"I am hesitant to say so, but I've known it to be a fact that people who tend to expect the most from politics often have the least from family. This is a common sense observation and it informs some of the Conservative criticism of the Welfare State. We should not, I reiterate for the boringeth time, depend upon politics or the government to give us personal gratification or bolster our self-esteem. We seem to have lost, in reaching out with identity politics, a grasp of the essence of citizenship which primarily involves sacrifice for the common good. Instead we have invoked a sort of Hobbesean deal from those who have for the benefits of the have-nots. That's fundamentally a decent idea, but not when the have-nots are getting a state-sponsored identity out of the deal. That kind of care and feeding requires family. Family is what's going to save you from the slings and arrows.

"So going back just a few months to the most recent and glaring example, our friend of great distinction Kanye West banged the needy drum once more with his observation that 'President Bush doesn't care about black people'. Is politics supposed to care? Politics is supposed to be a negotiated settlement, but there is not an active negotiation for black politics of West's sort going on. That's why it's episodic. When Jesse Jackson shows up to say the same thing at every photo op, this is a symptom of the kind of demand created for the politics of caring. But the basic contradiction is that politics is not an avenue for showing love. I think a bit too much of that thing which is popular black politics is looking for love in all the wrong places."-Michael Bowen