The liberal error of conflating nationalism with racism

Why can't conservatives talk about Western values without being called racists?

Donald Trump addresses Warsaw.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

Liberals were quick to deride President Trump's speech in Poland last week. While many conservatives heard the president deliver a thankfully forceful defense of country, family, faith, and freedom, many on the left heard loud dog whistles to the racist alt-right.

Trump's speech "often resorted to rhetorical conceits typically used by the European and American alt-right," Sarah Wildman wrote at Vox. "For as much as parts of Trump's speech fit comfortably in a larger tradition of presidential rhetoric, these passages are clear allusions to ideas and ideologies with wide currency on the white nationalist right," argued Slate's Jamelle Bouie. "The West is a racial and religious term," wrote The Atlantic's Peter Beinart. "To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white."

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.