Likewise, it is a hallmark of unhealthy emotional adaptation to demand that others conform to your sense of the way things should be. Self evidently, balancing these needs is a principal social and psychological task of people living in genuinely Liberal orders.
This is difficult work. The people who are continually repeating the indefensible slander that Donald Trump is a racist are effectively doing so in the name of what might be termed “boundary-lessness”. They refuse to consider that whites, in particular, have the same right to their culture that cultural Hispanics do to theirs; and more particularly that the United States has both the right and duty to enforce its literal boundaries to protect its identity as a sovereign nation governed by the rule of law.
I consider as friends a number of people who would self identify as Liberal, who no doubt are puzzled by my simultaneous ability to express concrete compassion and empathy as one individual relating to another, but to also embrace ideas which get called, propagandistically, “hateful”.
In my view it is both natural and desirable that we look at American history dispassionately, with an eye both to granting it what is uniquely good, and without lying about what was and in some respects still is bad. The willingness to do this is in important respects one of our most distinguishing features. Most nations do not do this. Most nations do not tell the truth. The Soviets–who were the original authors of most anti-Americanism, certainly never did.
What is not natural is to apologize for your success, for your virtue, for everything that makes you, and our society, good. Psychologically healthy tolerance cannot extend so far that it accepts the contempt of people for who you are and what you believe. You can grant people a hearing, but you need not accept their own self centered verdicts.
These are plain and obvious words, but they need to be spoken. Everything good in Europe is under attack. And the United States is only a few short years behind them.
I readily admit that becoming psychologically individuated is a difficult task. But maturity is necessary for freedom. Anyone indulging childishness, or tolerating unwarranted abuse for any reason, is inherently working for tyranny. There is no other way to look at it, in my considered view.