UN racism envoy will fan the flames
Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights. Credit: AP/Martial Trezzini
By William F. B. O'Reilly@wfborI don’t know whether American politics ever truly stopped at our shores, but, sadly, that sentiment appears long dead.
To wit, the Biden administration's recent decision to invite the United Nations Racism and Human Rights Envoy to the U.S. to collect and report information on racial discrimination here.
The envoy, Michelle Bachelet, is a graduate of the former Karl Marx University in the former East Germany and is the former two-term Socialist Party president of Chile. Does anyone doubt what she’ll announce at the end of her stay? Anyone steeped in class warfare and professionally tasked with rooting out racism is invariably going to find it widespread.
Establishing the "truth about these legacies, and their impact today, and taking steps to address this harm through a wide range of reparations measures is crucial to healing our societies and providing justice for terrible crimes," Bachelet said in advance of her trip.
Whatever domestic reparations the Chilean has in mind for us are yet unknown.
Bachelet’s visit is almost certain to embarrass America on the world stage, so why would the Biden administration invite her here to issue an indictment? Americans are hardly unaware of their nation’s past and present-day racial challenges — turn on any mainstream media channel.
My guess — and this is hardly a stretch — is that the trip is meant to further the progressive political narrative that our country is systemically racist. If such an opinion is made axiomatic, with the help of a major international observer, then we’d better empower the government in Washington to increase public spending even more, expand social welfare programs and raise taxes on the successful to even the playing field — the Biden agenda in a nutshell. According to this line of thinking, moreover, opposition to government growth becomes racist in nature, a clever rhetorical ploy to use against conservatives.
Racism is a forever topic in this country. It was largely what was talked about when I was a child in the 1960s, and it’s what we’re talking about now, often for good reason. But unlike yesteryear when there were reasonably clear good and bad guys, modern liberal orthodoxy insists that all white Americans are inherently racist or race "privileged," especially those who won’t see or admit it. Virtually all things American are projected through this cynical prism.
The ideological stridency first took hold in academia before spreading into the ongoing national culture war. We read news reports about college professors and elite private high school teachers haranguing white students to purge their inner bigots as a way to attain enlightenment. Those who won’t play along get canceled.
Bachelet should well know the tactic. Political self-assessments were standard practice within the former Soviet Bloc where she went to college, and China’s Mao Zedong perfected it during that country's disastrous Cultural Revolution. Everyone is guilty — confess and you’ll be saved!
It’s not hard to understand why many on the political right see those on the hard political left today as America haters, and Biden’s invitation to Bachelet will seamlessly play into that narrative. He should have known better than to extend the invite.
What happened to Bill Clinton’s "there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America" or Ronald Reagan’s "shining city on a hill"?
Now we’re outsourcing our national report card to the UN. It’s a mistake.
Opinions expressed by William F. B. O’Reilly, a consultant to Republicans, are his own.
William F. B. O'Reilly is a Newsday Opinion columnist. He works as a corporate and political communications consultant. He works with clients on the Republican side of the aisle.
