Aprogressive columnist finally let his mask slip this week and revealed the extreme liberal agenda for what it really is, a hate-filled and intolerant movement aimed at crushing anyone who dissents or gets in its way. Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald who has a syndicated column. His May 6 offering is a revealing look inside the mind of the far left in this country that many conservatives suspect exists, but its racial and anti-religious venom is seldom put into print.
In his latest screed, Mr. Pitts answers one of his progressive reader’s emails with a polite admonition. Rose, the reader, had the nerve to suggest that fellow liberals try to understand the position of Trump voters on issues. Mr. Pitts firmly puts Rose in her in her place as to the futility of trying to deal rationally with Trump voters. I am assuming that Trump voters include anyone who did not vote for Hillary Clinton in the last election.
Mr. Pitts politely but firmly reminds Rose that these people are not to be reasoned with; they must be crushed. Mr. Pitts lectures Rose that Trump voters — and that includes most Americans who claim to be conservatives — are on the wrong side of history and need to be swept aside by what he sees as the inevitable tide of non-white, non-Christian, non-male voters who are the future of this country; these are his words, not mine.
I’ve taken the time to review some of Mr. Pitts‘ columns to understand how he views the world and the people that make up the 50 percent of the voting block that he wants to defeat. How does he define the evil conservative Trump block? To some extent, his approach is a darker and less humorous incarnation of Jeff Foxworthy’s “you might be a Redneck” routine:
You may be a Trump voter if you are a white Christian male, and your opinion must be discounted automatically. If your wife or significant other agrees with you, she is a fellow traveler and needs to be discounted as well.
You may be a Trump voter if you question whether or not global warming is settled science as President Obama and The New York Times have decreed.
You may be a Trump voter if you think identity politics is not inherently a good thing and that any cop who uses a firearm is not automatically a racist criminal who needs to be fired, even if he or she is an African-American.
You may be a Trump voter if you think that Bernie Sanders’ concept of giving a $15-dollar-an-hour job to every American — no matter how indolent, incompetent or drug addled — is an idiotic idea.
You may be a Trump voter if you think Obamacare was an ill-conceived and badly executed idea.
You may be a Trump voter if you think that the Iran nuclear deal was a desperate attempt by Barack Obama and John Kerry to have a foreign policy legacy after their failures in Iraq and Syria.
You may be a Trump voter if the think gun-free zones will actually prevent determined psychopaths from attempting mass murder.
I frankly wasn’t a rabid Trump supporter in 2016, but I knew I didn’t want Mrs. Clinton as my president. So, I guess Ms. Rose can bury me on the trash heap of history with other conservative Americans. In reading Mr. Pitts, I am harkened back to Nikita Khrushchev. Mr. Pitts was born in 1957 so he would not remember the Communist leader of the former Soviet Union who told the Western capitalistic democracies that he would bury us in 1956. Khrushchev is dead and so is the Soviet Union, but far-leftist rhetoric still lives on.
Maybe Mr. Pitts is right in contending that demographics will crush conservative America, but what if? What if large numbers of young black men decide that Kanye West is right and they are better off under conservative policies than a Sanders-style welfare state? What if Catholic Latin American voters decide that their values of Christianity are inconsistent with Mr. Pitts‘ approach of celebrating atheism and/or non-Western religions? What if millennial voters suddenly find out that their prospects look better under the Republicans than they did under Mr. Obama?
None of this is certain, but Mr. Pitts is as certain as Khrushchev was that the far left will triumph. It may be a little early to bury conservatism. In the words of Monty Python; “we’re not dead yet.”
• Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel, is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs. |
