Libertarians far and wide (including me) have been looking to get rid of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at least since the '80s. This is not a new thing. It is, in fact, a liberal stance. That some recent racist Woke Right folks have glommed on to this stance is irrelevant to the materiality of the stance.
Additionally, at no point in either essay do you make a strong stance on what *should* be occurring. There's an old Robin Williams joke about unarmed British police who say "Stop! Or I'll say stop again!" These essays remind me of that. Should liberals be watchful of excesses? Yes. But there absolutely needs to be a direct assault on the CSJ rot that is pervasive in the US Government (and most Western institutions). Firmly standing behind two sexes. Cutting all Governmet funding for Critical Theory research. Disbanding Government sponsored affinity groups. Removing Government sponsored DEI regalia. Terminating employees directly employed by DEI organizations. This MUST HAPPEN. This is not revenge. This is not a wild backlash. This is an absolute necessary. Because the rot is very VERY deep.
Hmmm, yes. OK, I take your point. I have another libertarian making it as well. Perhaps a more nuanced take on the CRA which disbanded parts of it that fall into denying freedom of association rather than removing barriers could be argued ethically from a liberal position even tho I am uncomfortable with it!
I don't set out what should be done in these essays, no. I do in bits and pieces elsewhere and quite comprehensively in my last book. Perhaps I should produce a version of the book chapter to show how a strong liberal response is just as effective as a strong illiberal one and likely to stand the test of time in multiple scenarios.
The notion that there is "overt racism" in the anti-woke is problematic. What is going on, in many cases, is truth breaking out.
In the past, like 2 weeks ago, statements like "blacks are not more likely to be criminals than are members of other groups" are made. These statements are false. Blacks are 5x as likely to be criminals. Knife fights in HS involve, almost exclusively, blacks on one side, and usually on both sides. The BLM riots of 2020 involved 90% blacks stealing everything not nailed down. The smash-n-grab thieves in CA are black.
People exist as individuals, and to allege that a given person is likely or necessarily a certain way because of her/his attachment to a racial demographic group is overt racism on the part of the one making such a claim. It is not “truth breaking out” when black people or women in positions of power and influence are summarily dismissed as “DEI hires” — and that is the kind of thing we are hearing. Any individual who belongs to a group whose members are so targeted by MAGAs and other illiberal right wingers understandably embraces the idea of institutional and structural disadvantage/privilege, particularly since they are being stereotyped not by a random windbag in the comments section but by the most powerful men in the world.
Precisely. It's true that 99% of sexual offences are committed by men. Would this justify me being a misandrist? Would truth be breaking out if I assumed you both to be rapists? Alternatively, because men hold the majority of leadership positions in so many fields, should I assume that they got there due to patriarchal bias and not on their own merits and that an investigation should take place to discover whose male privilege is responsible for them holding a position and removing them from it?
Yeah, I don't think I will. I'll treat you both as individuals, assume you are both not rapists, decide George appears quite illiberal & prone to fallaciously applying statistics to individuals while Paolo holds liberal individualist ethics and does not use such flawed reasoning.
Tbf, it does justify why we have very different social and legal standards when treating men and women. You don’t need to make assumptions of men being guilty as much as recognizing men are much more likely to be the offender, so you make different decisions when interacting with men compared to women.
LeftWOKE = Black crime is caused by racism of white people.
RightWOKE = Black crime is caused by race of the offenders.
Neither is straight-forward truth.
If "truth broke out" about the phenomenon of minority crime in the USA it would probably contain a lot of ingredients that build up the problem, such as:
> A subculture of grievance within the Black community toward society/the state/white people seeing crime as a way to get back at things
> The above deliberately enabled by leftist ideology to stoke these grievances for political gain
> Endemic poverty caused predominantly be declining working class status combined with disastrous family breakdown dynamics
I've read a lot of Thomas Sowell on the subject, I think he is very wide on this subject. Race does not account for behaviour alone - you can easily tell this from the very different statistics from recent African immigrants
No one argues that crime is CAUSED by the race of the perps. However, what people do say, correctly, is that blacks are more likely to be offenders than whites.
In Chicago, Mayor Brendon Johnson, who is black and favors criminals, removed the ShotSpotter tool from the city. The reason given: The locations of most gunfire is in the black sections of town. This is due to the FACT that most gunshots are by black gangbangers in black sections of Chicago. Not all, maybe 95%.
The argument comes down to "Where should the cops go to look for criminals?" The answer is the black section of town, and the perps are young black men.
There is no material woke right as you have tried to paint it here. Your scold is similar to a situation where 1930s Germans beat back the Brown Shirts and you came out criticizing the German public for continuing to be anti Brown Shirt.
These woke shits did real harm to many. They still are. They need full on humiliation and rejection to set the principle that nothing like this can ever happen again. No amnesty for the critical social justice practitioners.
Absolutely. And another issue lies in the repeated chanting of the Woke mantras of DEI, fixing the marginalized, solving the problems of the poor, etc. I'd be happy to stop beating on the Woke. But they have no intention of apologizing or changing their own malign behavior. So, the Base will up the ante.
So you ain’t gonna listen cause you don’t wanna, why pretend you can engage in good faith? You’re the authoritarian. You’re the problem. You don’t believe in principles, you want to punish. You are the bad guy.
Bullshit. I care about the long-term health of all people, and woke is a crap elite luxury virtue signaling, and power-money making scam, that harms the health of all people.
My outright rejection of it and criticism of its practitioners is right, righteous, moral and valuable to the overall human condition.
Great piece. Just a couple of minor points about the Civil Rights Act:
- It has always been a fairly mainstream belief in libertarian circles that some parts of the Civil Rights Act that deal with non-discrimination by *private organisations* (or private individuals who don't represent the State) should be scrapped, because they violate principles of freedom of association.
- I think it is undeniable that the Griggs judgement from 1972 which enshrined the disparate impact standard has had a hugely negative impact and many have identified this as one of the origins of DEI.
To be clear, I completely agree that getting rid of the CRA in toto would be incredibly illiberal and those who are advocaing that should be opposed. There are few things more fundamental than the principle that the State should not discriminate based on identity. (Also, I think those who have just woken up to this cause due to anti-woke antipathy haven't typically thought things through).
