Most of us were raised to believe that racial bigotry as exemplified by segregation and Jim Crow laws was abominable. How dare some people subjugate others simply because of their skin color, while ignoring their character and common humanity?

At least that was the case when whites discriminated against blacks, forcing them to go to different schools, sit in segregated sections of buses and movie theaters, use different drinking fountains and bathrooms, and even attend different churches. But, thanks to federal laws passed in the 1960s, all that came grinding to a halt. And those who had held the whip, people like Orval Faubus, J. Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox, George Wallace, Theodore Bilbo, and Theophilus (“Bull”) Connor, were properly deposited in the dustbin of history.

Unfortunately, that didn’t bring an end to racial discrimination. Instead, it merely reversed it. Thanks to affirmative action, discrimination — this time against white Americans — became the law of the land. Instead of ensuring that everyone would line up at the same starting point, the government decided that real justice demanded that everyone finish the race at the same time, even if it meant that blacks would get to begin the race far ahead of others. Somehow, legislators decided that racial justice would best be achieved if those who had never been slaves were given advantages over those who had never owned slaves.

At the same time, those on the Left who had claimed the deed to the moral high ground decided that it was imperative, especially if they were ever again going to win the presidency, to change the demographics of America by bringing in more immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They anticipated, quite reasonably, that those coming here from Third World countries, who lacked language skills even when it came to their own native tongue and were low-skilled, would become wards of the welfare state and would therefore become Democrats. After all, just a few decades earlier, FDR had brought millions of blacks to the party of the Klan and segregation by placing millions of them on the dole during the 1930s.

It is now predicted that by 2040, white people will be in the minority in this country. Today, Democrats can hardly contain their excitement at the prospect of achieving what they regard as nirvana, few of them realizing that a nation in which people of color constitute the majority is unlikely to elect white politicians, no matter how much racial pandering they’ve engaged in over the years.

It strikes me that the only prominent Democrat who has laid the proper groundwork for this uncertain future is Sen. Elizabeth Warren with her claim to be a person of color; a noble redskin, no less.

People like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin, and Richard Blumenthal, with their open-border policy, remind me of those moral cowards Winston Churchill famously referred to — the appeasers who feed the crocodile in the hope they’ll be eaten last.

At the time, Churchill was of course referring to those craven European leaders who were only too happy to cede Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the hope he wouldn’t soon be looking in their direction and licking his chops. But, as history has shown, monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Xi, and the ayatollah never have their insatiable appetites satisfied with a mere appetizer. Unless you have the Churchillian courage to stand up to villains, they will gobble up everything in sight, including you.

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Someone sent me a cartoon of Robert Mueller plucking petals off a daisy while saying: “Collusion…Obstruction…Collusion…Obstruction.”

An alternative caption would have been: “I hate Trump…I hate him not…I hate Trump…I hate him not…Who am I kidding? I really hate the guy.”

One of the sorriest aspects of the phony investigation, aside from the fact that it required lies to get the FISA warrant that led to the witch hunt and that it only used the charge of Russian collusion as an excuse to bring down Trump’s administration, is the claim that Mueller is a Republican in a sorry attempt to paint him as an impartial dispenser of justice.

For one thing, nearly as many Republicans as Democrats in our nation’s capital despise Trump because they are members of the federal establishment and feel threatened by the slightest change in the status quo. So long as people like Bush I and II were in the White House, these jackals were happy enough to see America losing its industries to other countries. It never bothered them in the least that America was being constantly whip-sawed by foreign tariffs and trade deals like NAFTA, while millions of unskilled, illiterate foreigners poured over our borders and straight onto our welfare rolls.

They were reminiscent of the Republican legislators in California who signed on to the gerrymandering of congressional districts by Democrats so long as they would retain their own safely Republican districts for the foreseeable future.

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I’m reminded that Dick Barry sent along a new word, “ineptocracy,” defined as “a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”

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I keep seeing fans of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on TV being asked how they imagine all the free stuff being promised them will be paid for. Unlike the urban black fans of Barack Obama in 2008, who assumed the money would be coming from Obama’s stash, these white snowflakes haven’t the slightest idea.

I understand that their ignorance is blamed on our public education system, and with good reason. But that can’t be the entire story. After all, children are usually brought up on a hodgepodge of fairy tales and myths, including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. But at some point, they wise up. Sometimes they will pretend to go on believing long after their peers or older siblings have set them straight simply because they want to continue finding an endless supply of toys under the Christmas tree and have the occasional tooth magically turn into a quarter or half dollar under their pillows.

So how is it that they never quite wake up to the fact that money doesn’t grow on trees and that adults, unlike children, actually have to go out and work for the things they want?

I mean, when you get right down to it, how is it even possible that a person who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus and magical money trees can still believe in socialism?

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A friend sent me a few Jewish cartoons selected as his favorites by an editor at The New Yorker.

My own favorites among the batch included one comparing a boat christening to a boat bris. In the first panel, there’s a guy poised to bust a bottle of champagne across the wooden prow of a ship; in the other, a mohel (a circumciser of Jewish babies) is shown sawing a tip off the boat’s prow.

In the second, a little kid wearing a yarmulke is seated on the lap of a department store Santa Claus, saying: “First of all, this conversation never happened.”

In the third, a Jewish attorney in Hassidic garb is on his cell phone telling a client: “And remember, if you need anything I’m available 24/6.”

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Finally, I have a friend who told me he sometimes has to look up words I use in the dictionary. Even though English isn’t his first language, I was surprised because I try to write what I regard as conversational English.

In fact, I am put off when I come across people, such as the late William F. Buckley, who seemed to speak and write in a way that would send everyone scurrying to his Funk and Wagnall.

I suppose it was his intention to show off, but all it showed me was an insufferable display of snobbery, sacrificing meaningful communication for the sake of coming off as intellectually superior.

I could never really fathom why anyone would be intentionally obscure, employing jargon that would test the skills of an accomplished codebreaker.

In my experience, those who achieve a Ph.D. in obscurity generally pursue a career in art, music or wine, criticism, this enabling their fellow snobs to parrot their judgments without having the slightest idea what they’re saying.