Was Eric Holder in seclusion in 2008? Did the attorney general miss the historic year just gone by in which the role of race in America was dissected, debated and deconstructed at greater length than at any time since the 1960s?

Presumably not, since he's a member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet. Then why suggest we're a "nation of cowards," as he did this week, because we allegedly "do not talk enough with each other about race"?

Most of us certainly don't obsess about race. But if we did, what would Holder have us discuss, pray tell? You can read the full text of the attorney general's gassy speech and hardly glean a clue. And this from a fellow who accuses his fellow citizens of cowardice in confronting reality!

Holder laments our nation's unwillingness to "come to grips with its racial past" and its inability "to contemplate, in a truly meaningful way, the diverse future it is fated to have."

Over and over he urges us "to foster a period of dialogue among the races" and to "imagine if you will situations where people - regardless of their skin color - could confront racial issues freely and without fear."

But he never spells out the racial issues he wants us to confront. If the "the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with, and would like to not have to deal with, racial matters," as he maintains, then why couldn't he at least have identified the taboo topics that we're allegedly ducking?

To be sure, he does mention one issue: affirmative action. He says its "debate can and should be nuanced, principled and spirited." But not too principled and spirited, apparently, since he also believes "the conversation that we now engage in as a nation on this and other racial subjects [unspecified, of course] is too often simplistic and left to those on the extremes." So what would Holder make of the spirited assertion that racial preferences are morally wrong, a view that many Americans in fact hold? Too extreme, no doubt.

Holder is probably onto something when he deplores the general lack of detailed knowledge of black history, although he seems unaware of the extent to which black history is in fact included "in the standard curriculum in our schools." But all manner of history is underappreciated these days, not just black history; most college students, for example, don't have to take a single history course.

Perhaps Holder would like to see interracial neighborhood groups study the contributions of blacks to this nation. Is this the "significant interaction" between the races that he envisions on the weekends when, he laments, we go our separate ways?

Who knows? For a speech about cowardice, it wasn't particularly brave.

Double standards

Some birdbrain attended Tuesday's Statehouse rally protesting the national stimulus package while toting an anti-Obama sign in which a large swastika appeared inside the "O." So naturally ProgressNow Colorado, a left-wing agitprop group, put out a press release linking everyone within sight of the birdbrain - including Republican state Sen. Josh Penry, who has actually condemned the sign - with his bizarre sentiments.

The end of a tediously predictable story, right? I thought so, but thanks to Ari Armstrong of freecolorado.com, there's one delicious postscript. It turns out - and this will surprise no one who has lived through the past eight years - that ProgressNow Colorado has a Web site whose blogs and reader comments have included a number of Nazi and fascist references to former President George W. Bush and other conservatives - which Armstrong has listed on his own blog.

What? The group can't be held responsible for every nutty leftist who comments on the site? Maybe not, but it exerts more control over them than the organizers of an open-air political rally have over their crowd.

"We do not need Penry and [columnist Michelle] Malkin to return Colorado to the hate state," Michael Huttner of ProgressNowColorado exclaimed this week, oblivious to the irony.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.