'Republican' Is Not a Synonym for 'Racist' - The Atlantic - 0 views
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s American conservatism inherently bigoted? Many conservatives would be enraged by the question. Many liberals suspect the answer is yes.
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These different reactions stem, in part, from different definitions of bigotry. Conservatives tend to define it in terms of intention: You’re guilty of bigotry if you’re trying to harm people because of their race, gender, or the like. Liberals are more likely to define it in terms of impact: You’re guilty if your actions disadvantage an already disadvantaged group, irrespective of your motives.
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As a conservative, you may feel an impulse to conserve the past. In a country whose history is marked by the subordination of blacks, women, and LGBT people, however, many liberals believe that conserving the past maintains that subordination.
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Liberals and conservatives may never agree on whether or how deeply bigotry infects American conservatism. They don’t need to. What America needs is a conservatism whose devotees feel less stigmatized, and who earn that lack of stigma by trying harder to disentangle their support of small government and traditional morality from America’s history of bigotry. To make that possible, liberals and conservatives each need something from the other.
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Although conservatives dominate America’s elected offices, liberals wield the greater power to stigmatize.
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pressuring people to accept a nonbigoted belief can engender resentment that leads them to express more bigotry than they did before.
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Liberals would be wise to recognize this vicious cycle, and to use the nuclear epithet more sparingly. Yes, Fox News and company will likely describe political correctness as a menace to white, straight, Christian men no matter what. But liberals can make Sean Hannity’s work harder by resisting the temptation to deploy the label bigoted, or one of its synonyms, when describing an idea they consider stupid or immoral.
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Before calling conservatives bigots, liberals should remember something about their own ideology: Progressivism is progressive. It seeks ever-greater moral advance. That means that if liberals have their way, the list of things considered discriminatory will continue to grow.
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Given conservatives’ instinct to conserve, liberals cannot reasonably expect them to instantly declare bigoted something they have long considered acceptable.