Sunday, September 10, 2017

The Rarely Noted Affinity on the Left for Bigotry


Here’s a thought:  The Left’s allegiance to identity politics is akin to racial and ethnic loyalty spouted by bigots.

That may sound incredible at first.  But consider:  undeniably, the Left characterizes people by characteristics and circumstances.  White society, oppressed minorities, “tax the rich”, Black Lives Matter (don’t say “all”), and so forth.

It used to be a tenant of good liberal thought that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke for a better America when he hoped for a future in which a person’s character, not his skin color, was what mattered.  No longer.  Now the targets are structural (white) racism and white privilege.  Calls for reparations are next.

[Why shouldn’t today’s Americans, still predominately white, pay for the sins of Southern slave owners more than 150 years ago?

Should the sins be borne by generations?  And what about the millions and millions of immigrants who came to America after the Civil War?  Is their skin color a reason for assigning culpability?]

Look around.  Doesn’t it seem as if segments on the Left are hostile to whites because of their race?  Bigotry, racism are not the exclusive preserve of one group of the other.  Viewing people as members of a favored or unfavored group – not as individuals with distinct characteristics, good and bad – is the common denominator of the bigot.

Bigotry and hatred are anathema to conservatives.  Group categorization is the unalterable enemy of conservative principles of individual rights and responsibilities and the freedom in which they function.

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