After Trump’s Charlottesville failure, the only choices aren’t racism or liberalism
President Trump missed an opportunity to bring the country together around the racially charged issue that most unites us: the unequivocal rejection of obvious hate groups. How then will he, and the wider public, fare when discussing matters where we are much more divided?
We are not off to a good start. Just as Trump said some of the right things in the aftermath of Charlottesville only to undermine them in search of “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally, he has gone on to raise some legitimate issues in the most ham-fisted way possible.
This is unfortunate, because these are important questions. How do we deal with historical figures who were flawed men and women? How do we balance honoring the virtues of our country with recognition of its original sin, racism? How should the public square contend with symbols of our past that divide the American people in the present?
President Trump missed an opportunity to bring the country together around the racially charged issue that most unites us: the unequivocal rejection of obvious hate groups. How then will he, and the wider public, fare when discussing matters where we are much more divided? We are not off to a good start. Just as Trump said some of the right things in the aftermath of Charlottesville only to undermine them in search of “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally, he has gone on to raise some legitimate issues in the most ham-fisted way possible. This is unfortunate, because these are important questions. How do we deal with historical figures who were flawed men and women? How do we balance honoring the virtues of our country with recognition of its original sin, racism? How should the public square contend with symbols of our past that divide the American people in the present?