uilt is extraordinarily powerful.  People do all sorts of things in order to assuage their feelings of guilt.  If the problem with the Right is that it has way too little contrition over the sins of the past, the problem with the Left is that it has way too much contrition over the sins of the past.  It is perhaps ironic but true nonetheless that when it comes to guilt the appropriate amount of guilt is very much in order: too much is just as bad as too little.

Too little guilt consists in the wrong of failing to acknowledge the wrongs that one has committed.  That, of course, is rather disconcerting.  But, too much guilt really does not fare any better, although an acknowledgement of wrongdoing is in place.  Too much guilt does not fare any better because too much guilt consists in attributing to others (including, perhaps oneself) wrongs that they did not commit; and wrongly sullying a person’s moral character is just bad, albeit in a different way, as not acknowledging the wrongs that have been done.

I find it most interesting that, with regard to the assignment of guilt, the state of Israeli citizens and the state of whites in the United States are on a par with one another, in that both groups of individuals are often seen by the Left as being far more guilty than is even remotely possible. 

To hear the Left tell it, Israelis are responsible for every ounce of suffering that occurs in the life of a Palestinian.  And in the United States, the Left seems to be of the opinion that anything that goes wrong in the life of a black person can be attributed to the legacy of American Slavery and, therefore, whites are to blame for it. 

Once upon a time, it might have seemed that if one is going to err, too much guilt is better than not enough.  I am persuaded that this well-intentioned thought is very much mistaken. 

One very interesting consequence of too much guilt is that it invariably diminishes, and quite in appropriately, the moral agency of the victims in question.  Only a morally indecent person would deny the wrong or the existence of American Slavery.  Just so, it is utterly absurd to attribute everything that goes wrong in the lives of blacks to that horror.  Indeed, one cannot have it both ways. 

On the one hand, it is roundly acknowledged that in various ways and to varying degrees blacks exercised a measure of agency during slavery.  This they did so in spite of institutional structures the very aim of which was to undermine the agency of blacks.  But if blacks exhibited agency in the very bowels of slavery itself, it is utterly incomprehensible that they should turn out to be entirely bereft of agency in circumstances that are clearly quite some distance from the horror of slavery.

Let us look at Palestine.  Again, I have no desire to deny that Israelis have committed wrongs against Palestinians.  But this truth is a mighty long ways from the claim that all that is wrong among Palestinians can be attributed to the mighty force of Israel backed by the United States.  Yasser Arafat and his organization received considerable financial support from the European Union amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.  Yet, one would be hard pressed to point to anything constructive that was one done with the money. 

Consider this.  With their oil wealth the unvarnished truth is that Arab nations could have universities that were second to none in the world.  I cannot imagine a distinguished professor in Europe or North America who would not agree to be at least a visiting professor at this or that Arabic university for a handsome salary.  Palestine could have a university that is the intellectual equivalent of Israel’s Hebrew University.  The Arab world could have done this as a kind of comeuppance with respect to Israel.  Certainly, the European Union would have tripped over itself providing money for such a cause.

Yet, Arafat never made even a gesture in this regard.  Who is to blame for that?  The Left has a ready-made answer: Israel. 

The Left benefits from the truth that compassion is a virtue.  That, needless to say, is true enough.  But we do have the expression “misplaced compassion”.  And that, lest anyone should forget, is a vice.  If a person keeps getting drunk with money that I give him, then my charity is very, very wrong.  And there is nothing about my good intentions that will change that.  In fact, if precisely what I know is that the person will buy whiskey with the money that I give him, then one rightly questions just how good my intentions are.  Precisely what seems correct to say is that I am more interested in assuaging my conscience than actually helping the person, since it is manifestly clear that I am not doing that at all.

Victims of wrongdoing have long learned that there is an art to being a victim, because being a victim is a wonderful way of manipulating others.  If a person’s appearances are of the right sort, then he can prey upon our conscience by asking us for money for food even if he does so right in front of a bar and it is all too clear that he intends to purchase alcohol with the money we give him.  I shall always treasure the moment when I supposedly offended such a person by offering to buy him food rather than give him money outright. 

What happened there?  The beggar was out to manipulate me and I upstaged him by offering to get him exactly what he said he wanted money to buy, namely food.  In the end, the beggar ended up without money and without food.  Was I a callous person?  Most assuredly not. 

I would never deny the existence of racism.  But I bristle at the idea of turning being a victim of racism into none other than a platform for manipulation.  Whatever else is true, it is true, thank God, that slavery did not eviscerate blacks of their moral agency. 

Likewise, I am not about to claim that the State of Israel has not wronged Palestinians in various ways.  But the claim that I just made about blacks holds with equal force for Palestinians. 

There is an evil that consists in merely manipulating others; and images have become a very powerful way of doing that.  An image of a single Palestinian child crying easily trumps a thousand brilliant philosophical arguments that establish the absence of parental responsibility on the part of the child’s parents.  For isn’t it obvious that if Israel had not existed, then Palestinians would exhibit the right responsibility for their children?  Of course, it is.

There is no theory of human nature that could deliver the conclusion that only whites are wrong vis à vis blacks and that only Israelis are wrong vis à vis Palestinians.  And this is how I know that what we have is none other than mere ideology when people embrace what simply has to be false with regard to these two issues.  Both points of view are on a par with the feminist thesis that all men are rapist. 

This brings me to what I find despicable about the Left, namely that it is much more interesting than assuaging its conscience, whether the subject is blacks in the United States or Palestinians in Palestine, than doing what is right.  And that is none other than a vice.  It is egoism passing itself off as a righteous concern, which is anchored in a masterful form of self-deception.

Helpless black folks are a raison d’etre for the Left.  And as Shelby Steele makes clear in his book White Guilt, a great many blacks enjoy fueling precisely this image.  With Palestinians, we have exactly the same parallel with respect to Israel.  What is wanted, on the part of the Left is not a healthy Palestinian state, but perpetual talk about such a state.  Of course, Israel is always wrong.  After all, that is an axiom—not an argument supported by evidence.  There can no more be an argument that shows that Israel is always wrong than there can be one that shows that Palestine is always right.  But let us not let ideology get in the way of reality ! ! !  

It is probably true that the Right has its own faults.  However, there is nothing whatsoever that I have said that comes even remotely close to denying that possibility.  If there is anything that I cannot and will not abide, it is a point of view that denies me my moral agency.  But then anyone who knows me, knows precisely that.