It is ever dangerous to use dehumanizing rhetoric on people? Of course — when it is directed at people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or any other immutable physical characteristic. The Nazis did what they did to Jews and others because they dehumanized them based on their religious/ethnic/racial identity. That's why racism is evil. But why is it dangerous to use such rhetoric on people based on their behavior? By equating labeling the cruelest among us "animals" with labeling Jews "animals," Dionne cheapens the fight against real evil.
In any event, here is the example that I give if I only can give one example, and that is race. We were taught that the liberal position -- there is no other liberal position -- is that race doesn't matter, that skin color is of utter irrelevance, that if you think color matters, you're a fascist. You're a racist fascist. That's the way liberals were taught. Only racists believe race matters. We, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we believe character is everything. Race is nothing.
Today, race is considered everything. Race is intrinsically valuable. The last people to say this were the Nazis. Now, I never compared the left to Nazis. They're not opening up concentration camps. However, it's either a fact or I should be held accountable for telling you a lie that the last idea prior to the current left to hold that race matters is the Nazis. It's either true or not true, and if it's not true, I deserve to be called on it. But if it is true, the left needs to be called on it
Do you know that the University of California -- And this is on the internet. They are proud of it. They have issued a list of micro-aggressions, this nonsensical idea of you don't realize you're a racist, but if you say the following you really are a racist. Here is an example. It is officially a racist comment if you say, "There is only one race. The human race." That is considered to be, by the University of California, to be a racist comment. That was the quintessence of liberalism when I grew up. It is now considered right-wing racism.
So what do they believe in? Nothing. That's why open borders is not a problem to the left. Open borders only troubles those who want to preserve their civilization. We, in this room, want to preserve American civilization, so we don't want open borders. The left has no civilization to preserve, so, of course, they're for open borders.
Their positions actually make sense once you have their premises. That's why this is -- This is the battle. This is the greatest battle. It is easy to defeat Islamism. It is impossible to defeat internal termites. Termites bring down your structure. The left is the termite of Western Civilization, not liberals, the left. When you understand that, you have to just then decide to fight, cause good people fighting is what we need.
All right. So let me talk to you in the time given to me. I have a few things to state. Western Civilization is in crisis, in massive crisis, and the reason is the left. And if one doesn't understand that it is the left versus the West, one understands nothing about the modern world. It is as simple as that.
Only someone who has never debated the issue could make such a claim. So allow me to debate the assertion. My view is the antithesis of Dionne's. As I see it, it is not right to never call another human being an "animal." Calling the cruelest among us names such as "animal" or any other "dehumanizing" epithet actually protects humans. The word "beastly" exists for a reason and is frequently applied to human beings. By rhetorically reading certain despicable people out of the human race, we elevate the human race. We have declared certain behaviors out of line with being human.
Biologically, of course, we are all human. But if "human" is to mean anything moral — anything beyond the purely biological — then some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human. Otherwise "human" has no moral being. We should then not retain the word "inhumane." What is the difference between "he is inhumane" and "he is an animal"? Both imply actions that render the person no longer human.
What would Dionne have us call those Nazi physicians — "not nice," "badly flawed," "evil"? Why is rhetorically ostracizing them from the human race "a dangerous path"? He doesn't have an answer because he lives in the left's world of moral-sounding platitudes. Leftism consists almost entirely of moral-sounding platitudes — statements meant to make the person making them feel morally sophisticated. But based on their relative reactions to the sadists of the MS-13 gangs, I trust Donald Trump's moral compass more than E. J. Dionne's.
"It's never right to call other human beings 'animals.' It's not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path."