I used to think a big part of being a conservative meant bashing immigrants and minorities. Things I would today consider fear mongering.
At the time I would have said I was being “real.”
That’s how hateful minds work. They believe that all people—particularly other white people—see the same “truths” they do about immigrants and minorities and are just too scared to say so.
Everyone is just being “politically correct.”
I said, as a radio personality and writer, that Mexicans were “taking over” the country, all Muslims were a threat, anyone who cared about blacks or their concerns was “pandering.”
f the slander “cuck” existed a decade ago—the popular alt-right term used today to describe anyone who believes minorities aren’t the enemy—I would have used it.
Thankfully, I became a libertarian.
I wrote about this evolution at Politico in 2013 as it related to Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign:
"Something else was happening to me around that time—as I listened to Paul, my worldview began to evolve. Paul was serious about border security, but unlike other Republicans, he didn’t seem angry or hateful. Libertarianism, after all, is based on the relationship between the state and the individual, often with little regard for culture or groups. I had always thought this was shortsighted, but I began to change my mind. Ron Paul blamed illegal immigration on government, not immigrants. “If we had a truly free-market economy, the illegal immigrants would not be the scapegoat,” Paul said at the third Republican debate in 2007."
“Not the scapegoat? Many conservatives, including me, had spent years scapegoating Hispanic immigrants themselves,” I wrote.
“Paul never went there. He attacked government, not people,” I said.
Thursday night, Donald Trump attacked people. He peddled the idea that an omnipotent government—his—would have the magical power to stop immigrants, Muslims and blacks from murdering us all.
Reason’s Peter Suderman had a reaction similar to mine, “Donald Trump’s speech accepting the Republican nomination was easily the most overt display of authoritarian fear-mongering I can remember seeing in American politics.”
“The entire speech was dark and dystopian, painting America as a dismal, dangerous place beset by violent outsiders,” Suderman observed. “In response to the nation’s problems, Trump had only one solution: Donald Trump, the strongman who would take America back, by force if necessary.”
Now if you asked Trump if fear mongering or peddling hate was his intent–I don’t think he’s a bigot but isn’t self-aware enough to understand the dark emotions he’s recklessly unleashing—he would likely scoff and accuse you of being politically correct.
To make such an accusation is to encourage Trump and his followers who actually are racists even more.
They love this.
This election wasn’t supposed to be this way. Or at least, I had hoped.
A year ago my presidential candidate was Rand Paul. I hoped he could win the nomination and recast the Republican Party in a libertarian-conservative mold similar to how Trump has transformed it into a vehicle for populism and nationalism.
A more libertarian GOP would have featured a less interventionist foreign policy; an economic agenda that prioritized free markets over government solutions; vigorous enforcement of the Constitution including and especially the constantly threatened 2nd and 4th amendments; a serious commitment to border security coupled with practical immigration reform; and cultivating a pro-life culture, among other things.
It also would have aggressively courted minorities and other groups Republicans have historically shutout. Libertarians would grow the party’s base. A more libertarian GOP would emphasize how big government is minorities’ enemy too, as Sen. Paul emphasized and continues to do.
Emphasizing individualism as a priority—individual rights, protections and basic dignity—is key to any American government worth having and any conservatism worthy of that name.