However,
there are liberals who propose scrapping some parts of it or amending others who have held this position for decades.
That's not Charlie Kirk's argument, though, is it? I know libertarians always have objections to anything that isn't entirely hands off & they can quibble with some things, but that is reciprocal overcompensation.
Of course. I agree that Kirk and his ilk are not embracing a liberal opposition to wokeness in their approach. However I am distinguishing them from others who have advocated reforming CRA as one of the steps to dismantle wokeness (included would be numerous libertarians as well as prominent figures such as Hanania, Rufo and others, who are not necessarily libertarian).
Hmmm, yes. OK, I take your point. I have another libertarian making it as well. Perhaps a more nuanced take on the CRA which disbanded parts of it that fall into denying freedom of association rather than removing barriers could be argued ethically from a liberal position even tho I am uncomfortable with it!
I'd suggest that repealing the CRA is a reasonable thing for liberals to support. Freedom of association is a key pillar of a liberal society and our society already commonly segregates along racial lines, when peoples revealed preferences in areas like housing are revealed.
It is plainly illiberal to force unwilling people together.
We could call this 'woke right', however simple observation of the world around ones self plainly isn't the same as using critical theory. 2020 onwards simply taught a great many people that a non-trivial number of blacks do not like us and will attack us at work. I have explicitly been told that discrimination against me is fine because I am white and I don't need to recount the 'training' by my employer.
I would rather that the law allow me to not associate with people who behave like this and not force my employer to allow them access to my organization. In a multicultural society the law will be overtaken by the most aggressively tribal, which Plato warned of as I recall.
Can I ask you to clarify what you mean, as I wouldn't want to misunderstand.
The comedian Dick Gregory had a routine about segregation, starting:
"We tried to integrate a restaurant, and they said, "We don't serve colored folk here," and I said, "Well, I don't eat colored folk nowhere. ..."
Are you actually advocating this sort of *business* discrimination should be legal again?
In the famous MLK speech where people which seem to know exactly one line (which they misunderstand), he also said:
"We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. ... We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only."
Do you really believe we should roll back the clock so as to have this be legally permissible?
It was a nice idea in its time, however it's plainly apparent that human tribalism isn't a solvable issue. Humans can broadly get along for a while, however some event will always spark inter-ethnic conflict at some point.
Borders between people exist for a reason. We now have a situation where an increasingly authoritarian state deems the native people of Europe to be oppressors. It both allows and encourages African, Indian, Pakistani or Arab colonists to attack Europeans. We technically have legal protections, however law is subject to interpretation by hostile actors. There is a great deal of inter-ethnic tension and violence, now that the third generation of immigrants no longer feel that they need to respect the history or peoples of the countries that they live in.
Europe feels increasingly unsafe for many people and the current status quo cannot last. I just hope there is a peaceful separation and we do not devolve into Lebanon.
One pressure release valve may be to just restore freedom of association. None of this can work if people are being continually harassed by an Orwellian enforcement bureaucracy over their entire lives.
I think it is sensible to distinguish between the parts of the CRA that apply to the State and the parts that apply to private persons or organisations. Given that the State has monopoly on force and reoresents all citizens, I don't think it's a liberal stance to claim that representatives of the State, acting in that role, have full freedom of association.
There are three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.
Here is the problem. The woke are damaged goods until the get help that leads to a complete rejection of the parasitic mind virus of critical social justice ideology.
I promote a list of interview question that help identify candidates as having the virus so they can be rejected instead of brining their sick grievance toxicity into the work culture.
I do feel sorry for these people that got harmed by the radical corruption in the education system. The adults that did that to them should serve time. However, damaged they are and it is not the responsibility of business owners to accommodate them with all their flaws and risks to the organization.
I suggest a nation policy to help supplement cognitive behavior therapy... basically detoxification for their cult indoctrination... so they get back to being rational, normal, productive people that business can hire and promote as a human resource asset and not a liability.
Agree with most of the essay but disagree on Konstantin being an opponent of the “woke right”. I agree with Glenn Greenwald that KK is a perfect example of the woke right.
He does not reject special victimhood status or exaggeration of oppression or secret hidden racism and bigotry that is baked into society. He embraces it, but only as applied to his own tribe; and he believes in special accommodations and an ethnoststate specifically for his tribe and not necessarily to others, and definitely not to other cultures in the West.
He supports labeling opposing speech dangerous when it is against his tribe and he does not support free speech in principle.
Strap in. The next few years, anything bad that happens or any disaster or institutional mistake will be immediately followed by mobs looking for the first “DEI” hire they can find to pin it on. Since we do not know how many under qualified were promoted in every institution over the last 10 years or so, every single minority in a professional setting will have the potential to be subject to these mob investigations.
This, obviously, is NOT good, but this will be a likely reality for some time until it burns itself out.
Regarding Obergefell v. Hodges, if it does get overturned, many of us will be protected by the Respect For Marriage Act, the passage of which can pretty directly be attributed to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
I'll admit, as a gay guy, it's been a little jarring to see the resurgence of openly expressed anti-gay sentiments. But I'm trying to view it as a positive, that is, to say "Thank you for showing me who you are." My number one approach to bigotry has always been to return love for hate. It's amazing how effective it is to just let someone spout their worst thoughts--they're so thrown off when you don't take the bait, especially if you turn the other cheek. They know it leaves them just looking like dicks. I've actually turned homophobes into friends this way.
Whereas the best way to let bigotry fester seems to be to prevent its expression until it explodes; that's what woke did, and that's the result we're seeing now.
How many of those thirty-five states that still have anti-marriage laws on their books would have overturned them by now if the Supreme Court had limited its ruling to forcing states to recognize marriages made in other states (our nation's longstanding practice for any other difference in marriage laws, eg age of consent.) I'll always wonder if SCOTUS didn't snatch defeat from the hands of victory on that one, given how fast the tide of public opinion was already turning. Now those laws will sit on the books for decades to come.
To bring this around to the topic of the essay: Letting people express their bigotry and letting states handle these issues differently isn't just the liberal ideal, it's the liberal ideal because it actually works in practice to minimize bigotry. Whereas the stuff that's on the chopping block right now (yes, even possibly parts of the Civil Rights Act) represent a bipartisan multi-generational attempt to legislate against bigotry that has proven extremely counterproductive; wokeness was just its apotheosis. Right-wokeness has no such deep foundation in existing law.
