The Gates-Obama-Crowley affair is but the latest episode in the Anti-traditionalist class's continual battle to permanently neutralize its competition.

As much of the nation by now realizes, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — internationally recognized intellectual and professor of African-American Studies at Harvard University — is claiming to have been the victim of "racial profiling" at the hands of a "rogue" police officer from the Cambridge police department. 

According to all accounts, police responded to a call that two men with backpacks were seen pushing in the door of a home near the Harvard campus.  When the police arrived at the scene, they found Gates, to whom the lease of the house belonged. Apparently, he had just arrived back from a trip that he had taken to China and had misplaced his keys. With the assistance of his driver, Gates was attempting to get into his home.

Three police officers were at Gates' home that night. They were a multi-racial coalition: one, the arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, is white, while the other two are Hispanic and black. The account of the events that were to unfold provided by each officer converged seamlessly with that provided by the others. Gates, they all agreed, was wholly uncooperative. He acted in a wildly irrational and hostile manner toward Crowley, initially refusing to supply identification and accusing the latter of being a "racist." Gates also refused to step onto the porch in spite of Crowley's pleas for him to do so. This wasn't all for which the police report ascribes responsibility to Gates, but further details of his utterances are irrelevant for our purposes, for we now know enough to know why Crowley — a highly decorated, distinguished member of the Cambridge Police Department — arrested the academic star for "disorderly conduct."     

Gates, of course, submits a different account of the evening's happenings. He admits to making racially-charged comments to the officer — "This is what happens to black men in America!" and the like — but denies ever having acted abrasively. Until recently, at any rate, he insisted that he was "racially profiled" and demanded an apology from Crowley, whom he referred to as a "rogue" officer.

In response to this event, even President Obama couldn't resist publicly declaring his verdict: in spite of acknowledging that he wasn't privy to the facts, he nevertheless accused the Cambridge police of having "acted stupidly" and obliquely sided with his "friend," Professor Gates. Obama, however, didn't anticipate the furor with which his racial politicking was met. Within no time, he expressed regret over not having "calibrated" his words differently, called Sergeant Crowley, and invited the police officer and the professor to the White House for a conciliatory beer or two. Both Gates and Crowley accepted. Furthermore, Gates announced that he had abandoned his plans to file a lawsuit against the Cambridge police department.

In spite of all of Obama's assurances of "transparency" in his administration, there has been little if none of that — until now. Obama's invitation to Crowley and Gates is a transparent attempt for him and Gates to save face after having picked and lost a fight with the white police officer from Massachusetts.

Gates, though, was correct about one thing: the incident at which he was the center is not ultimately about him.

Larger than Gates: A Tale of Race, Gender, and Class

Class

Leftists generally and leftist academics (a virtually meaningless description by reason of redundancy) especially are forever castigating Americans — meaning American whites — for their alleged failure to deal honestly and justly with the issues of race, gender, and "class." I put the last in quotation marks because in an economy as fluid and dynamic as the United States', it is misleading to speak of "class," for such a notion suggests a society that is fixed, static, and determinate. No doubt, it is precisely by reason of the fact that the term has connotations that are inherently antagonistic to the idea of a free market order that it has gained such traction among those who wield it in their condemnation of that order and the larger society to which it belongs.

However, for the purposes of my argument here, if for no other, there may be and, I think, is, some significant sense in which we can speak of "class." "Class" shouldn't be understood materialistically, as the Left understands it, but, say, morally or spiritually even. Class can be said to refer to a frame of mind — a set of characteristic attitudes that, in turn, reveal a scale of values. It is in this sense of "class" that it can be truthfully claimed that class figured to no small extent in the Gates affair. Furthermore, it is exactly because the Left tirelessly waxes indignant over "class" that I can't resist co-opting one of its sacred terms so as to treat it to a long overdue dose of its own medicine.

Already the trajectory of my argument is coming into focus. When the Left excoriates white America — and make no mistakes about it, whenever any leftist criticizes "America," it is always white America that is their target — for its supposed negligence toward matters of "race, gender, and class" — what many on the Right have long since identified as the "Holy Trinity" of the Left's "identity politics — they indict white, working, middle, and upper-class heterosexual men for their ostensibly inexcusable and cruel indifference toward the non-white, the poor, women, and homosexuals.

