WHY CRITICAL THEORY DOES NOT WORK; WHY CLASSIC LIBERALISM DOES
Or, in Which I Answer Critics of My Character at a Length Which Probably Precludes Reading.
WHY CRITICAL THEORY DOES NOT WORK; WHY CLASSIC LIBERALISM DOES
Mary McDonald-Lewis
I have been asked by many why I am so opposed to Critical Theory and its subsets, such as Critical Race Theory. Buried in that question, usually begun with, “I’m just wondering…” is the suspicion that I juuuust might be a racist for doing so. I have also been asked what I would propose in its stead.
Herewith is my answer. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I have taken material from a few of the people I read, watch, and listen to, and organized it here in what I hope is a cogent response to the enquiry.
This material is complex. I have spent the lion’s share of the pandemic studying it daily. If you have trouble understanding some of this material, the source attributions provide links for deeper reading, or you can search for more clarity of comprehension on your own.
This treatise is long. If you have asked me about my position on Critical Theory and do not read this as my reply, that is of course your choice. But you may not ask me again, as the answers are all right here. Many who have asked me to defend my position (which I will not do) will not read this, preferring to continue the comfortable belief that I’m a right-wing nutjob; a racist; a transphobe; you name it. I have no control over that, and not only will I leave you to it, I’ll defend your right to that opinion.
Finally, for everyone who’s ever hinted or demanded some kind of declaration of me that proves I am not the “-ist” or “-phobe” du jour, this paper does not provide it. I stand with Cordelia on that one: my life serves as testament to my character; should it not, there is no single answer that will satisfy both my interlocutors and me.
So if you want to know why I say to anyone applying Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory and all subsets in ways that impact my personal and professional life: “No, that’s your ideological belief and I don’t have to go along with it,” read on.
Taken from https://amzn.to/3aGC0xp
SO WHAT’S THIS CRITICAL THEORY DEAL?
Brace yourself, Buddy. This is a toughie. It starts with postmodernism.
The earliest [signs of postmodernism] began in art—we can trace them as far back as the 1940s, in the work of artists such as Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges—but, for our purposes, the late 1960s are key, since they witnessed the emergence of French social Theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard, who were the original architects of what later came to be known simply as “Theory.”
THE FOUR PILLARS OF POSTMODERNISM
1. The social construction of the concept of the self: Identity is constructed by many cultural forces and is not given to a person by tradition;
2. Relativism of moral and ethical discourse: Morality is not found but made. That is, morality is not based on cultural or religious tradition, nor is it the mandate of Heaven, but is constructed by dialogue and choice. This is relativism, not in the sense of being nonjudgmental, but in the sense of believing that all forms of morality are socially constructed cultural worldviews;
3. Deconstruction in art and culture: The focus is on endless playful improvisation and variations on themes and a mixing of “high” and “low” culture;
4. Globalization: People see borders of all kinds as social constructions that can be crossed and reconstructed and are inclined to take their tribal norms less seriously.
POSTMODERNISM’S TWO PRINCIPLES AND FOUR THEMES:
PRINCIPLES
1. The postmodern knowledge principle: Radical skepticism about whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism.
2. The postmodern political principle: A belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how.
THEMES
1. The blurring of boundaries
2. The power of language
3. Cultural relativism
4. The loss of the individual and the universal
BUT… POSTMODERNISM DIDN’T WORK BECAUSE AS A POLITICAL PLATFORM, IT FAILED TO GET THE PEASANTS SUFFICIENTLY PISSED OFF ENOUGH TO REVOLT. SO, IT MORPHED INTO CRITICAL THEORY.
We therefore might think of postmodernism as a kind of fast-evolving virus. Its original and purest form was unsustainable: it tore its hosts apart and destroyed itself. It could not spread from the academy to the general population because it was so difficult to grasp and so seemingly removed from social realities. In its evolved form, it spread, leaping the “species” gap from academics to activists to everyday people, as it became increasingly graspable and actionable and therefore more contagious. It mutated around a core of Theory to form several new strains, which are far less playful and far more certain of their own (meta)narratives. These are centered on a practical aim that was absent before: to reconstruct society in the image of an ideology which came to refer to itself as “Social Justice.”
