An avowed white supremacist who caucuses with the Republican Party. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Congressman Steve King is sick and tired of political correctness. First, the liberal snowflakes decided that it was somehow “racist” to say that “white people” have “contributed more to civilization” than any other “subgroup.” Then, they decided that it was hateful for a lifelong Iowan to keep a miniature Confederate battle flag on the desk of his congressional office; or to tweet that “mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one”; or to endorse a far-right Austrian party that was founded by Nazis, and is currently led by a former neo-Nazi; or to insist that “the West” can’t “restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies”; or to liken immigrants to “dirt.”

But now, the PC police have truly gone too far:

Mr. King, in [an interview with the New York Times], said he was not a racist … At the same time, he said, he supports immigrants who enter the country legally and fully assimilate because what matters more than race is “the culture of America” based on values brought to the United States by whites from Europe. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Mr. King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

Steve King’s complaints notwithstanding, there aren’t a lot of things that a Republican politician can’t say, so long as he or she prefaces her remarks with some version of the magic phrase, “I’m not a racist, but …”

For example, the president of the United States has said (at various points over the past three years) that Muslims should not be allowed into the United States; federal judges with Mexican heritage cannot impartially preside over legal disputes; America should take in more immigrants from Norway, instead of from“shithole countries” like Haiti or those in Africa; Americans who immigrated to this country through the diversity visa lottery are all “horrendous”; Central American asylum seekers are trying to “infest our country”; and there are plenty of “very fine people” who enjoy marching with neo-Nazis, so as to defend the good name of men who committed treason against the United States for the sake preserving their right to buy, sell, rape, and murder dark-skinned human beings with impunity.

But the president also says that “racism is evil,” and that he is “the least racist person anybody is going to meet.” And thus, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Trump was a racist in an interview with 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper responded by asking, incredulously, “How can you say that?”

And yet, Steve King’s latest comments might have just pushed I’m not a racist but to its breaking point. The congressman did release a statement Thursday afternoon that condemned white supremacy as an “evil ideology” – but did not explain what he had meant when he asked the Times how “white supremacist” came to be seen as an offensive term.

My statement on the New York Times article. pic.twitter.com/IjBHgZYgRD — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 10, 2019

Still, saying, “you don’t have to be a racist to believe Confederate monuments are worth preserving” is one thing. Saying, “you don’t have to be a racist to think that whites are bearers of the supreme culture, and that light-skinned people, across Europe’s myriad nations, all share the same fundamental values — which all other subgroups of humanity lack, and can only develop if they submit to the tutelage of white civilization” seems like another.

Then again, maybe not: As of this writing, Steve King’s remarks to the Times have not cost him his place in the Republican Party’s congressional caucus.