This is why I'm more optimistic than afraid right now; it all feels more like clearing a log jam than destroying a dam.
Hmmm. Interesting insights. I'm inclined to agree with you on the returning love for hate. It is astonishingly effective! And your stance on letting people express bigotry and reveal itself as the best way to deal with it matches that of Jonathan Rauch's argument in Kindly Inquisitors which I think remains the most important book for really intuitively understanding liberalism. I really hope your optimism is warranted. I'm feeling a bit doom and gloom at the moment.
I suspect that those worried about the anti-woke find support for their concerns in comments on X. As one River Page for the Free Press writes, "I woke up and immediately opened Twitter (a.k.a. X)...like I do every morning." (Interestingly, comments on the article are now closed, less than a week after its publishing.) My first waking moments do not include opening X, but I'm a frequent visitor. Yes, there are more comments by conservative voices, but I very rarely see the kind of trash Page claims to see on X: "it is important you understand how bad things have gotten on X. Since Trump’s win in November, the extreme right has completely taken over the platform, and every day they’re getting high on their own supply, expressing opinions that the average American, including Trump voters, would find alienating, insane, or offensive." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the reason for that is simple. When I come across these kind of comments, I utilize X's technological wonder which enables you to inform its algorithm that I am "Not interested in this post." So far, it seems to have kept them away! Isn't that amazing?! The only downside is that I don't have occasion to write disaster porn about the hazards of free speech and the alleged insanity of the "far right" & MAGA. But I can live with that.
It has nothing to do with 'like'. It has to do with power. You know this, which is why you play the 'America is not a White nation' game. The end-game of all liberalism is race-mixing and the dispossession of White majorities in White homelands.
There's nothing 'nonsensical' about evaluating and discriminating by 'race'.
What's 'nonsensical' is the idea of an abstract so-called 'objective' basis for evaluating other people en masse.
Racism is good. It's good because Whites are the only people who take 'racism is bad' seriously and in doing so they've allowed themselves to be displaced and dispossessed across all White homelands.
'Good' is what is good for 'people like me'.
'Bad' is what is bad for 'people like me'.
This is your argument.
Since White Nationalists are not 'people like me' in your world, our lived experience and preferences are disregarded.
But what your entire politics amounts to is waging race-war on Whites by pretending that any defense of Whites on the basis of being White is invalid.
I advocate for racial separation in order to mitigate the invevitable collapse of liberal Kumayaworld.
Most people with your views live in 90% White Nationalist conditions. You use real estate costs as a kind of 'zipcode fortress' that pushes away the deleterious effects of your views on race-mixing and your anti-Whiteness.
You get to deal with domesticated and assimilated non-Whites who largely play the game of sharing your 'values' as long as you don't challenge them.
'Racism' is the recognition that other races puruse their racial agendas. It's noticing and responding to reality.
Your position would appear to be that that either (a) such racial agendas by non-Whites aren't relevant or don't exist' OR (b) that every non-Whte racial agenda is valid while every White racial agenda is invalid.
In the end, 'liberalism' in all its forms is about race-mixing. It doesn't matter whether it colonialist liberalism' (such as you espouse) or whether it's 'conservative' liberalism. The one thing all 'liberals' agree on is that homogeneous White nations must be race-mixed until the White population is dispossesed or genetically disappears.
You can't give that up.
The 'far right' is just as committed to race-mixing as you are.
That's what you don't get.
The real political division in the world is between those that want to create or maintain 'racially homogenous' homelands *for Whites* and those that want to flood those homelands with non-Whites and made Whites feel bad for rejecting them.
The 'far right' is just a liberal as you.
Which is why you like to set up this fact Punch and Judy show of the 'far right' versus 'conservatives': They both further the goal of race-mixing (look at the living arrangements of the 'leader' of AfD).
This is exactly where I am right now, in terms of I *am* rethinking my support of criticism, etc:
"Liberal lefties, please resist any temptation to respond to the rise of an authoritarian and vengeful anti-woke right by rethinking your support of criticisms of wokeness and becoming more sympathetic to it in order to maintain solidarity against the illiberal right. We've been here before and it went very badly. "
One response is that we've also been before, where we are right now, and it went badly. It was e.g. the end of Civil War Reconstruction, and the rise of the KKK.
US history is replete with examples where radical right-wingers get into power, and massively roll back civil-liberties. It seems weak tea to rely on a few relatively lonely voices saying "No, don't do that, really, it's not cricket ...".
I feel like those people could be argued the same as the true-believer Communists who were saying about the rise of Stalin "No, we didn't do this for purges and gulags, we wanted a worker's revolution against oppression".
Or, in the vernacular, sadly: "Leopards, stop eating people's faces!" sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
But I include that too. I'm certainly not advocating relying on a few weak voices. This piece is how important it is for us all to oppose the authoritarian anti-woke right. Is it not clear that I'm trying to inspire more people to do that?
You can do that without supporting the authoritarian woke left. This is the same principle as not having to support Christian Nationalists if you're worried about Islamists or Islamists if you're worried about Christian Nationalists. You can oppose both of them, on principle, but focus on one in practice depending on where you live and what the greatest threat is.
I'm dubious about this, in practice. It's an easy things to say, and it can't be disproven. But if it were true, the MAGA craziness should then produce a counter-reaction of scary amounts.
Yes, yes, it's very clear that you're trying to *inspire* more people. The "woke" argument is that's bringing not even a knife, but a cup of tea and plate of biscuits, to a gunfight. I'd sardonically describe a basic "woke" argument as "Someone is going to be in charge, and it's either us or them. Which side are you on?". One might respond "No, I choose the path of love and kindness, for it is the only way that leads to happiness of us all.". The important point is now, they have a counter-response - "Then you can be loving and kind in jail or worse, as the MAGA right-wing junta consolidates power".
I'm not one for WWII Germany analogies, they're overwrought. But there's plenty of horrific history in the world, where "not as bad as WWII Germany" is the epitome of damning with faint praise.