For postmodernists, Theory refers to a specific set of beliefs, which posit that the world and our ability to gather knowledge about it work in accordance with the postmodern knowledge and political principles. Theory assumes that objective reality cannot be known, “truth” is socially constructed through language and “language games” and is local to a particular culture, and knowledge functions to protect and advance the interests of the privileged. Theory therefore explicitly aims to critically examine discourses. This means something specific. It means to examine them closely so as to expose and disrupt the political power dynamics it assumes are baked into them so that people will be convinced to reject them and initiate an ideological revolution.
I’M ON TENTERHOOKS! WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Between the late 1980s and roughly 2010, [Theory] developed the applicability of its underlying concepts and came to form the basis of entirely new fields of scholarship, which have since become profoundly influential. These new disciplines, which have come to be known loosely as “Social Justice scholarship,” co-opted the notion of social justice from the civil rights movements and other liberal and progressive theories.
Not coincidentally, this all began in earnest just as legal equality had largely been achieved and antiracist, feminist, and LGBT activism began to produce diminishing returns. (Quoting McWhorter from https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists-e2f) Third Wave Antiracism’s claims and demands, from a distance, seem like an eccentric performance from people wishing they hadn’t missed the late 1960s, dismayed that so much of the basic work is done already. Seeking the same righteous fury and heartwarming sense of purpose and belonging, their exaggerations and even mendacities become inevitable, because actual circumstances simply do not justify the attitudes and strategies of 1967.)
Now that racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace was illegal and homosexuality was decriminalized throughout the West, the main barriers to social equality in the West were lingering prejudices, embodied in attitudes, assumptions, expectations, and language. For those tackling these less tangible problems, Theory, with its focus on systems of power and privilege perpetuated through discourses, might have been an ideal tool—except that, as it was wholly deconstructive, indiscriminately radically skeptical, and unpalatably nihilistic, it was not really fit for any productive purpose.
DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP.
Hang in there, Buddy. We got a ways to go yet.
Then, Theory underwent a moral mutation: it adopted a number of beliefs about the rights and wrongs of power and privilege.
The original Theorists were content to observe, bemoan, and play with such phenomena; the new ones wanted to reorder society. If social injustice is caused by legitimizing bad discourses, they reasoned, social justice can be achieved by delegitimizing them and replacing them with better ones. Those social sciences and humanities scholars who took Theoretical approaches began to form a left-wing moral community, rather than a purely academic one: an intellectual organ more interested in advocating a particular ought than attempting a detached assessment of is—an attitude we usually associate with churches, rather than universities.
New Theories arose, which primarily looked at race, gender, and sexuality, and were explicitly critical, goal-oriented, and moralistic. They retained, however, the core postmodern ideas that knowledge is a construct of power, that the categories into which we organize people and phenomena were falsely contrived in the service of that power, that language is inherently dangerous and unreliable, that the knowledge claims and values of all cultures are equally valid and intelligible only on their own terms, and that collective experience trumps individuality and universality. They focused on cultural power, regarding it as objectively true that power and privilege are insidious, corrupting forces, which work to perpetuate themselves in almost mysterious ways. They explicitly stated that they were doing this with the purpose of remaking society according to their moral vision—all while citing the original postmodern Theorists.
AND NOW WE’RE ALL CAUGHT UP
Whether we call it “postmodernism,” “applied postmodernism,” “Theory,” or anything else, then, the conception of society based on the postmodern knowledge and political principles—that set of radically skeptical ideas, in which knowledge, power, and language are merely oppressive social constructs to be exploited by the powerful—has not only survived more or less intact but also flourished within many identity-and culture-based “studies” fields, especially in the so-called “Theoretical humanities.” These, in turn, influence and often hold sway over the social sciences and professional programs like education, law, psychology, and social work, and have been carried by activists and media into the broader culture. As a result of the general academic acceptance of Theory, postmodernism has become applicable, and therefore accessible to both activists and the general public.
