The inadequacy of our English language can be seen in young children’s earnest confusion as they grapple with it. After explaining the function of a train depot to my eight-year-old, he pondered for a moment before asking, “Then what’s a Home Depot?” The same word can mean different things to different people in different contexts.
As we grow older, we learn the various meanings of the same word used in different ways. But our language remains vulnerable to confusion. This proves particularly so when words are used with purposeful ambiguity to obfuscate important issues. One such word, used insidiously by the Left’s cultural Marxists, is “racism.”
A family in Delano, Minnesota, recently decided to move after their new home was burglarized by vandals. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
What the family had thought was their dream home when they bought it in December was now painted with racial slurs and swastikas — both inside and out. “Get out” was spray-painted on an exterior wall. The vandals left a note, too: “Next time it’s going to be fire.”
…
Along with the threatening messages, several electronic gaming systems were stolen, according to the Wright County Sheriff’s Office.
Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Hoffman said the slurs included racially offensive symbols that he declined to describe…
This is what actual racism looks like, the type fueled by white nationalist ideology from the likes of Richard Spencer and the alt-right movement he coined. Actual racists place arbitrary value upon racial identity, irrationally viewing members of certain racial groups as inferior to themselves.
Compare such actual racism to that which the Left alleges, and it quickly becomes clear that we’re dealing with two wholly different definitions. According to the Left, we’re all racists. Yet we aren’t all vandalizing homes and spray-painting swastikas with the intent to intimidate. So what does the Left mean? How is your grandma, or my child’s first grade teacher and the rest of civilized American society, in the same league as the Delano vandals? Clearly, they’re not. Clearly, when the Left evokes “racism,” they are not referring to the objective definition of the word.
Real racism is bigotry defined by race. Real bigotry manifests as wholly irrational beliefs regarding any group of people for wholly arbitrary reasons. Irrational beliefs can be defined by race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, or a myriad of other factors.
All bigotry proves offensive to the rational mind, not simply because it is distasteful, but because it is irrational. We live in the context of reality, which must be dealt with rationally to pursue life-affirming values. All forms of irrationality prove destructive to life-affirming ends, and must therefore be condemned as moral evils. Racism falls into that category.
But that’s clearly not the standard employed by the Left. Rather than reject wholly irrational beliefs regarding any group of people, the Left has constructed an entire platform built with such planks. The police. The rich. White people. Men. Heterosexuals. Christians. Each endures scorn from a Left which projects wholly irrational generalizations upon them. Islamism may be the only source of bigotry greater than the global Left, but not by much.
Indeed, by the objective definition of racism, the Left proves blatantly racist to its core. The problem is so pervasive that it is expressed openly in the mainstream. From the Star Tribune:
Minnesota is in a “very deep hole” when it comes to providing a growing number of students of color with teachers who look like them, said Paul Spies of the School of Urban Education at Metropolitan State University. He’s part of a group, the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota, that is coordinating efforts to double the percentage of minority teachers — Hispanics among them — from 4 percent to 8 percent of all state teachers.
Apply this simple test. What would we call a group of whites who coordinated an effort to seek “teachers who look like them”? Racists, right? Indeed, that’s exactly what they would be, and that’s what this Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color is. If you assign inherent value to skin color, you are a racist. Simple.
Yet, the Left clearly has a different standard. It’s not merely a double standard. It’s something wholly alien to the objective definition of racism. The Left’s concept of “racism” really has nothing to do with race at all. For the Left, the word “racism” references western civilization in general, and capitalism in particular. Once you realize this, their use of the term begins to make sense. Of course all Americans are “racist,” because we’re all relatively free and relatively accepting of freedom. Of course Black Lives Matter should openly despise whites, because western civilization has a largely European heritage. The Left doesn’t actually care about race at all, not one solitary bit. They care about power, and wield “racism” as a rhetorical weapon in their quest to seize it. Hence “black lives matter” when they can be leveraged to undermine critical institutions and overthrow capitalism, but not enough to genuinely improve the quality of actual black lives.
Iowa Congressman Steve King was labeled a racist for his comments about culture and identity politics, not because he believes skin color has inherent value (a position he has never once expressed), but because he believes in the founding principles of this country. He believes in capitalism, which is nothing more than the liberty to pursue your own happiness through the creation of your own values. The Left can’t have that. They will dictate what has value, how it will be produced, and — most importantly — how it will be distributed.
As conservatives, as libertarians, as adherents to our nation’s founding principles, we cannot sit on the sidelines and remain quiet as the Left abuses the language in this way. We have to stand up and speak out in defense of what is fundamentally true.
Racism is a real thing with an objective definition. It must be opposed in the only meaningful way possible. We must pursue absolute freedom, established through proper government focused on its sole legitimate role — preserving individual rights. Racism is nothing absent force. Force gives racism its power. In a free society, racism recedes, shrinking in significance to a petty annoyance. Its purveyors become pitiful, impotent pariahs.
To secure such freedom, we must defeat the Left. They seek control. They seek tyranny. They thus stand as enablers of racism, if not outright racists themselves as evidenced in their rhetoric and prescribed policies.
The first step in defeating the Left will be shifting the moral polarity of the public discourse, no longer conceding the fallacious premises offered by the Left. We must reveal them as not only wrong, but viciously evil. The virtue of this tactic is its root in absolute, unassailable, objective truth. The Left is evil. The Left is racist. Their utter defeat should occupy every decent American citizen. Only then will Martin Luther King’s dream be realized. Only then will we regard each other according to merit, and put aside vile presumptions based on race.
This post is based on a discussion broadcast on Closing Argument with Walter Hudson, heard weeknights 9-11p CST on Twin Cities News Talk AM 1130 / 103.5 FM, streamed at twincitiesnewstalk.com and on the iHeartRadio app.
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