I have to hand it to the those on the left. They have succeeded in avoiding serious discussions about issues like health care, taxes, and the ecology by demonizing President Trump. Their latest attempt brands Trump as a racist for a less than perfect response to the Charlottesville tragedy. I\u2019m not here to parse his words, but to provide some context to their argument.<\/p>\n
First, the race card is nothing new. It\u2019s not just a strategic part of the left\u2019s playbook, but a philosophical one. They believe that all conservatives\u2014and they include libertarians like me and populists like the President\u2014are racist by default. They don\u2019t call Trump a racist because of his response to Charlottesville. He was already deemed a racist because of his political views. Just read the playbook, Paul Krugman\u2019s Conscience of a Liberal<\/em>. Trump supporters must be ignorant or evil simply because opposition to the left\u2019s agenda can have no intellectual basis.<\/p>\n Second, the President\u2019s thesis that there are bad people on both political sides is undeniably true. As in all elections, there were despicable individuals and groups who claim to support every candidate. I\u2019ve lost track of the number of leftist agitators I\u2019ve seen \u201cprotesting\u201d during the past year. The perpetrator in the Portland train stabbing earlier this year was an avid Bernie Sanders supporter, but it\u2019s not his fault. The notion that President Trump \u201cinspired\u201d neo-Nazis in Virginia is a real stretch.<\/p>\n Third, there\u2019s nothing \u201cright wing\u201d about white supremacy or neo-Nazi politics. This tag is tossed around freely to incriminate Republicans and conservatives, some of whom are apologizing profusely about Charlottesville as if they had something to do with it. Just read Paul Ryan\u2019s response. Apparently, few commentators know that \u201cNazi\u201d is short for the National Socialist German Workers Party<\/em>. If anything, Nazis should be categorized as hard left, but I don\u2019t think guilt by association is appropriate in either direction.<\/p>\n Finally, leftists are always telling us \u201cit\u2019s time we have a real conversation about ______.\u201d But as I noted, anyone who disagrees with leftist orthodoxy is branded as either a bad person or ignorant. It\u2019s hard to have a real dialogue if this is your starting point.<\/p>\n It should go without saying that I am speaking about the leadership of the political left, not all liberals, democrats, or progressives. While I strongly believe their ideology is misguided, many who identify themselves as such are nice people capable of reasonable dialogue. Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the case with their leaders in Washington.<\/p>\n If Trump is anything like me, he gets tired of having to preface every statement with obvious disclaimers about white supremacy, racism, neo-Nazis, or the like, lest he be accused of supporting their views. Despite CNN claims to the contrary, very few Americans\u2014including those of us in the South\u2014hold these views. Our country could benefit from some real conversations, but if you aren\u2019t willing to grant some intellectual merit and a little grace to the other side, you can\u2019t have one. This is why our society is so polarized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have to hand it to the those on the left. They have succeeded in avoiding serious discussions about issues like health care, taxes, and the ecology by demonizing President Trump. Their latest attempt brands Trump as a racist for a less than perfect response to the Charlottesville tragedy. I\u2019m not here to parse his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}