As the nation grapples in the throes of a once-a-generation soul search, the battle lines of our cold civil war between the Americanists and the civilizational arsonists only continue to harden.
This week saw the stunning public resignation of Bari Weiss as a New York Times opinion editor and columnist. In her cri de coeur, Weiss lamented the monolithic intellectual hegemony forcibly imposed at the Times by the left’s ascendant neo-Jacobin radicals — the dutiful foot soldiers of what Wesley Yang calls the “successor ideology.” In her plea, Weiss identifies Twitter — a synecdoche, of sorts, for leftist mob rule — as the Times’ “ultimate editor.” What’s more, Weiss, a proud Jew and recent author of a book about fighting anti-Semitism, decried her cowardly Times ex-colleagues who’d complain about her “writing about the Jews again.”
Politically, Weiss is an old-school liberal centrist. But at the nation’s paper of record, traditional liberalism has been overrun by a successor ideology that is committed not to tolerance and pluralism but to multiculturalism, identity politics and the pseudo-intellectual grift that is “intersectionality.” The problem with these faddish schools of “thought” is both straightforward and terrifying: They are not merely totalitarian; they are at war with the very concept of America.
Under the tenets of the successor ideology, there is right and there is wrong. However, rather than using the barometer of moral truth, right and wrong are judged as our would-be ochlocracy defines the terms.
According to the partisans of identity politics, right and wrong do not rely upon neutral appeals to truth, justice, egalitarianism or any other criteria that, for millennia, have guided Western political theory. Rather, right and wrong rely upon hierarchical appeals to gender, skin pigmentation, religious belief (or, more often, nonbelief), immigration status, sexual orientation and other categories of assigned “privilege.”
To the multiculturalist or the intersectionalist, homogenous groupthink ought to be foisted upon an unsuspecting people, with the idiosyncratic beliefs and preferences of the less “privileged” necessarily elevated, by very identitarian nature of an expositor, over the beliefs and preferences of the more “privileged.” So “brown” Palestinian-Arabs must be elevated over “white” Israelis (itself a demographic mischaracterization). The insurrectionist, anti-Western civilization platform of the Black Lives Matter movement – which lists on its official website organizational goals such as “disrupt(ing) the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking” — cannot be called into question because the word “Black” is used in the name.
This is poisonous claptrap — a blight upon America’s founding ideals and a cancer upon the basic norms of civic comity without which a unified republic cannot endure. Two weeks ago, we celebrated the 244th birthday of a nation famously founded on the proposition “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In a land conceived on that noble premise, there is no room for a politics of crass racial strife and other forms of rank identitarian subjugation. It is no exaggeration to claim that contemporary peddlers of such a morally bankrupt view of the world are the modern-day intellectual successors of the antebellum- and Jim Crow-era racists; they, too, viewed American society through a prism of race-based “right” and “wrong.” The two are flip sides of the same coin — a coin that is utter anathema to the Declaration of Independence.
On a more tangible level, a view of politics based on overarching hierarchies of “privilege” is also toxic to the sustainability of a civil society. Such a view of the world, predicated upon the diminution of individual moral agency and the pitting of identity-based groups against each other, sows dissension by its very nature. Those deemed “privileged,” or non-“woke,” are punished accordingly. White Christians always fit the bill. But so do Jews, despite their status as the world’s single most historically oppressed people and that we are living through a period of rising global Jew-hatred.
IN American Greatness today, Alan Mills penn’s a very good review on the outdated material used in the issue of racism. The Left Uses Junk Studies to Show Racism.. a very good read, take about 7-10 min.
That’s not truth. It’s a sales pitch for the push for regression that’s at the root of our current troubles.
How much of what’s tearing the fabric of the nation apart did we see before the ascension of Donald Trump? He brought it all to the fore, because division, anger, ignorance, and blame create the sort of environment he can best exploit. He’s doing to the nation what he previously did to his own extended family.
@Greg:
All of it, it was simply not screamed 24/7 on the boob tube.
How so, you mean a time where you could go from HS or college and get a job?
Walk in any major city and not step in human poop? When roads were for cars not protestors? When little boys dreamed of growing up and being a cop not killing one?
Please explain.
@kitt:
The world has changed because technology has advanced. Machines and computers are doing more and more of what human hands and minds once did.
That’s combined with an increasingly dominant corporate structure that puts profits ahead of people, and that has made government the servant of concentrated wealth. I view the wholesale removal of regulation as regressive. It’s essentially being done to remove obstacles that slow down corporate and financial obstacles to all of that. The government is supposed to represent the interests of the entire population, not be the facilitator and tool of those who would dominate and control everything.
Well, that comment came out a bit garbled, and also locked. I meant to say:
It’s essentially being done to remove obstacles that slow down corporate and financial pursuit of all that.
@Greg: Many of the regulations desired to be removed slow progress, narrow roads of death widened to safer wider roads. Multiple department approval for 1 project each that can for any reason halt the progress while costs of the project soar.
There are 16 computers in our truck its a 2010, but it still takes a wrench to repair, few HS still offer mechanics, welding, machinist or basic carpentry, they effectively forced a kid to take 2 more years of technical school just to get a starter job outside of Mc Donalds.2 years of OTJ exerience and 35K lost. Drivers Ed forget about it.
