Scores of liberal signatories question left/progressive tactics

A coming article in Harpers warns Democrats against an illiberal reaction to the anti-democratic pathologies of the Trump regime:

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts.
But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. … The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.

The signatories to this warning against the illiberal, “ideological” faction within the Democratic Party do not name the faction, but it is a group within the party which owes more to Central Europe and Marx than to the Western European Enlightenment outlook of the Declaration and Constitution: left/progressives.

Liberalism, like democracy, is about cooperation. Its most famous three words are, “We the People.” Liberalism gives the citizen the maximum possible amount of freedom (“pursuit of happiness” is a fundamental right) and asks citizens to be public spirited and give some of it back.

Left/progressivism, like its Marxian forebear, is about enmity. Marx declared that the very existence of the bourgeoisie constituted a fundamental wrong to the workers. When left/progressivism says “white privilege” it implies that white people are in an equally problematic relation to African Americans. In both cases it is not clear how the wrong can be expiated — what the path to redemption might be. “Ye have the poor always with you,” said Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago, but the privilege “argument” would seem to require a society in which no one is ever disadvantaged.

Huffington Post recently wrote, in 6 Things White People Say That Highlight Their Privilege, “If you want to be an ally in the fight against racism, start by acknowledging your white privilege.” The scores of Harpers signatories(1) wrote, “resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.”

As liberals in the Democratic Party would say, if they dared face the consequences, you can ask free citizens, who are exercising their “pursuit of happiness,” to be concerned about the everyday racism experienced by African Americans. But you cannot order them to do that. And you certainly cannot declare them guilty if they don’t (That is the business of the courts.). In a liberal society, political movements are not allowed to coerce.

It is likely that the Democratic Party’s fecklessness in the face of the present crisis of democracy is because the liberal wing and the left/progressive wing cannot both belong under the same umbrella. The Democratic Party cannot long endure half democratic and half coercive.

/*****/

(1) Among the signatories:

Martin Amis
Anne Applebaum
Margaret Atwood
Noam Chomsky
Francis Fukuyama 
Todd Gitlin
Wendy Kaminer
Randall Kennedy 
Dahlia Lithwick
Winton Marsalis
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Katha Pollitt
Jonathan Rauch
Salman Rushdie
Gloria Steinem 
Fareed Zakaria 

Self-validating arguments

I recently criticized “white privilege” on social media because it damns people for immutable characteristics, and because arguments which can’t be countered by evidence and reason are necessarily fallacious. “No one should be persuaded by it.” The “argument” is a gotcha: “Check your privilege” and assent to an ideology’s charge of racial guilt. Or be accused by that ideology of the guilt of refusing to take responsibility for “privilege.” A similar situation just appeared in Quillette.

Rob Henderson:

Consider the way charges of “racism” have been used to target individuals. People used to appropriately get rebuked or fired for expressing racist views. Today, though, people are getting cancelled for not supporting the claim that America itself is irredeemably racist. Never mind that such a position is in fact a Kafka trap: Danger awaits no matter how you respond. If America is a racist country, and you agree, then you are admitting that more purging and re-educating must be done. However, if you disagree, proponents of cancel culture take this as evidence that you and others like you are more racist than you realize, and thus more purging and re-educating must be done.

Ideology is the deformation of thought and language in the service of power. It is a belief system, whereas legitimate conceptual systems such as liberalism are information systems. Left/progressive ideologies say “America itself is irredeemably racist” and “confess your white privilege.” But they refuse to enter into debate. Instead of examining countervailing argument on its merits, they treat any attempt at refutation (“if you disagree”) as proof of guilt.

There’s a further problem on social media, where indicating agreement with the seductive falsehoods of left/progressivism — “white privilege” or “America is irredeemably racist” — is virtue signaling. Mindless agreement proves one is on the side of the angels. No debate is necessary, and no evidence or reason will be listened to.

This illustrates a fundamental difference between liberalism and left/progressivism. Both agree that a statement such as “black (derogatory characteristic)” would be racist. But liberalism holds that statements such as “white guilt” and “white privilege” are equally wrong. The left thinks that there is good racism (“white privilege”) and bad racism. Liberalism hold that all racism is wrong, because it does not accept moral double standards.