled by this system.

I'd call myself a "white conservative" today but I wouldn't want to associate myself with the Africaaner Nationalists.

If you want to be fair and complete, address the real nature of the old South African regime and maybe allow as to how people might be naturally opposed to it, and not stand up a progressive straw man to argue against.

OTOH if your object is polemic, well, good job.

Lewy14,

Of course the Afrikaner government was odious.

But all the surrounding governments were also odious. And as far as mistreating ordinary black people goes, some of them were far worse. Their people had fewer rights than in SA. They were more likely to starve, to be massacred, to be illiterate, to be expropriated, to die of preventable diseases, etc.

Yet most of you who demonstrated against SA didn't give a damn about those other countries. Why? There was global outrage over SA by millions of people who could not have found Zambia on a map to save their lives. WHY? Why did YOU demonstrate against SA, and, I bet, never even gave a thought to Central African Republic? Why did you not demonstrate against Idi Amin? He was a thousand times worse than the worst of Afrikaners.

I say it was because, for white activists, the real thrill was attacking a conservative white government. Do you have an alternate explanation?

I should clarify. I think the "thrill of attacking a conservative white government" was probably mostly unconscious. I'm sure that the demonstrators felt genuine concern and outrage over the sufferings of people in South Africa.

But as soon as the white government fell, the psychic energy that sustained the outrage disappeared, and the activists lost all interest. Even though people in South Africa STILL have lots of problems that merit our concern.

If you assume I personally never gave a thought to Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, et al, you would be wrong.

These people were tyrants and if you were to further assume that they had admirers among my circle, you would be wrong again.

Yes, these rulers were tyrants, but the South African Nationalists were racist tyrants, and for us, this was a distinction with a meaningful difference. (n.b.: I'm explaining my thoughts and feelings of 25 years ago here, not arguing the point).

As for the "thrill" of attacking a "white conservative" government - no, that is not a fair description. While that is my word against your assumption, let me make it plausible for you.

There is an authentic repugnance with racist ideology which goes back to the 19th century abolitionists, and which I will assert has a better claim on "white conservatism" than the racist ideology of the Africaaners. And it is that repugnance which motivated me and most of my friends.

Were there those whose primary goal was thrill seeking? Were they in the majority? I'd have to say yes, and "I don't know", respectively. Certainly there is much silliness (and worse) in the protest culture which is now evident, and I'm not going to claim it had no part of the protest against apartheid.

But what I am saying is that there were legitimate reasons to protest, which as a Christian and as a conservative would expect you to understand.

As to the utilitarian argument, that the black South Africans were better off under their apartheid masters than the subjects of the neighboring tyrants - I'm not unsympathetic to that argument, and wasn't back then, either. But for me it wasn't dispositive. I thought Mandela would not ruin the country. I'm not pleased the way SA turned out but again there is (as yet) a meaningful difference between SA and Zimbabwe.

Finally, while I carry no political water for the Left, and agree with much of what you stand for (I've been perusing your other posts - congrats on the Instalanche), I'd just just remind you that there is an entire strain of Leftism which defies your caricature, and remains implacably opposed to tyranny even if it means supporting (some) white conservative political positions. See, e.g., George Orwell, Christopher Hitches, and Norm Geras (another Trotskyite atheist), to whom you linked at the top.

JohnW, note, we cross posted - I posted before I read your clarification. As to what my unconscious motivations were, well, I can't attest to that, by definition, so it remains conjecture. But given that I was 19 or so at the time, a plausible one.

Lewy,

You have some good points! I may be over-reacting in tending to disparage the "anti-racist" position. I have a deep philosophical loathing for the viewing of people as members of groups, rather than as individuals. For example, viewing "majority rule" as having someone of the majority group be the ruler--even though the ordinary people have no say in government!

We see the same thing in our domestic politics, in the idea that a mostly-black area is "disenfranchised" if their district elects a white representative.....even though he pays close attention to his constituents of all races, and represents their interests very closely.

I think this kind of thinking is truly pernicious.

It seems that the South Africans were doomed to suffer because their oppressors were "racist" instead of merely murderous.
In fact, as Buckley noted, apartheid was worse than genocide--referring to the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan. Referring to the left's view of which was important and which wasn't even happening.
Nope. There was no tyrant the left disliked if said tyrant was an enemy of the US/West. All would be forgiven.
And Mugabe has too much WCC/lefty/Lib lipstick on his narrow ass for them to say much.
What is happening in Zimbabwe is just "happening". There is no--even if progressives can nerve themselves to mention the place--agency. It just happens. As when somebody "is shot". The bullet just showed up. There is no shooter.
The anti-apartheid movement was dishonest at its core. What happened to the rest of the South Africans was immaterial, as long as WHITE people were inconvenienced. White libs were using SA to assuage their own self-assigned guilt.