Taken from: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reasons-critical-race-theory-terrible-dealing-racism/
OK. FROM CRITICAL THEORY TO CRITICAL RACE THEORY.
Critical Race Theory:
1. Believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere.
Racism is not prejudice based upon race or believing some races to be superior or inferior to others that they mean by “racism.” It is, instead, the “system” of everything that happens in the social world and beyond that results in any disparity that works in the favor of “racially privileged” groups (on average) or any “racially oppressed” person claiming they experience racial oppression. These assumptions lead people who take up Critical Race Theory to look for racism in everything until they find it.
2. Relies upon “interest convergence” (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn’t trust any attempt to make racism better. The Interest-Convergence Thesis makes it literally impossible for anyone with any racial privilege (again, as outlined by Critical Race Theory) to do anything right because anything they do right must also have been self-interested.
3. Is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control. Critical Race Theory sees free societies and the ideals that make them work—individualism, freedom, peace—as a kind of tacit conspiracy theory that we all participate in to keep racial minorities down. When its advocates accuse people of being “complicit in systems of racism,” this is part of what they mean.
4. Only treats race issues as “socially constructed groups,” so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory. In Critical Race Theory, the goal of ideally treating every person as an individual who is equal before the law and meant to be judged upon the contents of their character and merits of their work is considered a myth that keeps racial minorities down. Instead, it sees people according to their racial groups only.
5. Believes science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a “black” alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people. Since modern science was predominantly produced by white, Western men, Critical Race Theory therefore views science as a white and Western “way of knowing.” Critical Race Theory therefore maintains that science encodes and perpetuates “white dominance” and thus isn’t really fitting for black people who inhabit a (political) culture of Blackness.
6. Rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian). Critical Race Theory is completely against the common-sense idea that race becomes less sociallyrelevant and racism is therefore diminished by not focusing on race all the time. Where liberalism spent centuries removing social significance from racial categories once it had been introduced in the 16th century, Critical Race Theory inserts it again, front and center.
7. Acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even if those people are black (which is also totalitarian).
There are more concepts in Critical Race Theory to deal specifically with how and why white people are racists for disagreeing with Critical Race Theory than perhaps any other idea.
Charles Mills claims that all whites take part in a “racial contract” to support white supremacy that is never discussed but just part of the social fabric. Barbara Applebaum says all white people have “white complicity” with white supremacy because they automatically benefit from white privilege and “white ignorance” which is a way for them to willfully refuse to engage (and proper engagement can only be proven by agreeing). Robin DiAngelo says white people enjoy “white comfort” and therefore suffer “white fragility” that prevents them from confronting their racism through Critical Race Theory.
The same conditions apply to people of color. Critical Race Theory has outlined what the essential experience of each racial group is. It then judges individual people (especially of minority races) on how well they give testimonial to that experience—which is to say, they judge individual people based on how well they support Critical Race Theory. This makes it impossible to disagree with Critical Race Theory, even if you are black. Critical Race Theory is only interested in the identity politics associated with being “politically Black,” and anyone who disagrees with Critical Race Theory—even if “racially black”—does not qualify. This means that in Critical Race Theory, diversity (which it calls for often) must be only skin deep. Everyone’s politics must agree and must agree with Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory cannot be disagreed with, even by black people. We have also seen how it rejects all alternatives and how it believes any success that it has comes down to “interest convergence.” Because it rejects science, it cannot be falsified or proven wrong by evidence, and because it assumes racism is present and relevant to all situations and interactions, even the acceptance of Critical Race Theory must somehow also contain racism. Therefore, Critical Race Theory cannot be satisfied.
