By
Gadfly
The shootings in El
Paso and Dayton are most unfortunate and reflect the hubris of America’s current
culture. Our thoughts and prayers are
with the victims and their families.
The title of this
essay is a spinoff from a Washington
Examiner editorial,
“Trump must name and condemn the evil of white nationalism.” The editorial was prompted by the killing of civilians
in El Paso, Texas. Although
well-intended, the editorial merely demonstrates how effective the Marxist left
has been at controlling the public narrative.
Eerily, this dynamic is an example of communist Douglas Hyde’s
experience as the news editor of London’s The
Daily Worker in manipulating other communists and the general public, as
described in his memoir, I Believed. The dynamic also reflects Admiral Ben Moreell’s
observations from the 1960s:
Our once free institutions,
political, economic, educational and social, are largely in the hands of the
proponents of the Welfare State, whose all openly avowed goal is to centralize power
in the hands of the political apparatus in Washington. This enhancement of
political power at the expense of individual rights, so often disguised as
"democracy" or "freedom" or "civil rights," is
"socialism," no matter what name tag it bears. Here we should recall
the warning of the late Dean Inge: "History
seems to show that the powers of evil have won their greatest triumphs by
capturing the organizations which were formed to defeat them, and that when the
devil has thus changed the contents of the bottles, he never alters the labels.
The fort may have been captured by the enemy, but it still flies the flag of
its defenders."[1]
White supremacy . . .
white nationalism . . . these are the crimes being advanced by the Washington Examiner and other critics
based on the El Paso shooting. According
to social media statements, the shooter expressed anti-Mexican sentiments. If we are to reason (or mimic) like the Examiner, then we are supposed to leap
to the conclusion that America is threatened by white nationalism. And if we are to maximize political capital (abundantly
visible on today’s Meet the Press) from
the event, then we are to blame guns for the violence and casualties. How many guns were responsible for the 3,000+
casualties on 9/11? And despite the
unfortunate number of gun-related homicides, they pale when compared to the
number of suicides
afflicting our country.
The Examiner editorial board stated:
Plenty in the media and in politics blame Trump for the rise
of white nationalism. Many of them are the same folks who have always argued
that conservatism — whether tax cuts, defense of the unborn, or belief in free
enterprise — is just thinly veiled racism, and on these grounds alone they
don't deserve to be taken seriously. Even so, a president has to be above the
blame game played by his critics. The single best way to prove them wrong would
be for Trump to crusade actively against white nationalism.
The apparent “acculturated”
thinking by Examiner editors may
explain the incongruity of “a president has to be above the blame game” and the
imperative to “crusade actively against white nationalism.” Does this imperative also imply the need for
a crusade against “white privilege” and any opposition to reparations and secular
humanistic values? For the supposedly
educated members of the Examiner’s
editorial board, this thinking puts its readers, if they buy into it, on a very
slippery slope.
What motivates someone
like the El Paso, Dayton, Columbine High School, Aurora theater (among other
incidents) shooters? Can reason be to
blame? What is reasoned about racial
supremacy and its connection to murder?
The brutal answer: absolutely
nothing.
If reason has any
moral basis, then how can one take the life of another person except as a
matter of self-defense? This question
becomes more complicated when talking about war. Even in this case, civil societies have
defined moral boundaries as to what is just and unjust during war. Islamic jihad further complicates this
question because hostile actions stem from ideology and not the security interests
of a nation-state.
This is the pressing
issue for America: ideology, especially multicultural
ideology. The Marxist left advocates for
multiculturalism because it becomes its ammunition against classical liberal
political philosophy that originally defined America. Classical liberalism--with its emphasis on
individual liberty, private property, limited government, free market/free
enterprise grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition-- served as the organizing
principle for American nationalism. As a
melting pot, American nationalism involved assimilation by a diversified
population.
Multiculturalism is
contradictory to the notion of assimilation and can only advance and survive
based on acculturation, which is politically coercive. Multiculturalism fragments and
alienates. It turns many into strangers
in a strange land.[2] Some become so alienated they find themselves
on the dark side of humanity. They act
out on their pain—some through suicide, some through homicide.
We don’t hear the
Marxist left address this form of alienation; to the contrary, they exploit
this alienation in order to agitate and organize against classical liberalism,
and we hear a lot about capitalist exploitation—Bernie Sanders and other leftist
candidates are very bold and candid in their public statements.
Capitalism fuels
prosperity. Prosperity is not possible
without capitalism. The corruption known
as greed occurs in any economic system, capitalist or socialist. Unfortunately, bigoted views can obscure
objective analysis—another product of the hubris of America’s modern culture as
demonstrated in this pathetic article
by Jeff Guo, formerly with The Washington
Post.
Capitalist
exploitation does not explain the brutal life in inner cities, such as
Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. These
are communities that have been run by Marxist leftist policies for
decades.
When President Trump
pulls the band aid off of this cancer, he’s labeled a racist. And now, when a conservative editorial board
picks up the left’s mantra about white supremacy, we may have crossed the Rubicon
as a free and just nation. This assertion
does not deny the existence of white supremacists, or black supremacists, or
climate change supremacists, or racists, or idiots, and so forth. There is a huge difference between mole hills
and mountains. And as an old allusion by
Aristotle states, “one swallow does not make a summer.”
For more analysis
along these lines, I recommend some past Gadfly articles:
[1] This quote is from a speech, “The Right to Be Wrong,”
delivered on November 22, 1963—the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated—published
in Vital Speeches, Volume XXX, Number
5, December 1963. Note: Dean Inge is Dean William Ralph Inge who was
an English clergyman and writer. Inge’s quote is from Christian Ethics and Modern Problems, Kessinger Publishing, 2003 (originally
published in 1930 by Putnam Sons), p. 142.
[2] Archbishop Charles J. Chaput captured this
phenomenon in his book, Strangers in a
Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith
in a Post-Christian World, (New York, NY:
Henry Holt and Company, 2017).
