It's time to create a libertarian ecosystem that doesn't welcome racists

This isn't about politics, it's about doing the right thing

The Gadsden Flag.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Wikimedia Commons)

It is a lie, Tim Carney argues at the Washington Examiner, that "conservatives are just a bunch of racists." And yet, he adds, "conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it's a lie."

The American right's racism problem is not about conservative ideas per se. That racists like some of the same things you like does not, of itself, make those things racist (though certainly it may prompt their re-examination) — see The New York Times' Ross Douthat's recent column teasing out some of this distinction. But, as Carney and Douthat both describe, the mainstream conservative movement has not made itself adequately inhospitable to racism.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.