I don't know what that means. This is an essay on the need to oppose authoritarian right-wing anti-woke. Why do you assume I mean we should do this with tea and biscuits? Is it because I wrote an argument rather than blowing up a building or shooting anyone? I admit that I don't advocate violence and I suspect you don't either. I think you think I should now support the woke, but presumably you want me to do that in words rather than actions too, so why isn't that tea and biscuits. I can argue & campaign just as fiercely for liberalism as I can for woke and liberalism is the thing I think will actually work. I've explained why.
If you disagree & think getting more woke will make people more likely to think favourably of the. left & less favourably of Trump, explain why? Write something addressing all the surveys of people's reasons for voting Trump, see how highly 'The left has gone woke" featured in them & explain why you think that being more woke will somehow make them change their mind about that and turn on Trump and support the left.
Let me back up, and perhaps be less poetic, to explain. One of the key aspects of "woke", one where the authoritarian aspect manifests, is an idea that the right-wing must be opposed by inflicting much hurt and pain on them as can be *legally* done. In practice, this doesn't mean violence - though some woke posture about "punch Nazis!", they're all keyboard warriors. But they do want to start with massive hate-campaigns, moving to trying to get people fired and made unemployable, and imposing censorship whereever they can. As should be clear from my phrasing, I don't favor this. But, importantly, there is an argument for it. They will say it's necessary, as the alternative is white supremacy and patriarchy and gay-bashing and all of those terms. And that opposing the authoritarian right-wing anti-woke by writing essays is what I called tea and biscuits. It's good-hearted, but completely futile. It's like pleading with the KKK not to wear hoods and burn crosses. The KKK won't care, and it doesn't do anything to stop them.
Now, I don't say you should now support the woke. I don't *now* support the woke myself - but I'm currently giving their arguments a lot more respect than I did two weeks ago. It seems to me they do have more evidence for their case.
I suppose the upshot of this is that, not to be rude, but I gently suggest for your goals that you need a better argument, one which grapples with how to restrain the radical right-wing, which will not care about essays. I will not presume to say what it should be.
So, I am to understand that by writing a piece on why we, but especially ethical conservatives, need to oppose the authoritarian anti-woke right for four reasons I have set out, I am not doing anything to restrain them.
Meanwhile, you by having feelings that are more sympathetic to the woke & telling me about them in my comments but not presuming to have any suggestions at all on how to meaningfully restrain the radical right-wing are?
I am writing a piece about this now because this happens a lot. Mostly, it's been the anti-woke right telling me that all my work showing the problem, my books explaining the problem, all my work helping companies and individuals push back authoritarian CSJ initiatives and the book about that is doing nothing to restrain the woke right while seeming to believe that they were doing something by saying radical & illiberal things online. They mistake the expression of their vengeful feelings for action and my attempts to actually make a difference by setting out what the problem and likely solution is in evidence-based ways for inaction.
Now I have people on the left telling me that my attempt to explain why the anti-woke right offer no solutions, will harm a lot of innocent people and make the woke left resurge and that we all need to be clear that their behaviour is unacceptable to us and that we won't vote for a leader who does that does nothing to solve the problem because I'm still trying to persuade people to be reasonable and ethical. They perceive their own strong reactive feelings of surging to the support of the woke and condemning the entirety of the right to be action because it soothes those reactive feelings. I'm good-hearted but entirely futile
Yes, there's an argument for authoritarian speech control whether it's from the left or the right. They're bad ones but they genuinely believe them. I am trying to stop more people radicalising and believing bad ideas. I have written the best argument against this that I can. If you are dissatisfied with it, I suggest you write the one you think I should have written that sets out what you think will work better. Little will be gained by complaining that I am not doing enough to fix things while yourself doing nothing at all. Presume to say what you think the solution and set it out powerfully and convince people.
The radical right is a mouse that the left projects to Godzilla size. They accrue some power whenever working class people get angry enough about bread & butter issues - which is precisely why the left can solve the problem quite easily by doing exactly what its there for - look after normal people's needs instead of pursuing luxury beliefs.
We're not in Weimar era Germany as much as Antifa types fantasize about it - people just want decent jobs, housing affordability and no more mass immigration. If a rational liberal/left gives it to them the radical right has nothing to offer the majority.
Great piece and part two. I appreciate this so much.
I have thought it obvious that woke is wrong for the same reasons creationist science is wrong, because they are not evidence based and are illiberal.
I think we need to focus on narrative, in part because that is the tactic of the Critical Social Justice movement, at least that is how they trained me in education circles.
Thr liberal narrative needs revitalizing. That includes the weaknesses we witnessed in the 21st century. Liberalism is exposed to Trojan Horses meandering in and opening the gates for those who disdain our system.
That does not mean making a utopian narrative as authoritarian do, but by recognizing the immense benefits society has garnered as a direct result of liberalism. Just as American History includes all our successes and failures (the failure of racism, slavery, segregation, misogyny and the turn the nation made because of liberal principles). Both the woke left and right do not want to maintain liberal principles, as you so rightly have pointed out, because their goals are illiberal.
In very simple terms, i believe liberalism = good, because [insert evidence based claim here] and I believe illeberalism = bad, because [insert evidence based claim here].
In dialogue, I think asking questions is the best way to engage with people (even when i fail to do it). Curiosity can be infectious, and does not invite as much of a reactionary hostility. Plant a seed of doubt and/or introspection.
I agree about the narrative and others have suggested the same. Because liberalism is careful and nuanced and about reform, rather than revolution, it does not lend itself well to unifying slogans. We need to inspire people to support liberalism in a way we have been failing to do.
"I have thought it obvious that woke is wrong for the same reasons creationist science is wrong, because they are not evidence based and are illiberal."
Some people moved from left to right without ever giving up the woke. Yes I am thinking of some prominent radfems.
Libertarians far and wide (including me) have been looking to get rid of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at least since the '80s. This is not a new thing. It is, in fact, a liberal stance. That some recent racist Woke Right folks have glommed on to this stance is irrelevant to the materiality of the stance.
