Liberal, Left, Ctd

Continuing a discussion from 2013, we note that Andrew Sullivan's Dish recently posted The Left’s Intensifying War On Liberalism, which reiterates the position that left and liberal are not at all alike. One is about groups—oppressor and oppressed—and inevitable class warfare. Liberalism, as suggested by the characteristic phrase “We the People,” is, this blog has argued, about harmony, cooperation and altruism. The left gravitates toward enmity; liberalism, toward friendship.

This groupism is suggested by a passage I once read (it may have been in Peter Shaw, The War against the Intellect: Episodes in the Decline of Discourse). As I recall, it claimed to recount a discussion at an AAUW convention.

It went something like this: A committee got to discussing the issue, Who is the oppressor? They agreed that men certainly were oppressors of women. Gay women added that straight women oppressed those of alternative sexual orientations. Socialist women present drew attention to the complicity of non-socialist women in capitalist exploitation. The minority women in the group said, Let's not forget the racist tendencies of white people. Thus the only person who was not an oppressor would be a gay, socialist, woman of color.

This possibly apocryphal story suggests the absurdities of identity politics. Sullivan's post, working from an article by Jon Chait, addresses “what the new guardians of the identity politics left are up to.” He writes, “the illiberal policing of speech, the demonizing of dissent, and extreme identity politics have now transcended the academy and arrived in social media with a vengeance.”

Sullivan cites Chait:

Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

As mentioned in earlier posts, the left is not actually concerned with civil liberties. It is concerned with “heightened scrutiny” for protected classes. This de facto privilege for those who escape classification as oppressors clashes with basic concepts of political democracy, such as persuasion, the dignity of the single person, equality, and freedom of speech even when it is offensive.

“It seems to me,” writes Sullivan, “they are being intimidated by an ideology that utterly rejects the notion that free speech – including views with which one strongly disagrees – can actually advance social justice, and by a view of the world that sees liberal society entirely in terms of “power” rather than freedom. And if you look across the non-conservative online media, this orthodoxy is now close to absolute.”

He adds, “If reason has no chance against the homophobic patriarchy, and one side is always going to be far more powerful in numbers than the other, almost anything short of violence is justified in order to correct the imbalance. The “victim”, after all, is always right. ... The only “dialogue” much of the p.c. gay left wants with its sinners is a groveling apology for having a different point of view. There are few things in a free society more illiberal than that.” 

Perhaps the worst thing about the way of the left is that it doesn't work: “For the past twenty years, the open, free-wheeling arguments for marriage equality and military service have persuaded, yes, persuaded, Americans with remarkable speed that reform was right and necessary. Yes: the arguments. If you want to argue that no social progress can come without coercion or suppression of free speech, you have to deal with the empirical fact that old-fashioned liberalism brought gay equality to America far, far faster than identity politics leftism. It was liberalism – not leftism – that gave us this breakthrough.”

The way of the left militates against freedom of thought. Opinions not approved of are likely to cause those who dare to express them to be reclassified: “Oppressor.”

Sullivan notes, “Which reveals how dismal this kind of politics is, how bitter and rancid it so quickly becomes, how infantilizing it is. Any “success” for one minority means merely that the oppression has been shifted temporarily elsewhere. Or it means that we dissenters in a minority have internalized our own oppression (by embracing the patriarchy of civil marriage, or structural hegemonic violence in the military) and are blind to even greater oppression beyond the next curtain of social justice consciousness.”

Such an us-vs-them outlook fits perfectly with the zero sum game perception, even as liberal enlightened self-interest is harmonious with universal justice.