by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-black \u2014 it is hard to keep track of all the recent allegations of bigotry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State representatives in Arizona overwhelmingly passed, to popular acclaim, an immigration law that the Obama administration has, for now, successfully blocked in federal court. Arizonans simply wanted the federal government to enforce its own laws, yet they were quickly dubbed bigots and racists \u2014 more worried about profiling Hispanics than curtailing illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
In California, a federal judge has just overturned Proposition 8 ensuring traditional marriage. Voters in November 2008 had amended the California constitution to recognize marriage only between a man and woman, while allowing civil unions between partners of the same sex.<\/p>\n
Californians took that step in response to the state Supreme Court\u2019s voiding of Proposition 22, a similar referendum on traditional marriage that California voters passed in 2000. Apparently, a stubborn majority of Californians still\u00a0think of\u00a0marriage as it has been followed in some 2,500 years of Western custom and practice. In contrast, gay groups have framed the issue as one of civil rights, often charging prejudice on the part of their opponents.<\/p>\n
Another controversy is brewing a mere 600 feet from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, site of the 9\/11 attacks, where a Muslim group wishes to build a $100 million, 13-story mosque. Opponents feel this is hardly a way to build bridges across religious divides, but instead a provocative act that tarnishes the memory of the nearly 3,000 people who died at the hands of radical Islamic terrorists.<\/p>\n
New York State residents poll in opposition to the project. Their unease reflects legitimate questions over the nature of the foreign funding for the project, and the disturbing writings and statements of the chief proponent of the plan, Feisal Abdul Rauf. They also worry that radical Islamists will use the mosque\u2019s construction (it will probably rise before the World Trade Center complex is rebuilt) as a propaganda tool.<\/p>\n
In response, once again the majority has been dubbed bigoted and prejudiced, this time against Muslims, for asking for a more appropriate location, farther away from Ground Zero.<\/p>\n
After lengthy investigation, Rep. Charles Rangel, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is facing charges of unethical conduct. In response, Rangel has scoffed that a plea-bargain offer was nothing more than an \u201cEnglish, Anglo-Saxon procedure.\u201d The implication was that ongoing prejudice, not moral lapses, caused Rangel\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n
Rangel\u2019s charges come at a time when Rep. Maxine Waters faces ethics questions for allegedly using her office to steer federal money to a bank that was associated with her husband. And since eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus have recently faced ethics inquiries, we are hearing that race, not unethical conduct, is the real reason for the investigations.<\/p>\n
These diverse cases offer some lessons.<\/p>\n
One, legitimate public concerns can be attributed to religious, ethnic, or racial prejudice in hopes that the debate will hinge on supposedly bad motives rather than convincing arguments.\u00a0Ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0attacks are always a sign of shaky logic.<\/p>\n Two, in most of these cases, the majority is opposed by a variety of activist groups, government officials, and judges. The charge of bigotry is usually expressed in terms of a sophisticated, liberal-thinking elite reining in the emotional and illogical unwashed masses. We saw proof of that with the release of confidential e-mails from the controversial \u201cJournoList\u201d group, which was comprised largely of influential liberal journalists, one of whom openly advocated defaming their opponents by calling them racists.<\/p>\n Three, these cry-wolf tactics are now stale. A real danger is that when legitimate charges of prejudice are leveled in the future, most will shrug and ignore them.<\/p>\n We live in a complex, multiracial, and religiously diverse society. A majority of black voters in California opposed gay marriage. Most Muslims probably concurred. Some 70 percent of Americans expressed support for the Arizona law, an overwhelming figure that would have to include some Asians, blacks, and Hispanics. White and Hispanic congressional officials have faced ethics charges, often more serious than those leveled against Rangel and Waters.<\/p>\n In other words, there is no simple ideological, racial, or religious divide between a monolithic \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem.\u201d We have devolved to the point where promiscuously crying \u201cBigot!\u201d and \u201cRacist!\u201d signals a failure to convince 51 percent of the people of the merits of an argument.<\/p>\n It is too often that simple \u2014 and that sad.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-black \u2014 it is hard to keep track of all the recent allegations of bigotry.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[565],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-mq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9281,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nihilism-of-sanctuary-cities\/","url_meta":{"origin":1390,"position":0},"title":"The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJ Media There are an estimated 300 or so jurisdictions -- entire states, counties, cities, and municipalities -- that since the early 1980s have enacted \u201csanctuary city\u201d laws, forbidding full enforcement of federal immigration law within their jurisdictions. Most of these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net\/e1\/victordavishanson\/user-content\/2\/files\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3213,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-went-wrong-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1390,"position":1},"title":"What Went Wrong?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, it wasn't\u00a0conservatism. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Conservatives have already in the three weeks after the election come up with three competing explanations \u2014 and remedies \u2014 for their congressional defeats and the victory of the relatively unknown Barack Obama.\u00a0 Post-election voting patterns and statistical data can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2008"","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/american-groupspeak\/","url_meta":{"origin":1390,"position":2},"title":"American Groupspeak","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Juan Williams was just fired from NPR. His sin? He confessed to occasional anxiety when Muslims board airplanes, and then went on to explain why stereotyping is wrong. The fate of Williams reminds us that Americans have developed two personas \u2014 one public\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2010"","block_context":{"text":"November 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/november-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1632,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-could-they-do-that-in-arizona\/","url_meta":{"origin":1390,"position":3},"title":"How Could They Do That in Arizona","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Arizona Hysteria Racist! Nativist! Profiler! Xenophobe! Write or say anything about illegal immigration, and one should expect to be called all of that and more \u2014 even if a strong supporter of legal immigration. Illegal alien becomes undocumented worker. Anti-immigrant replaces anti-illegal-immigration. \u201cComprehensive\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8723,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-sanctuary-cities-the-new-confederates\/","url_meta":{"origin":1390,"position":4},"title":"Are Sanctuary Cities the New Confederates?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online There are now 340 sanctuary cities in the United States \u2014 and the list is growing. 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