Additionally, at no point in either essay do you make a strong stance on what *should* be occurring. There's an old Robin Williams joke about unarmed British police who say "Stop! Or I'll say stop again!" These essays remind me of that. Should liberals be watchful of excesses? Yes. But there absolutely needs to be a direct assault on the CSJ rot that is pervasive in the US Government (and most Western institutions). Firmly standing behind two sexes. Cutting all Governmet funding for Critical Theory research. Disbanding Government sponsored affinity groups. Removing Government sponsored DEI regalia. Terminating employees directly employed by DEI organizations. This MUST HAPPEN. This is not revenge. This is not a wild backlash. This is an absolute necessary. Because the rot is very VERY deep.
Hmmm, yes. OK, I take your point. I have another libertarian making it as well. Perhaps a more nuanced take on the CRA which disbanded parts of it that fall into denying freedom of association rather than removing barriers could be argued ethically from a liberal position even tho I am uncomfortable with it!
I don't set out what should be done in these essays, no. I do in bits and pieces elsewhere and quite comprehensively in my last book. Perhaps I should produce a version of the book chapter to show how a strong liberal response is just as effective as a strong illiberal one and likely to stand the test of time in multiple scenarios.
'Woke Right' is a moronism.
The notion that there is "overt racism" in the anti-woke is problematic. What is going on, in many cases, is truth breaking out.
In the past, like 2 weeks ago, statements like "blacks are not more likely to be criminals than are members of other groups" are made. These statements are false. Blacks are 5x as likely to be criminals. Knife fights in HS involve, almost exclusively, blacks on one side, and usually on both sides. The BLM riots of 2020 involved 90% blacks stealing everything not nailed down. The smash-n-grab thieves in CA are black.
These statements are true.
People exist as individuals, and to allege that a given person is likely or necessarily a certain way because of her/his attachment to a racial demographic group is overt racism on the part of the one making such a claim. It is not “truth breaking out” when black people or women in positions of power and influence are summarily dismissed as “DEI hires” — and that is the kind of thing we are hearing. Any individual who belongs to a group whose members are so targeted by MAGAs and other illiberal right wingers understandably embraces the idea of institutional and structural disadvantage/privilege, particularly since they are being stereotyped not by a random windbag in the comments section but by the most powerful men in the world.
Precisely. It's true that 99% of sexual offences are committed by men. Would this justify me being a misandrist? Would truth be breaking out if I assumed you both to be rapists? Alternatively, because men hold the majority of leadership positions in so many fields, should I assume that they got there due to patriarchal bias and not on their own merits and that an investigation should take place to discover whose male privilege is responsible for them holding a position and removing them from it?
Yeah, I don't think I will. I'll treat you both as individuals, assume you are both not rapists, decide George appears quite illiberal & prone to fallaciously applying statistics to individuals while Paolo holds liberal individualist ethics and does not use such flawed reasoning.
Tbf, it does justify why we have very different social and legal standards when treating men and women. You don’t need to make assumptions of men being guilty as much as recognizing men are much more likely to be the offender, so you make different decisions when interacting with men compared to women.
Better to be a racist than a crime statistic. Your zipcode largely determines how much illusion about race your politics supports.
LeftWOKE = Black crime is caused by racism of white people.
RightWOKE = Black crime is caused by race of the offenders.
Neither is straight-forward truth.
If "truth broke out" about the phenomenon of minority crime in the USA it would probably contain a lot of ingredients that build up the problem, such as:
> A subculture of grievance within the Black community toward society/the state/white people seeing crime as a way to get back at things
> The above deliberately enabled by leftist ideology to stoke these grievances for political gain
> Endemic poverty caused predominantly be declining working class status combined with disastrous family breakdown dynamics
I've read a lot of Thomas Sowell on the subject, I think he is very wide on this subject. Race does not account for behaviour alone - you can easily tell this from the very different statistics from recent African immigrants
It is worse, RightWOKE = Black crime is caused by their inherently flawed and evil natures.
(And therefore... off to the races solution)
No one argues that crime is CAUSED by the race of the perps. However, what people do say, correctly, is that blacks are more likely to be offenders than whites.
In Chicago, Mayor Brendon Johnson, who is black and favors criminals, removed the ShotSpotter tool from the city. The reason given: The locations of most gunfire is in the black sections of town. This is due to the FACT that most gunshots are by black gangbangers in black sections of Chicago. Not all, maybe 95%.
The argument comes down to "Where should the cops go to look for criminals?" The answer is the black section of town, and the perps are young black men.
There is no material woke right as you have tried to paint it here. Your scold is similar to a situation where 1930s Germans beat back the Brown Shirts and you came out criticizing the German public for continuing to be anti Brown Shirt.
These woke shits did real harm to many. They still are. They need full on humiliation and rejection to set the principle that nothing like this can ever happen again. No amnesty for the critical social justice practitioners.
Absolutely. And another issue lies in the repeated chanting of the Woke mantras of DEI, fixing the marginalized, solving the problems of the poor, etc. I'd be happy to stop beating on the Woke. But they have no intention of apologizing or changing their own malign behavior. So, the Base will up the ante.
So you ain’t gonna listen cause you don’t wanna, why pretend you can engage in good faith? You’re the authoritarian. You’re the problem. You don’t believe in principles, you want to punish. You are the bad guy.
Bullshit. I care about the long-term health of all people, and woke is a crap elite luxury virtue signaling, and power-money making scam, that harms the health of all people.
My outright rejection of it and criticism of its practitioners is right, righteous, moral and valuable to the overall human condition.
You’re so much better than everyone else, YOU are the only one who sees the REAL truth, YOU should be in charge etc etc etc
Self righteous little pluke.
I see what is right and what is wrong in terms of consequences and outcomes. Try to engage without the name calling if you want to be taken seriously.
Great piece. Just a couple of minor points about the Civil Rights Act:
- It has always been a fairly mainstream belief in libertarian circles that some parts of the Civil Rights Act that deal with non-discrimination by *private organisations* (or private individuals who don't represent the State) should be scrapped, because they violate principles of freedom of association.
- I think it is undeniable that the Griggs judgement from 1972 which enshrined the disparate impact standard has had a hugely negative impact and many have identified this as one of the origins of DEI.
To be clear, I completely agree that getting rid of the CRA in toto would be incredibly illiberal and those who are advocaing that should be opposed. There are few things more fundamental than the principle that the State should not discriminate based on identity. (Also, I think those who have just woken up to this cause due to anti-woke antipathy haven't typically thought things through).
