I have been asking about the Liberal Impulse as an open set of questions, but there hasn't been much doubt in my mind that there is something we have in the West, in the Functioning Core, in Christian Charity that gives us plenty of good reasons to be do-gooders around the globe. Having been immersed in matters of security, I got a little imbalanced and various other parts of my brain went dead during a fascinating discussion in Baltimore. As soon as I got home from that discussion I remembered that I forgot to 'hew'.
HEW is Health, Education and Welfare, and these are products of the great engines of commerce we spin in America. Since I don't concentrate on these particular matters, although with Health I may begin, I wanted to hear from you all for giving some appeal and flavor to the utopian imperative - doing the most good for the most amount of people. When I speak about the superiority of America, I do so in the context of these liberal benefits which I view as infrastructural to nationhood.
With that background I have to say that what Oprah has done in her gift to South Africa is not only a quintessentially American act of generosity, but it is geopolitically sound too. This is exactly the kind of effort that gives me confidence that at long last Americans will see our potential to change the world for the better.
Oprah has been in this regard, a one woman drop squad. It is a sentiment that I think most successful African Americans harbor - this understanding that at one time in our lives we labored in obscurity waiting and hoping that somebody would recognize our potential and lift us from our sad environments. We have felt this on both sides, as the patron as well. So much effort is spent on an ineffective patronage though. We lack the capital, but not the intent. Oprah, lacking neither has done the absolute right thing. I see her completion in this, and her place in history.
I didn't join the controversy over her decision not to place her academy in the US. I basically have nothing to add on that score. She did right.
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