We Can’t Have ‘National Dialogues’ If People Get Fired For Talking Honestly

“While we write and print millions of words about race in America, why is it still so hard to have a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue about perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue in American life?” asks David French in his Dispatch article “American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go.” Yet he does not mention in his story of personal change the elephant in the room: the Black Lives Matter movement’s radical cultural hegemony.

Establishment Republicans made the same mistake by ignoring the movement’s radical premise: that at its core, America is rotten and systemically racist, and thus woke Americans must rebuild and reimagine the country from the ground up.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney marched with the Black Lives Matter movement, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted, “It’s important to understand that the death of George Floyd was personal and painful for many. In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone.”

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell admirably tweeted, “Our republic can survive a pandemic. It can survive civil unrest. But ideas and deliberation are our foundation. America cannot be America if civil disagreement becomes a contradiction in terms. Anti-speech silencing tactics are a cancer in a free and open society.” But aside from McConnell and Sen. Josh Hawley, few Republican leaders denounced BLM’s central claim.