"I hope Trump's victory means those of us who reject the liberal dogma of our time, and who have been silenced, can speak out and stand tall." Enabled:

The first line in an editorial published in The Press soon after this year's United States presidential election could have been written by Hillary Clinton: "Inequality breeds contempt. It breeds resentment, violence. Inequality bred President (Donald) Trump."

Clinton didn’t get it, the US media didn’t get it and it would seem the writer of this editorial doesn’t either. To insist that the main issue is inequality is really an attempt to return the fight to a battleground chosen by the liberal elite.

Inequality did not contribute to Trump’s victory; the so-called "front porch protesters" simply wanted a fair go as they don’t believe equality is another name for justice. They wanted (and still want) a fair day’s work and a fair day’s pay. They felt overwhelmed by an elite obsessed by its ideology of inclusion that excluded them. They were ignored and nobody was listening. Until Trump.

donald trump

Trump had the numbers and won. The dogma of equality and the insistence of diversity is despised by many ordinary Americans. They see it for what it is - a civil religion by another name. The catchall "politically correct" might be inadequate, but Trump is "politically incorrect" and that is enough. Disempowerment submits to empowerment. They can be heard and their needs taken seriously.

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The accusation has been made that the president elect will create a new kind of tribalism. That is hardly possible because the politics of identity that naturally arise out of the imposition of diversity have already created their own tribalism.

In the US, like most other Western countries including New Zealand, nuanced discussion is almost impossible. Unless one adopts the liberal orthodoxy of our time, one must remain silent.

The language controlling public debate remains in the mouths of the progressive liberals. They insist that yesterday’s orthodoxy is today’s "extremism".

I am no longer free, without ridicule, to suggest that there are only two sexes; all at once I am a bigot. I cannot even talk about the natural intergenerational family with approval. I cannot declare, in spite of the evidence, that the major cause of poverty in NZ is the breakdown of marriage and dissolving family structures.

If I was a young and ambitious academic I would not be promoted in many university faculties if I held that marriage between a man and a woman is simply that, marriage. I would have trouble if I was opposed to euthanasia, especially if I insisted calling it assisted suicide. I would be frequently criticised if I insisted on the virtues of the pro-life movement. It would be anathema for me to be critical of human-rights ideology or the theory of multiculturalism.

I believe coherent arguments against me would be few, but invective common.

Irony overwhelms us.

In spite of one's reservations, some people see Trump’s victory, wishfully perhaps, as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. Too many people were tired of liberal ideology, disguised as enlightenment, being forced upon them. Their voices were silenced.

And to rub salt into the wounds, the establishment, both political and media, couldn’t help themselves. They insisted, and continue to insist, that Trump’s supporters were, and are, uneducated yahoos.

Since the 1960s a destabilising perception of democratic politics has been forced upon us. The gatekeepers in academia and the media are convinced that democracy is about modernisation, tolerance, progress and increasing moral liberalism. These are to be carried out whether the voters like them or not.

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Well maybe, just maybe, as a consequence of Trump's victory, we will be given a chance to re-examine the contemporary politicised cultural dogmas. Perhaps we will begin to understand what I believe - that enforced notions of egalitarianism weaken the community and that we are deprived of national identity by creating groups who demand equality, come hell or high water.

The ideology of identity politics causes people to think everything is either right or wrong. It gives a collective and individual purpose to identify with the group rather than the nation. There is an imperative to side with one group in deed and thought. Tolerance is approval of any particular group.

The enemy is obvious. The nation, the church, classical and mediaeval philosophy, moral conservatism, the intergenerational natural family, and religion generally. When did you last see any regular commentator on television or in the newspaper talk seriously about any one of these?

We might observing some kind of shift in political consciousness. Just where it might lead is uncertain. It would be satisfying if it gave all of us more freedom to speak our minds without mindless ridicule and name-calling.