This means that if your workplace takes up Critical Race Theory, eventually activists will start to make demands and will threaten to make trouble if they do not get their way. (They usually do not ask.)
In the workplace that adopts Critical Race Theory, it’s only a matter of time until someone with that worldview finds out how your entire company and its culture is “racist.” At that point, they will cause a meltdown that forces everyone to take sides and demand a reorganization of the entire (now divided) office culture and management.
Perhaps the worst thing about Critical Race Theory is, it will not promote our continued progress in any area of human rights, least of all for minorities.
Taken from: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/identity-politics-civil-rights-movements/
HOW CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND IDENTITY POLITICS DAMAGE RACE RELATIONS
The Civil Rights Movement, second-wave liberal feminism, and Gay Pride were liberal projects, both in the broad philosophical sense and in the narrower meaning that arises within contemporary politics. Nevertheless, it is common for those of us who consider ourselves liberal in either sense, or both, to be told we must disapprove of these great liberal successes. This occurs when we criticize identity politics.
This peculiar criticism follows an insistence that these civil rights movements must be a form of identity politics because they advocated very explicitly for a certain identity group. No. This is never what liberal critics of “identity politics” mean by the term. It is fully consistent with—indeed, integral to—universal liberalism to advocate for universal human rights, freedoms, and opportunities by focusing on the identity groups who lack them. This advocacy, however, is not identity politics.
This is not a mere semantic quibble. It is vital to distinguish between universal liberalism and identity politics and recognize what they share in common alongside how they differ. Both see and oppose inequality and seek to remedy it, but they do so with very different conceptions of society and use different approaches. These differences matter. Universal liberalism focuses on individuality and shared humanity and seeks to achieve a society in which every individual is equally able to access every right, freedom, and opportunity that our shared societies provide. Identity politics focuses explicitly on group identity and seeks political empowerment by promoting that group as a monolithic, marginalized entity distinct from and polarized against another group depicted as a monolithic privileged entity.
THE PROBLEM WITH IDENTITY POLITICS
Epistemological: It relies on highly dubious social constructivist theory and consequently produces heavily biased readings of situations.
Psychological: Its sole focus on identity is divisive, reduces empathy between groups, and goes against core moral intuitions of fairness and reciprocity.
Social: By failing to uphold principles of non-discrimination consistently, it threatens to damage or even undo social taboos against judging people by their race, gender, or sexuality.
By relying so heavily on social constructivist perceptions of society—which sees it in terms of hierarchies of power perpetuated in discourse and on lived experience—as an authoritative form of identity-based knowledge that cannot be disagreed with by anyone outside that group, identity politics feeds, legitimates, and builds upon itself. Because it starts with the assumption that a power imbalance characterizes any interaction between people seen as having a privileged identity and people seen as having a marginalized identity and assumes that this can be shown by interpreting the language of the privileged through this lens and regarding the perception of the marginalized as authoritative, it is prone to highly ideologically motivated confirmation bias.
It is generally a terrible idea to have different rules of behavior dependent on identity because it goes against the most common sense of fairness and reciprocity which seems to be pretty hardwired. It is also antithetical to universal liberalism and precisely the opposite of what civil rights movements fought to obtain. Identity politics which argues that prejudice against white people and men is acceptable while prejudice against people of color and women is not do still work on a sense of fairness, equality, and reciprocity but it is reparative. It attempts to restore a balance by “evening the score” a little, particularly thinking historically.
This is no true justice, however, as the people being targeted are different than the people who historically oppressed people of color and women. This instinct is almost certainly also natural to us, as “the sins of the fathers” has a very long history. It is one best left behind, and it certainly has no place in a liberal democracy. If most people are now working on an understanding of fairness, equality, and reciprocity as individual, this mentality can be incomprehensible and alienating.
