I’m happy to write on Veteran’s Day, as a former U.S. army infantryman, descended from a long line of U.S. infantry veterans, with a son who just finished his service in Iraq and Syria.

What I saw when I joined the Army was a mosaic of different Americans from widely varying backgrounds, united in serving a nation whose greatness connects us across every ethnic or tribal divide. But on this holiday of gratitude for patriotism, I feel the need to speak out against some grave threats to our country.

We praise first responders like firemen and EMT pros because on days like September 11, 2001, they ran toward the disasters, while others ran away. But what would we think of people who suited up as firefighters, and sprayed gasoline on the flames? Or of EMTs who decided to euthanize the injured, instead of saving them? And what if these saboteurs insisted that they were heroes? And denounced those trying to put the fires out and rescue the injured? Would we be proud to join such people? Would it be the right thing to do?

Jason Jones (l) in U.S. infantry exercises.

We’re Turning Back into Tribalists

It’s my sad duty to tell you, my fellow citizens: That’s where we are today, when it comes to questions of race, ethnicity, gender and religion. Far too many of those who claim that they are deeply opposed to discrimination and groupthink in fact encourage these practices. They fan the flames of division, selectively demonize, and pretend that for each group their “Intersectional” ideology identifies, there’s an orthodox party line.

Those who speak out of turn, and challenge a dominant view, can be labeled “Uncle Toms,” “coconuts,” “self-haters” or even “race” or “gender” “traitors.” When Kanye West appeared at the White House in a search for common ground with a president we rightly criticize, media heads exploded. Mr. West was sprayed with abuse, described with insulting, archaic racial epithets, and dismissed as mentally ill — in the same way that Soviet dissidents once got diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia.”

Do we really want to raise our children to believe that there’s just one right way to look at things? That if they dissent they are “sick,” or even evil? That they should shun people with different points of view, which grow from their diverse backgrounds? That if they turn out to think differently than we do, we’ll cut them off and forget them? That may sound extreme to you, but I see it happen. I’ve read articles and social media postings that talk about disinviting family members from holiday dinners because of politics. Doesn’t that get things backward? Isn’t the family the building block of society? And yet we are willing to shatter it. That worries me.

Fake Racism, and the Genuine Article

So does the blithe indifference of major institutions to norms of human decency and fairness. The New York Times hired a writer, Sara Jeong, with a long track record of expressing vicious racial hatred, some of it sounding creepily eliminationist. She didn’t denounce Republicans, conservatives, or even real white racists and sexists. She damned “white men,” and joked about them as subhumans who ought to die off from skin cancer. Yet our country’s paper of record hired her as an opinion writer. It accepted her excuses (she claimed, without proof, that she was satirizing white racist and sexist speech to which she’d been subjected). What message does that send young people, when they feel tempted to hate or resent those who look or think or live differently from them? Not the right one.

Even worse, the Times embraced the amoral and collectivist redefinition of “racism” that is sweeping the academy. On that theory, racism has little or nothing to do with active discrimination or hatred. It’s not even a human act or feeling. Instead, it refers to the “disparate institutional outcomes” we see in society. So if “too many” Asians or Jews get into Harvard, that is racist. If Harvard sets up quotas to keep them out, that isn’t. In fact, it’s “anti-racist.” Those from a historically powerful group cannot be victims of racism, by definition. Nor can members of “victim” groups be guilty. We must hold them to lower standards than we do white men — apparently the only group from which we can expect unbiased behavior.

If that sounds to you like the “White Man’s Burden” ideology that led to places like my home state of Hawaii getting colonized, that’s no accident. In fact, the new “anti-racism” is patronizing and insulting to the very groups it pretends to protect. It also threatens the well-being of every member of any minority group, for a very simple reason. It encourages people to think of themselves in angry, tribal categories. Then it claims that it can unite the “disadvantaged” groups in a common struggle against “oppressors.” It’s “us” against “them,” forever.

