Trump Battles False Anti-Racism

Submitted by Dave (Canada), Aug 17, 2016 at 19:00

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, decent people decided to act decisively against racism. Notable examples were the Civil Rights movement in America and the Catholic Church's leadership against anti-Semitism with Nostre Aetate. These anti-racist efforts were rational because the notion at the core of Nazism, that someone's physicality determines their moral character, is scientifically absurd. Truth and virtue were aligned.

As time went on, however, the human tendency to take virtue to extremes took over. Eventually, it became racist to disparage other religious ideologies or cultures. While racism may indeed lurk in such attitudes, ideologies and cultures are human creations, as imperfect and deserving of criticism as their fallible creators. Thus arose "political correctness", and virtue and truth parted ways.

This has had many malign consequences. One of them is that it complicates the defense against Islamism by making it racist or Islamophobic to even criticize Islam. Political elites are hesitant to probe in those areas and the Democrats are totally mum. It's therefore no surprise that a political outsider like Trump has championed a counter-revolution. He is rich and enough of a boor to be heedless of social niceties. He may be careless and obnoxious, and he may well get crushed in November, but his legacy could turn out to be that truth and virtue will come closer together again, and the world will be better off.

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