It is in this way that identity politics is the most counterproductive and even dangerous. We humans are tribal and territorial creatures, and identity politics comes far more naturally to us than universality and individuality. Our history bears the evidence of humans unapologetically favoring their own tribe, own town, own religion, own nation, and own race over others and creating narratives after the impulse to attempt to justify doing it.
Taken from https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists-e2f
GOSH! IF CRITICAL THEORY AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY ARE SO DESTRUCTIVE, WHY IS EVERYONE GOING ALONG WITH IT?
Because people don’t want to be called racists, and because Critical Theory, as the religion it is, has just the inquisitors for that job.
Third Wave Antiracism exploits modern Americans’ fear of being thought racist to promulgate not just antiracism, but an obsessive, self-involved, totalitarian and utterly unnecessary kind of cultural reprogramming. One could be excused for thinking this queer, glowering kabuki is a continuation of the Civil Rights efforts of yore, the only kind of new antiracism there could be. Its adherents preach with such contemptuous indignation, and are now situated in the most prestigious and influential institutions in the land. On their good days they can seem awfully “correct.”
However, there is nothing correct about the essence of American thought and culture being transplanted into the soil of a religious faith. Some will go as far as to own up to it being a religion and wonder why we can’t just accept it as our new national creed. The problem is that beyond a certain point, religion is not to be meaningfully reasoned with, and this is resoundingly true of this new one. Unreasoning, shuddering allegiance is no foundation for matters of societal procedure and priorities in any modern society. The people forcing us to pretend otherwise are, in this, medievals with lattes.
SO IT’S NOT THAT CRITICAL THEORY IS “RIGHT,” IT’S THAT --
-- it’s terrifying, and it’s got easily half of America’s college students, and half of America’s workforce, afraid to speak out against it.
McWhorter again, ibid.:
To all but a very few, being called a racist is so intolerable today that one would rather tolerate some cognitive dissonance and fold up. This wouldn’t have worked as well in, say, 1967. In that America, many white people called racists by this kind of person, for better or for worse, would have just taken a sip of their cocktail and said “I don’t think so at all.” Or even just “Fuck you!”
Today, ironically because of progress, things are different. Now most cringe hopelessly at the prospect of being outed as a bigot, and thus: in being ever ready to call you a racist in the public square, the Third Wave Antiracist outguns you on the basis of this one weapon alone. Even if their overall philosophy is hardly the scriptural perfection they insist it is, that one thing they can and will do in its defense leaves us quivering wrecks. And thus they win.
The statements of solidarity from seemingly every institutional entity, the social media selfies of people “doing the work” of reading White Fragility, anyone pretending to entertain notions that the hard sciences need to “open up” to “diverse” perspectives by pulling back from requiring close reasoning – all of this is a product not of enlightenment but simple terror. We have become a nation of smart people attesting that they “get it” while peeing themselves.
WAIT, YOU BURIED THE LEDE – CRITICAL THEORY AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND ALL THE REST ARE … A RELIGION?
You got it in one, Buddy.
America’s sense of what it is to be intellectual, moral, or artistic, what it is to educate a child, what it is to foster justice, what is to express oneself properly, what it is to be a nation, is being refounded upon a religion. This is directly antithetical to the very foundations of the American experiment.
Religion has no place in the classroom, in the halls of ivy, in our codes of ethics, or in deciding how we express ourselves, and almost all of us spontaneously understand that and see any misunderstanding of the premise as backwards. Yet since about 2015 a peculiar contigent is slowly headlocking us into making an exception, supposing that this particular new religion is so incontestably goodly, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence.
But a new religion in the guise of world progress is not an advance; it is a detour. It is not altruism; it is self-help. It is not sunlight; it is fungus. It’s time it became ordinary to call it for what it is and stop cowering before it, letting it make people so much less than they – black and everything else -- could be.
SO WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?
Read on Buddy, read on. The answer is Universal, or Classic, Liberalism, of the Age of Enlightenment Stripe.