However,
there are liberals who propose scrapping some parts of it or amending others who have held this position for decades.
principles.
That's not Charlie Kirk's argument, though, is it? I know libertarians always have objections to anything that isn't entirely hands off & they can quibble with some things, but that is reciprocal overcompensation.
Of course. I agree that Kirk and his ilk are not embracing a liberal opposition to wokeness in their approach. However I am distinguishing them from others who have advocated reforming CRA as one of the steps to dismantle wokeness (included would be numerous libertarians as well as prominent figures such as Hanania, Rufo and others, who are not necessarily libertarian).
Hmmm, yes. OK, I take your point. I have another libertarian making it as well. Perhaps a more nuanced take on the CRA which disbanded parts of it that fall into denying freedom of association rather than removing barriers could be argued ethically from a liberal position even tho I am uncomfortable with it!
I'd suggest that repealing the CRA is a reasonable thing for liberals to support. Freedom of association is a key pillar of a liberal society and our society already commonly segregates along racial lines, when peoples revealed preferences in areas like housing are revealed.
It is plainly illiberal to force unwilling people together.
We could call this 'woke right', however simple observation of the world around ones self plainly isn't the same as using critical theory. 2020 onwards simply taught a great many people that a non-trivial number of blacks do not like us and will attack us at work. I have explicitly been told that discrimination against me is fine because I am white and I don't need to recount the 'training' by my employer.
I would rather that the law allow me to not associate with people who behave like this and not force my employer to allow them access to my organization. In a multicultural society the law will be overtaken by the most aggressively tribal, which Plato warned of as I recall.
Can I ask you to clarify what you mean, as I wouldn't want to misunderstand.
The comedian Dick Gregory had a routine about segregation, starting:
"We tried to integrate a restaurant, and they said, "We don't serve colored folk here," and I said, "Well, I don't eat colored folk nowhere. ..."
Are you actually advocating this sort of *business* discrimination should be legal again?
In the famous MLK speech where people which seem to know exactly one line (which they misunderstand), he also said:
"We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. ... We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only."
Do you really believe we should roll back the clock so as to have this be legally permissible?
Yes.
It was a nice idea in its time, however it's plainly apparent that human tribalism isn't a solvable issue. Humans can broadly get along for a while, however some event will always spark inter-ethnic conflict at some point.
Borders between people exist for a reason. We now have a situation where an increasingly authoritarian state deems the native people of Europe to be oppressors. It both allows and encourages African, Indian, Pakistani or Arab colonists to attack Europeans. We technically have legal protections, however law is subject to interpretation by hostile actors. There is a great deal of inter-ethnic tension and violence, now that the third generation of immigrants no longer feel that they need to respect the history or peoples of the countries that they live in.
Europe feels increasingly unsafe for many people and the current status quo cannot last. I just hope there is a peaceful separation and we do not devolve into Lebanon.
One pressure release valve may be to just restore freedom of association. None of this can work if people are being continually harassed by an Orwellian enforcement bureaucracy over their entire lives.
I think it is sensible to distinguish between the parts of the CRA that apply to the State and the parts that apply to private persons or organisations. Given that the State has monopoly on force and reoresents all citizens, I don't think it's a liberal stance to claim that representatives of the State, acting in that role, have full freedom of association.
I think that's a reasonable compromise.
There are three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.
Here is the problem. The woke are damaged goods until the get help that leads to a complete rejection of the parasitic mind virus of critical social justice ideology.
I promote a list of interview question that help identify candidates as having the virus so they can be rejected instead of brining their sick grievance toxicity into the work culture.
I do feel sorry for these people that got harmed by the radical corruption in the education system. The adults that did that to them should serve time. However, damaged they are and it is not the responsibility of business owners to accommodate them with all their flaws and risks to the organization.
I suggest a nation policy to help supplement cognitive behavior therapy... basically detoxification for their cult indoctrination... so they get back to being rational, normal, productive people that business can hire and promote as a human resource asset and not a liability.
Agree with most of the essay but disagree on Konstantin being an opponent of the “woke right”. I agree with Glenn Greenwald that KK is a perfect example of the woke right.
He does not reject special victimhood status or exaggeration of oppression or secret hidden racism and bigotry that is baked into society. He embraces it, but only as applied to his own tribe; and he believes in special accommodations and an ethnoststate specifically for his tribe and not necessarily to others, and definitely not to other cultures in the West.
He supports labeling opposing speech dangerous when it is against his tribe and he does not support free speech in principle.
Strap in. The next few years, anything bad that happens or any disaster or institutional mistake will be immediately followed by mobs looking for the first “DEI” hire they can find to pin it on. Since we do not know how many under qualified were promoted in every institution over the last 10 years or so, every single minority in a professional setting will have the potential to be subject to these mob investigations.
This, obviously, is NOT good, but this will be a likely reality for some time until it burns itself out.
Regarding Obergefell v. Hodges, if it does get overturned, many of us will be protected by the Respect For Marriage Act, the passage of which can pretty directly be attributed to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
I'll admit, as a gay guy, it's been a little jarring to see the resurgence of openly expressed anti-gay sentiments. But I'm trying to view it as a positive, that is, to say "Thank you for showing me who you are." My number one approach to bigotry has always been to return love for hate. It's amazing how effective it is to just let someone spout their worst thoughts--they're so thrown off when you don't take the bait, especially if you turn the other cheek. They know it leaves them just looking like dicks. I've actually turned homophobes into friends this way.
Whereas the best way to let bigotry fester seems to be to prevent its expression until it explodes; that's what woke did, and that's the result we're seeing now.
How many of those thirty-five states that still have anti-marriage laws on their books would have overturned them by now if the Supreme Court had limited its ruling to forcing states to recognize marriages made in other states (our nation's longstanding practice for any other difference in marriage laws, eg age of consent.) I'll always wonder if SCOTUS didn't snatch defeat from the hands of victory on that one, given how fast the tide of public opinion was already turning. Now those laws will sit on the books for decades to come.
To bring this around to the topic of the essay: Letting people express their bigotry and letting states handle these issues differently isn't just the liberal ideal, it's the liberal ideal because it actually works in practice to minimize bigotry. Whereas the stuff that's on the chopping block right now (yes, even possibly parts of the Civil Rights Act) represent a bipartisan multi-generational attempt to legislate against bigotry that has proven extremely counterproductive; wokeness was just its apotheosis. Right-wokeness has no such deep foundation in existing law.
