One Word at a Time

by Tom McCaffrey, ©2023

(Jun. 5, 2022) — “[T]the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.” So said President Biden at Howard University’s commencement recently. Was he telling a bald-faced lie? At the very least, he was corrupting the language. Herein, a primer on some of the more egregious crimes against clear thought that are currently bedeviling well-meaning Americans. But first a word on precisely what the culture vandals are out to destroy.

The American Way of Life

Despite the best efforts of the neo-Marxists and their collaborators in both parties, America still possesses a distinctive way of life. Those who subscribe to it believe that “governments are instituted among men” to secure the rights of individuals, and that individuals do not exist to serve governments. They believe in the rule of law, equality before the law (as the only sort of equality government should concern itself with), and basic law and order. They believe in freedom of religion, speech, and press and in the right to bear arms. They believe in a person’s right to run his own life and in his obligation to take full responsibility for it. They believe in private property, in earning one’s keep, and in the economic freedom and opportunity afforded by capitalism. They put great stock in science and technology, and they see industrialism as an overwhelmingly beneficial human achievement. They see the family as a fundamental and essential institution, and if they are religious, they are likely Judeo-Christian. Their language is English, and they do not believe that all cultures are created equal.

Diversity

If every American subscribed to the American way of life, it would be a very bad thing, we are told. That’s because diversity is good, they say. Race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual identity–the more ways in which the members of any group of Americans differ from each other, the better. No valid rationale for this conception of diversity has ever been offered. Usually, it is simply asserted, as in this statement from the website of the Boston Foundation, “Diversity is core to what makes cities great.” Diversity thus conceived is always treated as intrinsically and self-evidently beneficial. In truth it is an Orwellian pseudo-concept conjured out of thin air to serve a subversive political agenda. Only a confused, compliant, or deeply cynical mind would accept it at face value.

Promoting diversity is a means by which neo-Marxists dilute and weaken organizations committed to the American way of life. Until recently, the US military was the most effective fighting force in the world and a bastion of support for the American way of life. Then open homosexuality became acceptable, then women in combat, and now the Army provides transition surgery and medical care for aspiring transsexuals. All of this was done not to make the armed forces more effective militarily, but to help the “oppressed” and to bring diversity to our fighting forces. The result will be to transform the armed forces into the kind of organization that no real warrior will want to be part of, and, in the bargain, to neutralize it as a stronghold of support for the American way of life.

It was white-skinned peoples who created the American way of life, and whites tend to subscribe to it in greater numbers than non-whites. So the Biden Administration has set out to erase whites’ majority status within the U.S. population by importing third-world aliens wholesale. Inevitably, some of these aliens will feel like outsiders in their new culture, and the cry will go up that, in the name of inclusiveness, Americans must abandon their own, distinctive way of life to accommodate the newcomers. (Consider, for example, how we’re being urged to overhaul our socio-sexual tradition in order to accommodate transsexuals.) To the neo-Marxist mind, the arrival of each newcomer represents a claim against the American way of life.

Systemic Racism

America’s distinctive way of life permeates every institution and every nook and cranny of American society. But according to the cultural relativism of the neo-Marxists, because it was developed by white-skinned peoples, the American way of life is thoroughly, systematically “white.” There is nothing universally valid, they claim, about the rule of law, equality before the law, or any of the other principles that characterize the American way of life. For Americans to maintain their way of life is, therefore, to perpetuate whiteness. And in a society that mindlessly exalts cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity, to perpetuate whiteness is to perpetuate “systemic racism.” The overall thrust of the charge of systemic racism is that Americans are not entitled to have their own distinctive way of life.

White Privilege

Whites are not only guilty of racism, they are also guilty of not being subjected to racism. This is called “white privilege.” To compensate for being white in a country largely run by whites with a culture developed by whites, whites need to transform their way of life to better accommodate non-whites, so the logic goes.

White Supremacy

There was a time when the term “white supremacist” referred to violent racists. It still does mean this to most Americans. So when President Biden says that white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat to the country today, it sounds like an outright lie. But when we learn that “[T]he Biden Administration used a $40 million grant program of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ostensibly earmarked for anti-terrorism purposes, to target conservative organizations and media, including Breitbart News,” we realize that the President is, as a practical matter, treating defenders of the American way of life as violent terrorists. The January 6^th show trials set the template for this equivocation.

The effort is well under way to persuade the American public that the term “white supremacist” includes anyone who advocates the American way of life. Consider Merriam-Webster’s (second) definition of white supremacy: “the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.” If we leave out their editorial comment at the end of this definition and substitute a more neutral ending, then “white supremacy” means simply “the social, economic, and political systems that collectively [characterize America].” Or consider that other storehouse of left-leaning conventional wisdom, Wikipedia: “As a political ideology, [white supremacy] imposes and maintains cultural, social, historical, and/or institutional domination by white people and their non-white supporters.” In other words, “white supremacy” can mean simply white culture whenever that culture is a country’s dominant one. 

One day soon, the Democratic faithful (and the more pusillanimous Republicans) will reflexively look upon anyone who defends the American way of life as a violent white supremacist. In strategically associating the two groups, the neo-Marxists are anticipating the day–whose arrival they are working mightily to hasten by censoring their opposition and corrupting the election process, when patriotic Americans will no longer have a voice in the conduct of public affairs, and their only recourse will be to resort to arms. When that day arrives, the American public will have been well-primed to expect violence from those “racists” who would defend the American way of life.

Corrupted language is the enemy of clear thought. Minds populated by pseudo-concepts like those above are putty in the hands of neo-Marxist destroyers. We can begin to reclaim our civilization by cleaning up the language, one word at a time.

Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and Prosperity.