The liberal myth of the intolerant other
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Drag queens danced under rainbow flags in Hendersonville on June 15 as the small rural town celebrated its first gay Pride Day.
With the imprimatur of a mayoral proclamation and the support of many local businesses in this Republican-dominated county, the event was yet another sign of how North Carolina, and America, continues to become more inclusive and welcoming.
Those dancing drag queens also gave the lie to the drumbeat alarms about the ascendance of bigotry and hate during the age of Trump.
That left-wing narrative is false. It uses cherry-picked data (the recent rise in relatively low rates of hate crimes) and analysis by anecdote (turning the racist Charlottesville marchers into representatives of white Americans) to smear our country. It pushes misleading numbers to trumpet phony “wars” on women, blacks, immigrants, gays and lesbians. It dismisses the obvious and indelible gains achieved by once marginalized groups – as well as the rapid growth in our foreign-born population – to make the bizarre claim that little has changed since the 1950s.
The Hendersonville celebration, for example, reflects the remarkable increase in support for same-sex marriage in North Carolina just since 2009 – rising to 62% from 37%.
So what’s really going on? Ironically, this left-wing propaganda is largely a reflection of white privilege.
Studies shows that white liberals – whose money and position give them inordinate power to shape the national discourse – have moved far to the left. From their perches in academia, the media and Silicon Valley, they espouse an intolerant form of identity politics driven by the psychological need to confirm their own virtue by damning other whites.
In his must read article in Tablet, “America’s White Saviors,” Zach Goldberg mines a broad range of polls of surveys to show that the leftward lurch of white liberals actually began around the year 2000 — well before the emergence of Trump (or Obama).
Since then, white liberals have shown the greatest increase of any group in their support for affirmative action, for the idea that government should ensure “equal income across all races” and the belief that white people have “too much” political influence. Indeed, white liberals are the only group of Americans, Goldberg writes, “that expressed a preference for other racial and ethnic communities above their own.”
White liberals are much more likely than black and Asian Democrats to embrace heretofore radical ideas regarding social and gender issues.
These findings dovetail with a 2018 study by the liberal group More in Common that found that progressive activists — an almost uniquely homogenous group of rich, highly educated whites — are the only group in America who do not consider political correctness to be a problem.
Many forces are propelling the Great Awokening, including the left-wing bent of American education. But, Goldberg notes, social media is a main driver. White liberals spend more time in their virtual echo chamber than any other group, reinforcing their views and shaming those who question the party line.
This mindset is amplified by publications like The New York Times, which has sharply increased its use of terms such as patriarchy, privilege, racism and implicit bias.
White liberals will interpret all this as evidence of their enlightenment. But that doesn’t negate the fact that these champions of equality are using their power and privilege to impose their views on the rest of us — views that smear America so they can feel good about themselves.
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