This is why I'm more optimistic than afraid right now; it all feels more like clearing a log jam than destroying a dam.
Hmmm. Interesting insights. I'm inclined to agree with you on the returning love for hate. It is astonishingly effective! And your stance on letting people express bigotry and reveal itself as the best way to deal with it matches that of Jonathan Rauch's argument in Kindly Inquisitors which I think remains the most important book for really intuitively understanding liberalism. I really hope your optimism is warranted. I'm feeling a bit doom and gloom at the moment.
I suspect that those worried about the anti-woke find support for their concerns in comments on X. As one River Page for the Free Press writes, "I woke up and immediately opened Twitter (a.k.a. X)...like I do every morning." (Interestingly, comments on the article are now closed, less than a week after its publishing.) My first waking moments do not include opening X, but I'm a frequent visitor. Yes, there are more comments by conservative voices, but I very rarely see the kind of trash Page claims to see on X: "it is important you understand how bad things have gotten on X. Since Trump’s win in November, the extreme right has completely taken over the platform, and every day they’re getting high on their own supply, expressing opinions that the average American, including Trump voters, would find alienating, insane, or offensive." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the reason for that is simple. When I come across these kind of comments, I utilize X's technological wonder which enables you to inform its algorithm that I am "Not interested in this post." So far, it seems to have kept them away! Isn't that amazing?! The only downside is that I don't have occasion to write disaster porn about the hazards of free speech and the alleged insanity of the "far right" & MAGA. But I can live with that.
It has nothing to do with 'like'. It has to do with power. You know this, which is why you play the 'America is not a White nation' game. The end-game of all liberalism is race-mixing and the dispossession of White majorities in White homelands.
There's nothing 'nonsensical' about evaluating and discriminating by 'race'.
What's 'nonsensical' is the idea of an abstract so-called 'objective' basis for evaluating other people en masse.
Racism is good. It's good because Whites are the only people who take 'racism is bad' seriously and in doing so they've allowed themselves to be displaced and dispossessed across all White homelands.
'Good' is what is good for 'people like me'.
'Bad' is what is bad for 'people like me'.
This is your argument.
Since White Nationalists are not 'people like me' in your world, our lived experience and preferences are disregarded.
But what your entire politics amounts to is waging race-war on Whites by pretending that any defense of Whites on the basis of being White is invalid.
I advocate for racial separation in order to mitigate the invevitable collapse of liberal Kumayaworld.
Most people with your views live in 90% White Nationalist conditions. You use real estate costs as a kind of 'zipcode fortress' that pushes away the deleterious effects of your views on race-mixing and your anti-Whiteness.
You get to deal with domesticated and assimilated non-Whites who largely play the game of sharing your 'values' as long as you don't challenge them.
'Racism' is the recognition that other races puruse their racial agendas. It's noticing and responding to reality.
Your position would appear to be that that either (a) such racial agendas by non-Whites aren't relevant or don't exist' OR (b) that every non-Whte racial agenda is valid while every White racial agenda is invalid.
In the end, 'liberalism' in all its forms is about race-mixing. It doesn't matter whether it colonialist liberalism' (such as you espouse) or whether it's 'conservative' liberalism. The one thing all 'liberals' agree on is that homogeneous White nations must be race-mixed until the White population is dispossesed or genetically disappears.
You can't give that up.
The 'far right' is just as committed to race-mixing as you are.
That's what you don't get.
The real political division in the world is between those that want to create or maintain 'racially homogenous' homelands *for Whites* and those that want to flood those homelands with non-Whites and made Whites feel bad for rejecting them.
The 'far right' is just a liberal as you.
Which is why you like to set up this fact Punch and Judy show of the 'far right' versus 'conservatives': They both further the goal of race-mixing (look at the living arrangements of the 'leader' of AfD).
Liberalism is the issue. You want to go back to an earlier stage of liberalism which is predicted to invariably lead back right to where we are now?
Go read Why Liberalism Failed, by Patrick Deneen.
This is exactly where I am right now, in terms of I *am* rethinking my support of criticism, etc:
"Liberal lefties, please resist any temptation to respond to the rise of an authoritarian and vengeful anti-woke right by rethinking your support of criticisms of wokeness and becoming more sympathetic to it in order to maintain solidarity against the illiberal right. We've been here before and it went very badly. "
One response is that we've also been before, where we are right now, and it went badly. It was e.g. the end of Civil War Reconstruction, and the rise of the KKK.
US history is replete with examples where radical right-wingers get into power, and massively roll back civil-liberties. It seems weak tea to rely on a few relatively lonely voices saying "No, don't do that, really, it's not cricket ...".
I feel like those people could be argued the same as the true-believer Communists who were saying about the rise of Stalin "No, we didn't do this for purges and gulags, we wanted a worker's revolution against oppression".
Or, in the vernacular, sadly: "Leopards, stop eating people's faces!" sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
But I include that too. I'm certainly not advocating relying on a few weak voices. This piece is how important it is for us all to oppose the authoritarian anti-woke right. Is it not clear that I'm trying to inspire more people to do that?
You can do that without supporting the authoritarian woke left. This is the same principle as not having to support Christian Nationalists if you're worried about Islamists or Islamists if you're worried about Christian Nationalists. You can oppose both of them, on principle, but focus on one in practice depending on where you live and what the greatest threat is.
Also, when I said the failure to criticise the woke left went very badly, I meant it resulted in a surge to the right and the rise of illiberal right.
I'm dubious about this, in practice. It's an easy things to say, and it can't be disproven. But if it were true, the MAGA craziness should then produce a counter-reaction of scary amounts.
That's right, yes. Do you not think Donald Trumps last presidency had anything to do with the rise of woke authoritarianism?
I've written here that I fear his current one could produce a resurgence that is even bigger.
Yes, yes, it's very clear that you're trying to *inspire* more people. The "woke" argument is that's bringing not even a knife, but a cup of tea and plate of biscuits, to a gunfight. I'd sardonically describe a basic "woke" argument as "Someone is going to be in charge, and it's either us or them. Which side are you on?". One might respond "No, I choose the path of love and kindness, for it is the only way that leads to happiness of us all.". The important point is now, they have a counter-response - "Then you can be loving and kind in jail or worse, as the MAGA right-wing junta consolidates power".