Computer based stuff is still available, My son was of the first graduating class in one HS here, brand new everything, his Cad teacher walked from the room(I see nothing!) as the kids stole ram chips from the word processing computers to install in his computers so the CAD program would run faster. I doubt if kids today would even know how or why.
@Greg:
The problem being that someone has to agree to use their manual labor to build those machines and computers and the Snowflake Generation thinks they all deserve corner offices with a view, not having to work up a sweat unless it is to tear down religious statues.
Yeah, because it’s not like police officers, firemen, teachers, telephone company workers, et al, have their retirement plans invested in those corporations that pay them dividends. All that money earned by the evil corporations* go into the evil corporate president’s pocket, right?
Of course you do, Comrade.
Wait a minute…..you hate the evil corporate* section but want the government to control ever aspect of your life with (repressive) regulations? Seems you want two things that are diabolically opposed to each other.
Just post the Communist Manifesto. It’s what you believe.
@retire05, #7:
No, I want the government to counterbalance the single-minded pursuit of wealth and power by cabals of amoral people like Donald Trump, who those such as yourself somehow imagine are trustworthy guardians of the interests of the very people their blind ambitions lead them to exploit. You’ve put the worst of foxes in charge of guarding the hen house.
Wealth free to buy political influence and power that can then be used to accumulate even more wealth is a vicious circle, and a certain road to plutocracy and autocracy. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. On the contrary, it takes a deficit of the imagination not to see it. This seems to be the same deficit that keeps people from figuring out for themselves that advising everyone to wearing a mask during an out-of-control pandemic is simple common sense, rather than a devious political ploy.
@Greg:
You mean also like the Kennedys, and all the other amoral people that reside(d) on the Democrat side of the aisle? Like Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, et al?
The rest of your post is just so much drivel. More of your Marxist idealism. But we are no longer surprised by that.
Here’s the deal, Comrade Greggie; anyone can become rich in the U.S. Build a better mouse trap, invent something that people want to buy, work your ass off and create a service people need. The problem with you lefties is that you are not capable of creating anything and so you hate anyone that can.
Yes, I realize little Donald used to polish shoes on a street corner. He had to scrimp and save for years to accumulate enough to pay someone to take his SAT for him…
@Greg: greggie the rock, you never are right. You just continue to show your ignorance.
@Greg:
Take a look at the people who have come from simple means and make a decent living in the U.S. Lots of them. But all you can say is “Trump”.
If it is so bad in the U.S., why are you not leaving and going to some Marxist utopia?
@retire05: Oh I see someone has heard about The newest Trump book. A disgruntled grandchild who thinks she should have got more outta dead grandpas bones. The most disgusting type of vulture, raised by a drunk has her own mental issues she should deal with.
@retire05</a Being raised on a small farm in PA, I remember hard times. We didn't realize they were hard at the time. We didn't know any better. There were 5 kids in our family. We each gave a dime every Sunday at Sunday School. It was a big day when we each were given a quarter to place in the collection plate. There was always work from before daylight until after dark. Some how my parents found time to participate in the community in church, on the school board raising funds for those less fortunate and other efforts that allowed a small community to survive.
We got 2 sets of clothes, one before school in the fall and another at Christmas. I was lucky that I could get hand me downs from some of our city relatives. There were not many hand me down clothing in our family. We just wore them out on the farm.
I was fortunate. I earned a small scholarship that allowed me to attend Penn State if I got a job at school. When the family took me to State College in 1966 in our 1950 Oldsmobile, we had our first meal in a restaurant. My mother attended the local college and got her teaching degree. She made sure we all got a good education by reading to us every night and picking up books from the traveling library. All of us went to college funded by our hard work. My 3 sisters became teachers and I did well in the army and later in the medical field. My brother never finished his BS, but he ended up retiring as an AA pilot flying everything from a 6 passenger commuter to B767 . All of us did well. All of us have also been able to assist our children in retirement due to President Trump's expertise in improving the economy.
None of us understood that we came from a very poor family when we were growing up. We had food and a place to live. We learned to look after ourselves and to understand the value of hard work. We came from simple means and did quite well. There are people accomplishing this every day by taking advantage of educational opportunities, working hard and relying on themselves rather than government hand outs. We put up with President Trump's unconventional means of accomplishing good things for this country. He has a vision that few people have and can see how to accomplish it. He may be many things, but he cares about this country and is overcoming many difficulties to make it better. Maybe those who oppose him should ask themselves what they are doing to make this country better!
We are under constant propaganda attack this pops up on my browser,
Time to dismantle my system and find another browser.
@kitt: First of all, systematic anything means there must be a gene that carries this. What makes “real racists” believe that white people only listen to white authors and white thought leaders? That by itself is a racist statement. Race in the military is not nearly as important as character. It is not skin color that causes trust in the person who has your back or that you have their back. It is character that causes trust. Can anyone trust a person who will burn down your house or a neighborhood business to make their point? Can one trust a person who uses every angle to scam our government or people? Everyone has to prove they are trust worthy before that are fully trusted. Skin color is not important, only character.
@Randy: Exactly why is an internet browser pushing this marxist propaganda bullshit?