Critical Race Theory is not only poisoning the political debate but the culture at large, as it rejects the founding of the United States as immoral and illegitimate. A proper response requires an understanding and use of the truths of the first principles of the Founding Fathers combined with an understanding of the larger threat of group identity politics and its origins.
Critical Race Theory arose directly from the Marxist Frankfurt School of the 20th Century. The Frankfurt School replace the classic Marxist class-based group identity warfare with race-based divisions. Critical Race Theory holds that the entire culture, politics, and all the institutions of Western Civilization are based on and driven by racism. Therefore, Western Civilization as a whole is unjust and barbaric to its core, requiring its rejections and the dismantling of its systems.
Radical Feminists have allied to Critical Race Theory to also argue that Western Civilization is entirely sexist and misogynist. On this has been added claims that Western Civilization is homophobic and so on. The theory assumes that any unequal outcomes are a product of an evil system. Therefore, the potential victim groups are endless.
CRT on its face is ridiculous: Western Civilization with its positives and negatives weighed together has together greatly advanced mankind’s knowledge, living standards, and most importantly the liberty and justice in the world. However, CRT has been flourishing in public schools, the media, corporate boardrooms, and among the political classes. The reason is that CRT arises out of a large group identity politics that had already largely captured the culture and politics.
Group Identity politics finds its roots in Hegelianism and the 19th Century German School of Philosophy. Georg Hegel rejected objective truth, and that in its absence people should be guided by conforming to their groups such as race or ethnic group and its norms. Hegel grounded his teachings in an organic sense of humanism, embracing evolution and rejecting the truth that mankind was made in the image of God. John Calhoun embraced the group identity teachings of Hegel as the basis for his defense of slavery.
Calhoun argued that evolution had made blacks a natural slave class and those of European descent were a natural master class. Thus, Hegelianism first impacted American culture and politics as a defense for slavery. Likewise, the same group identity and evolution precepts defended segregation. This reveals a historical conflict that has been underway for generations between the noble principles of the Founders and those of the 19th Century German School of Philosophy. A struggle that continues to this day.
Woodrow Wilson was an ardent Hegelian, who strongly embraced and used group identity politics. He sought to divide America among conflicting groups to further his statist agenda. Wilson understood that group identity politics was probably the single powerful weapon to transform the American culture and politics to establish a super-powerful state which could remake the nation and its culture. Likewise, CRT today is a tool for making the state, even more, dominant in the culture of America in the name of perfecting the basic nature of man.
Conservatives must take heed: group identity politics is not inherently restricted to the political left, for Hegelianism has left, center, and right-wing branches. Conservatives should embrace our unique American patriotism rooted in the principles of the Founders, and this includes a push back against political tribalism that has embroiled the right. Conservatives must not embrace European-style nationalism which arouse from group identity politics.
Conservatives must reconnect with the first principles of the Founding Fathers and speak the truth to the culture and politics of today from that unique foundation of American exceptionalism. The conservative movement must not continue to carry the water for a Republican Establishment that does not believe in the Founding Fathers or our founding principles. Instead, let us strive to reform the Republican Party to once again be the party of Lincoln. The problem has been a moral compromise of the conservative movement, abdicating our role as truth-tellers and educating the culture and politics on the principles of the Founding Fathers.
This problem goes back to the roots of the modern conservative movement, which arose in the 1950 and 60s defined by being anti-Marxist more than by being rooted truly in our nation’s founding principles. The single greatest misstep was the failure of the conservative movement to fully embrace the fight against segregation. Conservatives should have led the fight for the restoration of the true meaning of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court had neutered the 14th Amendment with its rulings in the Slaughter-House, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) and Plessy vs. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) cases. The true original intent of the 14th Amendment was to ensure that states respected the full God-given rights of all individuals.
The modern Supreme Court has conditioned the 14th Amendment upon a plaintiff being a member of “suspect class” that is to say, membership of a victim group identity. Further, the modern court has created “balancing tests” to consider whether the state interest is sufficient to allow the violation of individual liberty. All true God-given rights are meant to never be violated by the government.
Therefore, conservatives must invoke the truth of the first principles of the Founders embodied in the Declaration of Independence, especially, the truth that all mankind is made in the image of God, the source of rights, as rights come from God, not the state. Conservatives must strive for those principles to be restored in the law, public policy, and the culture as a whole. It is essential to restore the Founders’ faith in the power of speaking the truth. The truth spoken boldly can bring light to this present darkness, order from the chaos of today, and defeat the evil ideology behind Critical Race Theory.
Further, conservatives must heed the wisdom of Washington: how character is destiny for nations and individuals. The national interest must come first and not any special or partisan interest. The principles of the Founders can unite a coalition across all ethnic and socio-economic labels and classes, and completely reset the political landscape of America. Speaking the truth with faith in the power of the truth can bring together this coalition as we all yearn for a government that protects and upholds liberty.
These principles hold as an intrinsic quality maximum respect for the individualism of each person, so we would seek actual justice that is equal protection under the law, and we would look out for the national interest as vitally threatened by certain special-interest manipulators and supplanters who are bringing the nation to ruin. Further stressing that liberty, which is freedom balanced with duty, is the way for each person to truly achieve their individuality. Moreover, this restored allegiance to objective truth answers the cultural and moral rot of the current culture of post-modernism, and this can lead to the healing of the nation, God willing.
By Johnny B. Davis, Liberty University
