Regularly, something happens that reminds me why I became a conservative in the first place — and when I say “conservative,” I mean a Reaganite. (These days, more than ever, you have to specify.) Earlier this week, I had a post about President Trump, saying that you can tell when his heart is in something and when it isn’t. When he denounced the Nazis et al. in Charlottesville, he sounded pro forma. When he denounced Kenneth Frazier, the CEO who left the president’s Manufacturing Council, he did it with gusto.
In my post, I said that you could tell the same about President Obama: You knew when his heart was in something and when it wasn’t.
I also said that Trump was loath to apologize or admit error, ever. In this, I compared him to Al Sharpton, who has explained why he will never apologize for his role in the Tawana Brawley hoax.
So, after this post went up, a man tweeted at me — a journalist in a college town. He said, “You spend more words criticizing black men in that post than you do Trump. Hmmm…”
Hmmm, indeed. Needless to say, I did not respond. I was a little stunned. (WFB would say things to me like “Can you be ‘a little stunned’?”) And I realized a big difference between that fellow and me: He regards Obama and Sharpton as black men. I regard them as men. The same as I do Trump. And all three are different from one another — they are individuals — although, as I pointed out in my post, they have some things in common.
That is what sets people like me apart from the Left, and from elements of the Right, elements that are gaining in strength and influence.