About a week ago a friend of mine
asked my opinion on President Obama. I told him that I disagreed with his views
and was unhappy with his actions as president. A college student nearby
overheard what was said and immediately confronted me telling me that I was
racist and that what I’d said was equivalent to hate speech. Nothing I said to
the young man mattered. I disagreed with him and that made me a racist.
Of
course this made me wonder. Why wouldn’t he give me the benefit of the doubt?
Had I said this same thing about Clinton (which I did) the idea that I was a
racist would have been obviously preposterous. The fact that Obama is half
black doesn’t concern me. I respect him as a fellow US citizen and would
endeavor to be a good neighbor to him if we ever shared a fence. I believe him
to be at least a relatively intelligent man, even if I fundamentally disagree
with him on many issues.
A short
history lesson is all that is needed of course. Shortly after World War 1,
after everything had been said and done, there were a group of seriously upset
people. These people were socialists. Before the world war had even started,
these people had believed it to be “scientifically proven” that worldwide socialism would have been the end result of
the world war, and would have eventually ended in transforming the world into a
blissful one world utopia.
Their “science” didn’t quite work
out. The major world powers that were the US and Britain didn’t lose control of
their countries to their own “victimized” workforces. In fact, the places where socialism did take
root were not the international powerhouses, but the technologically and
socially backward places like Russia and China.
They found that the workers they’d
staked their bets on didn’t get angry at their “mistreatment,” instead they
became prosperous and found themselves in a boom of industry that made the
common people of the US and Britain wealthy by comparison to the majority of
the world.
For most people, seeing an economic
system that made the common man wealthy would illuminate an obvious reaction:
adopt that system, but by this point these people were too invested emotionally
in the ideas and principles of socialism to let them go and so they set up a
school in Germany. They called it the Institute for Social Research (also
nick-named the Frankfurt School.)
They eventually came to the
conclusion that all-out war and economic superiority were areas in which
socialism could not win head to head. Instead, they came to the conclusion that
a far more insidious course of action must be taken in order to install
socialism. Subterfuge. The only way to destroy capitalism and free trade was
from the inside. Indeed, it was to be a war of culture, or at least the
destruction of one.
In their search for “weaponry” to use
against their targets, they found an offensive tool and a defensive one. The
common names for these tools are “critical theory” and “political correctness.”
Critical theory sets up a “divide
and conquer” scenario. Find groups of
mildly to moderately unsatisfied people and, in turn, tell them they deserve
more and that their current society isn’t meeting their needs. Wash, rinse and
repeat and you have dozens if not more groups of motivated people who, energized
by either greed or a sense of victimization, will endeavor tirelessly to tear
apart anything they see as the status quo.
This is easily seen in today’s news
as hundreds of individual groups assail the American culture as a whole.
They’re told America is the most racist country of all. This is an obvious lie
as we have more multicultural civic leaders in our elected positions than any
than any other three countries. They’re told that we were the worst slavers in
history. This is another lie. As abominable as the practice is, it is still in
practice to this day in various forms all over the world, and the US didn’t
invent it, either, as it existed for centuries beforehand. These are only two
of the many anti-American lies being perpetrated by these groups and others
like them.
The second tool, “political
correctness,” is defensive in nature. It is used as a diversionary tactic
against anyone speaking out against the goals of the aforementioned groups.
When a moral person is accused of saying something hateful or bigoted, it is only
natural to stop and recount one’s words, as being hateful is not a desirable
goal for them. However, this moment of pause gives the opponents of this
individual a chance to destroy the perceived character of the person making an
argument against them. Put bluntly, it shuts them up.
In truth, this tactic usually works
only on people who aren't racist. Would you bother telling someone in the KKK
they were bigoted against black people? How about telling a Nazi they’re
anti-Semitic? Most of these kinds of people take pride in this fact! Telling
them the obvious won’t give them pause.
This tool is also used constantly
and can be seen everywhere. The commonly used phrase “pulling the race card” by
calling someone a racist or bigot is a perfect example of this but it also
applies to several other areas of social disagreement. The wealthy are called
classist or elitist; the religious are convicted of being puritanical or sexist
or any other branch of bigotry. In fact, the recent “hate speech” laws some
places have enacted are merely an evolution of this thought and lend the threat
of legal recourse against anyone speaking out as well.
Do people of these branches of
society have bigots among them? Of course! But by tying these terms to these
people it is yet another form of putting people in categories. It is yet
another form of bigotry.
And so, in conclusion, I find
myself in the position of stating for the record that, while I do not find any
portion of humankind to be worth less than myself, I occasionally must say
things that others do not agree with and will, in turn, be called a number of awful
things. From here on out, I will try not fall to this trap. Blind accusations
of bigotry will not shut me up. If you want to win an argument with me you’ll
need to use logic and facts instead of name-calling. God Bless.
