Rep. Steve King of Iowa stirred up controversy on Sunday with a tweet that liberals are criticizing as racist in nature.
King, referring to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, said on Twitter: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
King’s tweet inspired outrage from the perennially outraged, and liberals accused the Republican of flirting with racism with his unapologetic defense of Western civilization.
From the Washington Post:
The formulation of “our” civilization being at risk from “somebody else’s babies” is a deliberate suggestion that American civilization is threatened by unnamed “others” — almost certainly a reference to non-Westerners. The idea that national identity and racial identity overlap entirely is the crux of white nationalism; King’s formulation above toes close to that line, if it doesn’t cross. American culture, of course, was formed in part over the past two centuries by the assimilation of immigrants from a broad range of nations — first mostly European but later a broader diaspora. Iowa, the state King represents, remains one of the most homogeneously white in the United States.
King is one of the few conservatives who isn’t afraid to defend the white, European culture that founded this country. He knows there is a vast ocean of difference between being a “white nationalist” or a racist and recognizing the truth about who built the United States more than 200 years ago. And it has less to do with skin color than with the socialist, authoritarian philosophies that dominate non-Western countries.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, King refused to walk back his tweet. In fact, he proudly defended his views.
“Well, of course I meant exactly what I said,” King said. “It’s a clear message. We need to get our birth rates up or Europe will be entirely transformed within a half century or a little more. And Geert Wilders knows that and that’s part of his campaign and part of his agenda.”
King said that illegal immigration was dividing the United States and erasing everything that ties us together as Americans.
“Living in enclaves, refusing to assimilate into the American culture and civilization,” King said of immigrants. “Some embrace it, yes. But many are two and three generations living in enclaves that are pushing back now and resisting against the assimilation.”
King said he wouldn’t sit idly by and allow liberals to change what it meant to be an American.
“This is an effort on the left, I think, to break down the American civilization, the American culture, and turn it into something entirely different,” King said. “I’m a champion for western civilization and yes our English language is a big part of it. It’s a carrier of freedom.”
It’s sad that someone like King can be assailed as a monstrous racist for speaking such obvious, indisputable truths, but that shows you just how effective the left has been in their mission to reimagine this country.