Establishment "conservatives" and the Republican Party for which they speak forever resist these charges of a "racist," "sexist," "classist," America. They are, of course, correct, but there are two problems that I have with the establishment Right's characteristic maneuver on these matters.  First, in invariably permitting the Left to place them on the defensive, they fail to go on the offensive. Second, establishment rightists incorrectly and, quite honestly, foolishly, refuse to concede that the Left is, in part, correct: race, gender, and class (as I defined it) are profoundly formidable realities in the United States (and beyond).

Thus, unlike establishmentarians on the Right, I choose — and emphatically encourage others to make this same choice — to confront the left head-on by turning its cherished ideas against it.

From its vocabulary of stock terms and expressions, the term "privilege" is continually drawn for use in the Left's discourse on race, gender, and class. The idea of "privilege" is understood pejoratively in the leftist lexicon. Rather than quarrel with the meaning that leftists have imposed upon it, however, I will rather keep with the strategy for which I have opted and characterize Professor Gates, one of the Left's own, in the terms in which he has made a living characterizing others: Gates is, by the standards of material comfort and respect from others — the only standards by which the Left measures "the privileged" and "underprivileged" — as "privileged" a human being in our society as anyone.

Gates, as we have been inexhaustibly reminded since word of this incident broke, is a world-renown scholar who is in possession of at least 20 professorships at one of the most famous and prestigious institutions of higher learning on the planet.  The immediacy with which the charges of disorderly conduct that were brought against him were dropped was surpassed only by the immediacy with which his arrest elicited calls of sympathy from the President of Harvard, the Mayor of Cambridge, the Governor of Massachusetts, and even the President of the United States!

James Crowley, however, is known only by his peers in the Cambridge Police Department. His is a record of service to his community and his police force that is unrivaled for its distinction. Crowley's profession, though as indispensable to the survival of any society, and as heroic, as any of which we can conceive, nevertheless lacks the prestige of Gates' profession, and there can be no question that this "prestige gap" is reflected by the fact that the sergeant's salary is but a fraction of the professor's.

And yet it is Professor Gates who treats himself, and who is in turn treated by the establishment press and the President of the United States — the chief law enforcement officer — as the victim.

This response to this situation is a function, in no small part, of the hegemony that a certain class of values has come to enjoy in contemporary society. For a lack of a better term, and so that readers may more readily relate to the idea that I am trying to convey, we can say of these values that they are the conventional wisdom of "Anti-traditionalists." While "tolerance" is among the values that belongs to this class and, in itself, is equally affirmed by those classes of values to which the Anti-traditionalists are opposed, the "tolerance" that is our focus has as its beneficiaries only select groups of people — namely, those groups that reliably endorse the class of values defended by the Anti-Traditionalists. To put the matter another way, the "classism" of this class is revealed by the consideration that among its cardinal values is a ruthless intolerance of all classes of values with which it may have to compete, especially that class to which we may refer (because lack of greater precision eludes us here) as "Traditionalist."

From this latter perspective, "Fairness" is a premiere value: race and class are realities to which it is impossible to be literally "blind," but individuals should nonetheless be treated as such to the extent that our finite judgment allows. That is, individuals should be treated as intelligent agents who, by virtue of their intelligence, are responsible, but responsible for their conduct, not that of others with whom they may happen to share the same class and/or race.

These classes of values are ideal types. In actuality, each admits of multiple variations, and it is probably true that most people subscribe partially and in varying degrees to components of both. Still, from our current practices, we can abstract these two sets of ideas, and it is undeniable that they are mutually antithetical to each other. My point, though, in delineating these two ideals is to substantiate my thesis that Crowley, in "belonging" to, or at least being perceived as belonging to, the second of the two classes, is already judged adversely by the guardians of the first. This "classist" attitude — often, but unhelpfully, termed "elitism" by establishment rightists — we have seen expressed by our President on several occasions, beginning with remarks concerning small town Pennsylvanians made during his campaign and culminating with his recent comments that he all too eagerly made in defense of his "friend," Professor Gates.

But appeals to class (again, as I have defined it) do not adequately account for all that this story of the professor, the police officer, and the President encapsulates. For a complete account, we must draw our attention to the roles that race and gender play in it as well.

Gender and Race       

The class of the Anti-traditionalists is indeed fiercely intolerant of those classes of values that challenge its hegemonic pretensions; but when it judges a competitor class to be "Eurocentric," it is beyond intolerant: it is contemptuous.  The class constituted by Traditionalist values is deemed "Eurocentric" by the politically correct class. What this means is that it embodies, from the perspective of the latter, the prejudices, preferences, and biases of whites generally and white men in particular.