Ditto the rest of Africa, where, since there are no white people to be inconvenienced, catastrophe and mass murder and starvation and pointless war go unremarked.

Don't blame anti-apartheid activists for the excesses of anti-colonialism. I realize most in the first camp were also in the second, but the issues were no less different because of it.
Apartheid was wrong. End of story.
Colonialism was also wrong, but anti-colonialism was even worse, as it morphed into Western support of beating and ethnic cleansing of Caucasians in Africa, support for murderous dictators on the ridiculous presumption of "lesser of evils", and up until after the Rwandan genocide willful blindness to injustices perpetrated by Africans -- regardless of the race of the victims.

No, not end of story. More like the beginning. Moral Resoning is a tough science, and there are lots of reasons why fighting to right a wrong may just possibly be wrong. A few:

1. There may be unintended consequences. In fact there usually are. The anti-apartheid fight had the unintended effect of proclaiming that we would not oppose various other bad things. Proclaiming that we would overlook all sorts of oppression if the oppressor's face was the desired color.

2. Priorities. Resources are limited; choosing one wrong to fight will necessarily mean that other ones are not dealt with.

3. There is a great temptation to arrogance and self-righteousness. The do-gooder is frequently indifferent to those who are not so enlightened as himself...often to the point of squashing them like bugs.

4. There is a temptation to substitute "doing good" for doing God's will. Bad move. The crusade can "crowd out" the love that is due to God, or to family or country.

5. Fads. Do-good projects tend to be faddish. People don't think and examine, they just follow the crowd. And the fads are often for the wrongs that are psychologically comfortable to fight, not the ones most urgent.

6. Fight against evils often end up resembling them. For instance, fighting racism is racist. That is, it makes race the most important thing.

"The anti-apartheid fight had the unintended effect of proclaiming that we would not oppose various other bad things ..."
You either didn't understand the anti-apartheid versus anti-colonialism dichotomy I posited or you've implicitly rejected it.
I maintain that focused concerns, like being anti-apartheid, are more likely to be well-founded and constructive than broad concerns like "anti-colonialism" which invariably devolve into witch hunts, tribalism, and violence.
Maybe you think that idea so ridiculous it's not worth addressing, but you should at least acknowledge you understand it.

"4. [Good versus God]"
At least "doing good" has metrics rooted in materialism. Doing "God's Will" could mean anything.
I do agree with you that "do gooders" have given doing good a bad name, I think because they act on emotion rather than reason. The metrics are there -- for instance giving food aid to dictatorships only empowers the dictator -- but "do gooders" don't want to think, they want to feel good about themselves, so they ignore the evidence, cut the check, and pat themselves on the back.
But just because most "do-gooders" are bad at doing good doesn't mean doing good is bad. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing it right. So are our Armed Forces, though of course their motive is improving our long-term national security.

"6. [Beware ye who fight dragons]"
Not fighting dragons leaves you with dragons running loose.
Your point about fighting racism depends on the situation: refusing to give up a seat on a bus isn't racist. Forced busing is.
So it all depends, as any reasonable person should say to themselves when confronted with any overly-broad generalization.

I'm sorry, I did fail to get your point. I agree with you that a campaign focused on a clear-cut evil is much more likely to be productive than one that attacks an amorphous concept like colonialism. (It is also easier to debate and discuss something that can actually be pinned down or defined.)

I agree that in general "God's will" is a loose cannon. I actually had in mind something more specific. We Christians believe that we all need to put God at the center of our lives. Doing good is still just as important, and if you are focused on God you will want to do good all the more, and will actually do a much better job of it! But putting anything else at the center is very dangerous.

This sounds vague I'm sure, but think of it as analogous to a marriage. If I make something else more important to me than my wife—even if it is something very very good—we will gradually tend to drift apart. I won't respond to her love whole-heartedly, and eventually she will feel rebuffed and start to pull back. (I would in fact be starting on the "road to hell," though in this case it's just the hell of divorce court.) But if I keep my priorities straight, and my wife at the center of things, I'll do more good in the long run.

If you're suggesting that adhering to a code of ethics keeps you from making bad decisions, I agree.

However, "focusing on God" as a metric for doing good seems just as vague as "do good". Unless there is a Commandment that says, "Thou shalt measure thy progress and demand results," I don't see how your system works any differently.

"Eradicating smallpox" is a quantifiable metric. "Keeping the focus on God" isn't.

I never mentioned "metrics." You are reading into my comment the subject you are interested in. (Which is a very interesting subject, to be sure.)

I think one can be "good at doing good" with all sorts of belief systems. But if your soul is not oriented rightly, your internal compass will be mis-calibrated, and you will, little-by-little, tend to go off course..

But this is not something that can be measured or proved, because there is no agreed-upon standard of what is good, and what we should be heading towards. I can't give anyone any metrics, just a suggestion that "doing good" is a thing that should be approached with humility and a willingness to question ones own motives and open-mindedness.