I'm not one for WWII Germany analogies, they're overwrought. But there's plenty of horrific history in the world, where "not as bad as WWII Germany" is the epitome of damning with faint praise.
I don't know what that means. This is an essay on the need to oppose authoritarian right-wing anti-woke. Why do you assume I mean we should do this with tea and biscuits? Is it because I wrote an argument rather than blowing up a building or shooting anyone? I admit that I don't advocate violence and I suspect you don't either. I think you think I should now support the woke, but presumably you want me to do that in words rather than actions too, so why isn't that tea and biscuits. I can argue & campaign just as fiercely for liberalism as I can for woke and liberalism is the thing I think will actually work. I've explained why.
If you disagree & think getting more woke will make people more likely to think favourably of the. left & less favourably of Trump, explain why? Write something addressing all the surveys of people's reasons for voting Trump, see how highly 'The left has gone woke" featured in them & explain why you think that being more woke will somehow make them change their mind about that and turn on Trump and support the left.
Let me back up, and perhaps be less poetic, to explain. One of the key aspects of "woke", one where the authoritarian aspect manifests, is an idea that the right-wing must be opposed by inflicting much hurt and pain on them as can be *legally* done. In practice, this doesn't mean violence - though some woke posture about "punch Nazis!", they're all keyboard warriors. But they do want to start with massive hate-campaigns, moving to trying to get people fired and made unemployable, and imposing censorship whereever they can. As should be clear from my phrasing, I don't favor this. But, importantly, there is an argument for it. They will say it's necessary, as the alternative is white supremacy and patriarchy and gay-bashing and all of those terms. And that opposing the authoritarian right-wing anti-woke by writing essays is what I called tea and biscuits. It's good-hearted, but completely futile. It's like pleading with the KKK not to wear hoods and burn crosses. The KKK won't care, and it doesn't do anything to stop them.
Now, I don't say you should now support the woke. I don't *now* support the woke myself - but I'm currently giving their arguments a lot more respect than I did two weeks ago. It seems to me they do have more evidence for their case.
I suppose the upshot of this is that, not to be rude, but I gently suggest for your goals that you need a better argument, one which grapples with how to restrain the radical right-wing, which will not care about essays. I will not presume to say what it should be.
So, I am to understand that by writing a piece on why we, but especially ethical conservatives, need to oppose the authoritarian anti-woke right for four reasons I have set out, I am not doing anything to restrain them.
Meanwhile, you by having feelings that are more sympathetic to the woke & telling me about them in my comments but not presuming to have any suggestions at all on how to meaningfully restrain the radical right-wing are?
I am writing a piece about this now because this happens a lot. Mostly, it's been the anti-woke right telling me that all my work showing the problem, my books explaining the problem, all my work helping companies and individuals push back authoritarian CSJ initiatives and the book about that is doing nothing to restrain the woke right while seeming to believe that they were doing something by saying radical & illiberal things online. They mistake the expression of their vengeful feelings for action and my attempts to actually make a difference by setting out what the problem and likely solution is in evidence-based ways for inaction.
Now I have people on the left telling me that my attempt to explain why the anti-woke right offer no solutions, will harm a lot of innocent people and make the woke left resurge and that we all need to be clear that their behaviour is unacceptable to us and that we won't vote for a leader who does that does nothing to solve the problem because I'm still trying to persuade people to be reasonable and ethical. They perceive their own strong reactive feelings of surging to the support of the woke and condemning the entirety of the right to be action because it soothes those reactive feelings. I'm good-hearted but entirely futile
Yes, there's an argument for authoritarian speech control whether it's from the left or the right. They're bad ones but they genuinely believe them. I am trying to stop more people radicalising and believing bad ideas. I have written the best argument against this that I can. If you are dissatisfied with it, I suggest you write the one you think I should have written that sets out what you think will work better. Little will be gained by complaining that I am not doing enough to fix things while yourself doing nothing at all. Presume to say what you think the solution and set it out powerfully and convince people.
The radical right is a mouse that the left projects to Godzilla size. They accrue some power whenever working class people get angry enough about bread & butter issues - which is precisely why the left can solve the problem quite easily by doing exactly what its there for - look after normal people's needs instead of pursuing luxury beliefs.
We're not in Weimar era Germany as much as Antifa types fantasize about it - people just want decent jobs, housing affordability and no more mass immigration. If a rational liberal/left gives it to them the radical right has nothing to offer the majority.
Great piece and part two. I appreciate this so much.
I have thought it obvious that woke is wrong for the same reasons creationist science is wrong, because they are not evidence based and are illiberal.
I think we need to focus on narrative, in part because that is the tactic of the Critical Social Justice movement, at least that is how they trained me in education circles.
Thr liberal narrative needs revitalizing. That includes the weaknesses we witnessed in the 21st century. Liberalism is exposed to Trojan Horses meandering in and opening the gates for those who disdain our system.
That does not mean making a utopian narrative as authoritarian do, but by recognizing the immense benefits society has garnered as a direct result of liberalism. Just as American History includes all our successes and failures (the failure of racism, slavery, segregation, misogyny and the turn the nation made because of liberal principles). Both the woke left and right do not want to maintain liberal principles, as you so rightly have pointed out, because their goals are illiberal.
In very simple terms, i believe liberalism = good, because [insert evidence based claim here] and I believe illeberalism = bad, because [insert evidence based claim here].
In dialogue, I think asking questions is the best way to engage with people (even when i fail to do it). Curiosity can be infectious, and does not invite as much of a reactionary hostility. Plant a seed of doubt and/or introspection.
I agree about the narrative and others have suggested the same. Because liberalism is careful and nuanced and about reform, rather than revolution, it does not lend itself well to unifying slogans. We need to inspire people to support liberalism in a way we have been failing to do.
"I have thought it obvious that woke is wrong for the same reasons creationist science is wrong, because they are not evidence based and are illiberal."
Its a sort of Lysenkoism of the Humanities.
Extremism begets extremism. I think they both fuel each other. Negative feedback loop. We need radical centrists.