Scapegoating Isn’t the Answer

But unity built on scapegoating is fragile and false. It breaks down the moment the “dominant” group loses power. Then those who united against it .… What do they do? They turn on each other, in a contest to see which group can become top dog instead. That’s what happens when you organize society not on strong, universal ideals of justice and human dignity — such as Rev. Martin Luther King promoted via the civil rights movement. If your choice instead is resentment, tribalism and groupthink, you’re no better than the bigots you claim that you’ve been fighting. No better at all.

In fact, the new “anti-racism” is patronizing and insulting to the very groups it pretends to protect.

We hear all the time that it’s right to “punch a Nazi,” to use violence or institutional power to silence those whose views offend us. Of course, it’s a slander to call 99.99% of those silenced or de-platformed these days “Nazis.” Most wouldn’t even qualify as “racist” by the standards in place just a few years ago — which if applied retroactively to figures like Bill Clinton, Harry Reid, and Diane Feinstein, would tar them as well, for their hardline statements on illegal immigration, for instance. Google it if you don’t believe me.

But beyond the rank injustice of the charges that get thrown around, think of the damage such thinking does us. It goads us to think in black and white, Manichean terms, quickly and sloppily labeling our neighbors as “evil.” And ourselves, by contrast, as “good.” It teaches us not to question our own ideas and motives, but instead to pronounce ourselves “triggered.” As if we were guns, instead of people. When I look at my children, I don’t see loaded weapons, on a hair-trigger ready to ostracize, silence, and punish. I hope that I’m raising them better than that. I hope we all are.

The Line Through the Human Heart

Moralistic groupthink is not a force for progress. In fact, it’s an ancient, reactionary human temptation. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once reminded the world that the line between good and evil doesn’t run through parties or political movements. It runs through the human heart.

God help us if we tell ourselves that the rightness of our cause excuses us from self-examination, from considering others’ claims with a modicum of fairness, and instead gives us license to scapegoat our opponents. God forgive us.

Remember that even the Nazis had their excuses for scapegoating and hatred. They pointed to “disparate institutional power” of Jewish Germans in media, universities, and finance. That gave angry “Aryans” the pretext for hatred, bias, boycotts, and finally persecution. Likewise, the Hutus in Rwanda claimed to be righting ancient wrongs when they hunted the richer, better educated Tutsis. And called them “cockroaches.”

We humans have been replaying this ugly script since Cain murdered Abel. That is, since the very beginning. Are you and I really so advanced, so “progressive,” that we’re immune to this ancient human weakness? Look into your heart. Are you sure?

Micah Jones, e-4, U.S. Infantry.

Are you really being courageous when you step forth and denounce modes of discrimination that are already widely disgraceful? Even if you dabble in the new, more fashionable flavor? Or are you pumping gasoline onto the flames of 9/11?

I Know We Can Do Better

As a resident of Hawaii with an ethnically blended family, this social fragmentation saddens me. As a citizen it frightens me. By the logic now dominant, my mixed-race children should hate themselves. My wife and I should hate each other, or at least be locked in a constant power struggle, as representatives of opposing sexes and rival races.

Whites and men would be smart to hunker down and cling to what power they have, because the rest of us are coming for them. And each of us had better get my group ready for the next fight down the road against the next racial “enemy.” We have no common ground. We don’t even seek it.

That’s not how I’m willing to live. It’s not the way for our country to survive. I know we can do better. I pray that we start to try. It begins with the little ones. I invite you to look into a child’s eyes (your own child’s, if you have one.) Do you want to see them narrow with hatred? Squint with suspicion? Close up in the face of criticism? Fill with tears when others meet their hostility with anger? Or would you prefer to open them? To look alongside your own at a future of harmony and fairness, which doesn’t see color, creed, or historic grievances as bitter, electrified fences dividing us from our neighbors.

Without vision, the people perish.