The class of values that I describe as Traditionalist is, then, both "racist" and "sexist," or, as it is not infrequently said, it is a specimen of "patriarchy."  It "privileges" whites and men over women and "historically disadvantaged" (non-white) minorities.

From this clash of "classes," we may take away several points.

First, the class of Traditionalist values to which I refer is continuous with and an inheritance of Western civilization. Thus, attacks against this class are animated by and coequal with hostility toward Western civilization generally.

Second, whenever America or the West is criticized as "racist," "sexist," "homophobic," "imperialist," or what have you, it is always whites generally and white men specifically that are the targets of this disdain.

Third, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., like President Obama, both belong to the dominant Anti-traditionalist class.

Fourth, Sergeant James Crowley — being a working-class white man, a police officer, of all things, and, thus, emblematic of the strength and the courage that white men have always exercised in creating, sustaining, and enhancing Western civilization — affirms, or at least is perceived by Gates, Obama, and their ilk, as affirming those "Eurocentric" and "patriarchal" values that they are determined to crush.

Thus, the Gates-Obama-Crowley affair, I submit, is but the latest episode in the Anti-traditionalist class's continual battle to permanently neutralize its competition.

Let us state the matter even more bluntly: the Gates-Obama-Crowley encounter is the latest episode in the on-going effort to castrate the white man. Ironically, the very same talk radio hosts and other mainline "conservatives' who incessantly (but truthfully) bemoan what they derisively regard as the "feminization" of boys appear oblivious to the fact that for all of their protestations against this phenomenon, they themselves haven't been entirely successful in inoculating themselves against being "feminized." This, I believe, is most powerfully evidenced by their reactions to race-related issues.

It is painfully obvious that establishment right-leaning commentators, whether they are nationally syndicated newspaper columnists, television personalities, or radio talk show hosts, are possessed by considerable fear when it comes to the issue of race. Although by every indicia pertaining to social pathology — rates of crime, education, and illegitimacy — blacks and Hispanics dwarf whites; and although the rate of white-on-black crime is but the remotest fraction of that of black-on-white crime, these white commentators invariably assume a defensive mode and resort to Rodney King type platitudes when racially charged issues become the focus of national attention and, thus, become impossible to avoid discussing. 

And never, never, do these white commentators dare express any indignation over the indignities and injustices to which whites are all too often subjected by black and brown perpetrators of inter-racial crime. Nor do they articulate any manly anger over the fact that Anti-traditionalists, by continually stoking the flames of racial grievance, encourage such crimes and the hostilities by which they are motivated.

Given the dominance — and ruthlessness — of the Anti-traditionalist class, I understand this reticence.  But however understandable it may be, it is most definitely not manly.  And this, sadly, only underscores how successful the Anti-traditionalist class has been in realizing its objective: the emasculation of white men.

There is much drivel emanating from the Anti-traditionalist class generally, and the university in particular, to the effect that the historical injustices perpetrated by whites against blacks (and of course such injustices there have been) were partially motivated by the fact that white men felt their masculinity threatened by that of black men. Such fear, the wisdom of this class maintains, continues to this day. 

In truth, however, the fear runs in the opposite direction: there is an awe-inspiring fear on the part of the members of the class of Anti-traditionalist, regardless of their race or gender, of the masculinity traditionally associated with the white Western Man. The episode in Cambridge is but the most recent illustration of this fear.  Crowley, being a white, working-class police sergeant, emblematizes those dispositions of character that the West and America have historically prized as manly virtues and that the politically correct class, therefore, despise. 

Conclusion

Gates, then, couldn't have been more right when he emphatically declared that his run-in with the Cambridge police wasn't about him. Yet in construing his situation as an episode of the "racial profiling" of blacks, he profoundly misread it. In fact, at the time that I write this, not even Gates is any longer trying to weave it into that narrative. No, Gates' belligerence toward a highly decorated white police officer, and the national attention that he succeeded in garnering for it with the help of his friend, President Obama, is illustrative of the intentions of the Anti-traditionalist class — the class in which Gates and Obama are both heavily entrenched.

For the last 50 years or so, there has been a war of a sort transpiring within Western civilization and against Western civilization — or at least Western civilization as it has historically been conceived. The war is between two classes, what I have called "the Anti-traditionalist" and "Traditionalist" classes.  Most people in the latter class don't realize that there is any such war. Those in the former, though, know exactly what is happening, for it is they who have subtly (and not so subtly) declared war on those who they perceive to be their enemies.

From the perspective of the Anti-traditionalists, the enemy to be destroyed is white masculinity.

The affair in Cambridge was both the latest battle in this war and a concretization of it.