What to the Conservative Is Juneteenth?

In theory, there is nothing wrong with a celebration of emancipation. {snip} But we don’t live in theory.

Our politics happen in practice, and in practice, the vote that elevated Juneteenth National Independence Day to the status of a federal holiday is a disaster for those who hold that our country is good, our Constitution a great charter of liberty, and that the nation is to be commended for its progress on racial matters {snip}

Practically speaking, we live in a political environment in which leftists are eagerly preaching the gospel of America’s evil. They have commandeered school curricula and corporate boardrooms in the service of the ideology of critical race theory, the core holding of which is that key constitutional features (e.g., due process of law) produce unequal outcomes and are therefore the product of white supremacy. {snip}

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Juneteenth will become the high holy day of the Left’s calendar, a Lenten repentance to Pride Month’s Easter celebration. It will serve as a day to recollect all of the gravest of America’s sins. There will be educational programs about the brutality of slavery, with no mention of the national agony of the Civil War or how the nation has struggled mightily to live up to its founding creed. There will be specials on the Tulsa race riot, the Birmingham church bombings. {snip}

The Left will put forward these things not because they are evil but because leftists’ current political project relies on the creation of a historical memory in which America’s story is one long racist nightmare. {snip} No one will pay reparations unless the black experience in America today is as bad as it was during 1860.

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Conservatives have long lamented that, try as they might to win elections, the Left’s control of the culture of the elite allows it to win victory after victory. We would do well to begin this fight early, or our successors will find themselves debating a reparations bill being brought forward on Juneteenth National Independence Day 2031 {snip}