By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
There was a column on January 12 on slate.com meant to block Jeff Sessions’ nomination for attorney general. The column, by Dahlia Lithwick, was entitled “What Jeff Sessions Doesn’t Understand About Racism.” If you ask me, it revealed more about the wrongheaded thinking on the American left about the topic.
I have no way of knowing if the wrongheadedness is a deliberate tactic contrived to defame conservatives, or confusion brought on by their political enthusiasm. Whichever, it is wrongheaded, fuzzy thinking, a cheap shot.
Watch the sleight of hand Lithwick employs to make her case against Sessions. She concedes that “witnesses told stories of Sessions as a mentor, boss, colleague, and friend, someone who supported black colleagues and never whispered a racist sentiment,” but insists “these stories are beside the point.”
For Lithwick, Sessions is racist because of his support for “a voter ID” and “his vote against taking the language of religious tests out of immigration law” when dealing with Muslims.
In other words, Sessions is a racist not because of any hostility toward minorities — which Lithwick calls “old-timey racism” — but because he does not go along with the left-wing’s agenda on race. There is no other way to say it: Lithwick sees Sessions as a racist because he is a conservative.
She is unwilling to accept the proposition that Americans on the right favor voter IDs because they fear voter fraud; that they want to vet Muslim immigrants more scrupulously than, say, Swiss immigrants because of the track record of terrorism by Muslim extremists. For her, the motive is racism. She cannot — or will not — accept that there are Americans who reject the left’s agenda on race because they are convinced that they have a better, more effective way to seek racial justice.
By her standard, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once called for a period of “benign neglect” on racial legislation, was racist. So are Clarence Thomas and the conservative members of the Supreme Court who question the wisdom and legality of many government programs to achieve racial justice.
This is why the American left is having a collective nervous breakdown over the election of Donald Trump. They do not see him someone with different political views, but as a racist, a sexist, a homophobe and xenophobe, a man who belongs in Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.”
Unfortunately, this view of conservatives can be found not only among the left-wing activists such as Lithwick. It has seeped into the general public. Permit me to offer an example.
A group of my former students from a Catholic high school in the Bronx in the mid-1960s has created a section on Facebook where they exchange reminiscences about the old days, along with comments about politics, music, movies, etc., of current interest. They are now men in their mid-sixties.
I enjoy reading their comments. It intrigues me to see what kind of adults they have become. There are lots of surprises. Some of the old hippy-types are now law and order conservatives, some old tough guys are now fawning grandpas, some dashing ladies’ men dumpy old men, some old jocks sedentary types, and some of the more studious types avid runners and skiers. Most have remained loyal to the Church, but in varying degrees of commitment.
In mid-January, one of them posted a shortened version of Psalm 23, sometimes called the Psalm of David: “The Lord is my shepherd. He leads me in the paths of righteousness. I will fear no evil. I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” The man has been having some health problems and was attempting to put them in context, as well as give comfort to any of his former classmates if they find themselves in similar straits. I had no idea that anyone would object.
But someone did. Let us call him “Joe.” He wrote, “So I guess it’s okay to be Pro-Trump, just as long as you carry around a PSALM in your heart. One question though; will Mexicans, Muslims, POW’s, etc., be allowed in that house that you’re dwelling in with the Lord?” It is Dahlia Lithwick’s view of the world. One cannot back Donald Trump without being a sexist, a racist, and a homophobe.
I was tempted to write something to support the man who posted the psalm, but I didn’t. I never revealed my personal political views when I was their classroom teacher, and would still feel it out of place if I did so now. I know: I doesn’t make sense. They are not teenage boys any longer.
But I didn’t have to respond. The man who posted the psalm did so himself.
He wrote to the man criticizing him, “Joe, why you would choose this post is beyond my understanding. You have no idea what is in my heart. My home is always open to anyone. My best friends where I now live are Muslims. I have taught ESL as a volunteer to hundreds of Mexicans and worked at a local hospital with vets suffering with PTSD. I help feed the poor, clothe the infirm, and visit the imprisoned. I am not sure why you are so angry but I will keep a prayer lifted up for you and family and pray for our country. My house has many mansions.”
To which his critic replied: “I think that’s great that you do all those things. You are certainly a much better person than I am. What I don’t understand is why you defend, promote, etc., a lowlife who is willing to round up human beings, break up families, disrespect a handicapped reporter, make fun of a POW, etc., etc.”
In other words, someone cannot have supported Trump in this last election with high-minded motives. The left’s agenda equals virtue, the right’s does not. Case closed.
For my entire adult life, I have heard from liberals that it is wrong to be close-minded, to impute ignoble motives to those who disagree with us; that we must listen to both sides in the “marketplace of ideas,” to not assume that we have a monopoly on the truth, that reasoned discourse is the surest path to the truth. The modern left has been the champion of the “free speech movement” from its beginnings at the University of California at Berkeley under Mario Savio. Remember him?
That commitment to a free exchange of ideas has ended. It would be hard not to conclude that it existed only as a tactic designed by the left to disarm their adversaries on the right. The old rules don’t apply to Donald Trump and his supporters. Name-calling and charges of racism have become virtues on the left, boycotts and blacklists noble endeavors.
It all reeks of hypocrisy.
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