CITY JOURNAL
Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth. Point out that women and
men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate amount
of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and
the Left leaps to its collective feet in openmouthed shock, like
Margaret Dumont after a Groucho Marx wisecrack. This is racism! This is
sexism! This is some sort of phobia! I’m shocked, shocked to find facts
being spoken in polite company!
No one is really shocked, of course. This is simply a form of bullying.
The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to
silence our opposition to their bad policies. The idea is to make it
seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious.
The bullying is highly effective and very dangerous. In England, in the
city of Rotherham, at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls, some as young as 11,
were brutally raped by Muslim immigrants over a period of years in the
2000s. Police and other officials worked to keep the facts hidden
because, according to multiple reports, they were afraid of being called
racist. Think about that: police officers did not want to seem racist,
so they stood by and let their city’s children be raped. The same thing
goes on in other cities in England and throughout Europe. And in fact,
some who have spoken out have had their careers curtailed by
manufactured scandal. The message is clear: it’s just not nice to tell
the truth. It’s just not done. Don’t do it.
Here in the states, the First Amendment has so far allowed old-fashioned
American loudmouths to fight the system whenever they could find ways
around our monolithic corporate media. But the Empire of Lies is quick
to strike back. Google/YouTube now stands charged by multiple accusers
of singling out conservative voices for censorship, “fact-checking,” and
demonetization. Hidden-camera videos released by Project Veritas this
week show Twitter employees conspiring to “shadow ban” conservatives on
their system. On campus, intelligent conservative speakers of good will
like Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Christina Hoff-Sommers have faced
violent protests meant to shut them up.
No person of importance on the right seeks to silence anyone on the
left. The Left, on the other hand, is broadly committed to ostracizing,
blacklisting, and even criminalizing right-wing speech.
Enter President Donald Trump. He is a rude and crude person. He speaks
like a Queens real estate guy on a construction site. And because he
does not have good manners, he thoughtlessly breaks the rules with which
the Left has sought to muzzle those who disagree with them. In this
regard, I frequently compare Trump to Randle Patrick McMurphy, the
loudmouthed, ill-mannered roustabout from Ken Kesey’s brilliant novel
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy comes into an insane asylum
controlled by a pleasant, smiling nightmare of a head nurse named
Ratched. Nurse Ratched, while pretending to be the soul of motherly
care, is actually a castrating, silencing tyrant. Her rules of good
manners, supposedly fashioned for the benefit of all, are really a
system of mental slavery. All of McMurphy’s salient character flaws
suddenly become heroic in the context of her oppression. Only his
belligerent ignorance of what constitutes good behavior can overturn the
velvet strangulation of her rule.
For Nurse Ratched, read Hillary Clinton, CNN, the New York Times, Yale
University, Twitter, and Google/YouTube—all the tender ministers of
polite silence and enforced dishonesty. If Donald Trump’s boorishness
crashes like a bull through the crystal madhouse of their leftism—well,
good. It’s about time.
I don’t know exactly what Trump said in a closed-door meeting with
senators at the White House this week. Unnamed sources say that he
referred to some African countries and Haiti as “shitholes.” Maybe so;
sounds like him. In any case, when it comes to a chance to attack Trump,
our journalists don’t waste time with fact-gathering or source-
identifying. Like Madonna, they just strike a pose. Various media
knuckleheads have reacted to the alleged comment by calling Trump
“racist,” “Nazi,” “Evil,” and a “terrorist sympathizer.”
(Personally, my first thought on hearing about the remark was: “What
squirrely little tattle-tale of a weasel went running to the press with
that?” But never mind. That’s just me.)
Let’s state the obvious. Some countries are shitholes. To claim that
this is racist is racist. They are not shitholes because of the color of
the populace but because of bad ideas, corrupt governance, false
religion, and broken culture. Further, most of the problems in these
countries are generated at the top. Plenty of rank-and-file immigrants
from such ruined venues ultimately make good Americans—witness those who
came from 1840s potato-famine Ireland, a shithole if ever there was one!
It takes caution and skill to separate the good from the bad.
For these very reasons, absurd immigration procedures like chain
migration, lotteries, and unvetted entries are deeply destructive. They
can lead to the sort of poor choices that create a Rotherham. Trump’s
suggestions—to vet immigrants for pro-American ideas and skills that
will help our country—are smart and reasonable and would clearly make
the system better if implemented.
So, when it comes to the Great Shithole Controversy of 2018, my feeling
is: I do not care, not even a little. I’m sorry that it takes someone
like Trump to break the spell of silence the Left is forever weaving
around us. I wish a man like Ronald Reagan would come along and
accomplish the same thing with more wit and grace. But that was another
culture. History deals the cards it deals; we just play them. Trump is
what we’ve got.
For all the bad language, for all the loose talk, I would rather hear a
man speak as a man without fear of the Nurse Ratcheds in the press and
the academy than have him neutered and gagged by a system of good
manners that has been misused as a form of oppression. Better
impoliteness than silence. Better crudeness than lies.
We have seen the effect of uncontrolled immigration on Europe. It is
very, very bad. The fact is: some countries are shitholes. I don’t want
this to become one of them.
Andrew Klavan is a novelist and City Journal contributing editor. His
podcast is featured Monday through Thursday at the DailyWire.com.
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