Harper’s “A letter on justice and open debate” is criticized by some of the narrow-minded ideologues targeted

The Objective criticizes Harper’s “letter”:

1. Harper’s is “a prominent magazine that’s infamous.” “The signatories [include those who are] white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms … even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.”

2. “Nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.”

3. “The content of the letter also does not deal with the problem of power: who has it and who does not.”

4. The authors avoid “The ongoing debate about who gets to have a platform.”

5. “‘Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class.’”  “Laurie Sheck, who said the N-word when referencing a James Baldwin piece in class.” The Objective implies she wasn’t punished, therefore this is a bogus issue. In fact, it was made an issue;(1) and though she wasn’t fired, many others have been fired on the same grounds.

6. “The heads of organizations are ousted for what are just clumsy mistakes?” John McWhorter cites many such instances in Woke Racism, for example, the person who strongly supports Black Lives Matter, but made the mistake of noting the universal liberal principle that all lives matter as well, in passing.

What’s wrong with this stuff? First, it’s an example of the people being rightly criticized objecting to their critics for not writing about their issues. It’s like criticizing an article objecting to high taxes for not writing about how the government needs to spend more. Wokeness is a current ideology - a set of dogmas which seeks to dictate what everyone else should believe and say and do. That’s not compatible with “open debate,” so they fault a critique for 1. having massive “platforms”; 2. not addressing marginalization; 3. not addressing “the problem of power”; 4. not addressing “who gets to have a platform”.

5. and 6. They dismiss the problem of Woke taboos’ hampering open debate.

I call ideology “the restriction of thought, language, and truth in the service of power.” Usually the power of a self-aggrandizing group or faction. As such, ideology is a mere belief system (“thank you for speaking ‘our’ truth”), and a much better option is an information system, such as liberalism throughout the ages.

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(1)“The Idea That Whites Can’t Refer to the N-Word”

Linguist John McWhorter rightly names this: It’s a taboo. I cite his article because of Orwell’s warning about the deadly effects of taboos, below. “Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind.”

McWhorter: “Laurie Sheck is a professor of creative writing at the New School in New York, a decades-long veteran of the classroom, a widely published novelist and essayist, and a Pulitzer nominee. She’s also spent the summer in trouble with her bosses for possibly being a racist.”

“Early last spring semester, Sheck, who is white, was teaching a graduate seminar on [James] Baldwin, and one of the questions she posed for discussion was why the documentary title had substituted “Negro” for [the n-word.]”

“A white student in the class objected to Sheck’s having uttered the word. And administrators were apparently dissatisfied with Sheck’s attempt to defend herself, because the school put her under investigation, while directing her to reacquaint herself with the school’s rules about discrimination. This month the school determined that Sheck had committed no offense. But the fact that smart, busy people felt it necessary to investigate Sheck for mouthing the word when referring to it—not using it independently, much less directing it at someone—suggests a preoccupation less with matters of morality than with matters of taboo.”

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.

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(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.