Taken from: https://bit.ly/3qI80qE
THE PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL LIBERALISM
Human Dignity - This is the foundational principle that every person possesses dignity simply by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. This starting point is a defining principle that grounds other core concepts within the classical liberal tradition.
Individual Freedom - This is the default starting point classical liberals favor, as it leads to patterns of widespread human flourishing. Individual freedom is the primary political value within the classical liberal tradition.
Voluntary Action - This is the presumed standard for how we achieve what classical liberals take to be the social ideal: a society of mutual benefit based on peaceful cooperation.
Justice - In the classical liberal tradition, this is the principle that the individual rights of all must be respected.
Toleration & Pluralism - These are complementary principles that build upon one another toward the good society. At its most basic level, toleration is the principle that so long as someone is not substantively harming others, their behavior, speech, and views should be legally permitted. The principle of pluralism says that pluralistic societies tend to be dynamic and more amenable to positive social change, and better able to realize the benefits of the differences among us.
Freedom of Expression - This affords every person the right to voice his or her own opinion, fearlessly and publicly, ensures that no good idea goes unheard and that no bad idea goes unchallenged. Freedom of speech is a core political value in that it ensures the right of the governed to criticize the government, and therefore serves as an essential check on state power. Further, classical liberals argue that the open marketplace of ideas is essential if the boundaries of knowledge are to expand.
The Rule of Law - This is the principle that society must be governed by rules that apply, impartially and equally, to all people. The rule of law principle includes “equality before the law,” meaning that all people within a polity are governed by the same rules, regardless of their race, socio-economic class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and so on. The rule of law also serves as a constraint on state power.
Civil Society - This is the sphere of voluntary human action that exists between the individual and the state. Classical liberals recognize that the institutions that constitute civil society—such as the families, religious communities, neighborhood and professional associations, and philanthropic communities—are rich in their potential to address a wide range of social problems.
Spontaneous Order - This is the idea that much of the order within society—widespread social coordination—arises not by virtue of human design, not by top-down rational control, but by bottom-up processes of trial, error, learning, and course correction.
Intellectual Humility - While classical liberals hold in esteem the power of reason, they also recognize the limits of reason. A classical liberal understanding of the market economy, for example, recognizes that the knowledge required for complex social coordination is fundamentally dispersed across billions of market participants. This means that each of us knows only a small slice of the knowledge that is necessary for overall social coordination. This insight reminds classical liberals how little each of us actually knows, and tempers any hubris of thinking we can bend all complex processes to our will.
Economic Freedom - This is the principle of economic freedom over policies grounded in the principle of economic control. History has shown that when people have the freedom to innovate and the incentive to seek out new solutions, and when they possess secure property rights that allow them to realize the benefits of those efforts, patterns of widespread prosperity and human flourishing follow.
Peaceful Solutions - This is the notion that peaceful solutions are key to fostering a society in which individuals go about their daily affairs in a context of voluntary cooperation and in the absence of violence or war.
Taken from https://newdiscourses.com/2020/05/liberalism-anti-liberal-moral-order/
WHY AND HOW UNIVERSAL LIBERALISM IS NOT A MAD RELIGION LIKE CRITICAL THEORY
Liberal societies are fundamentally different than ones predicated on a particular moral order (such as the religion Critical Theory and its subsets) because they arrange a system of conflict management that can handle pluralism (which is not the same as multiculturalism), which no particular moral order can accomplish (they have to use repression instead). This is no small point. Liberalism is a set of very tolerant approach to managing conflicts that arise between people, ideas, and even moral orders. The first of these is covered by democratic and republican law, the second by science and philosophy, and the third by secularism. It’s also no small point that these features of liberalism exist to protect people, ideas, and moral orders from encroachment upon them by other entities. The church is protected from the secular state even more effectively than the secular state is protected from the church.
In liberal systems, you’re allowed to be a fundamentalist religious person; you’re allowed to be an anti-state libertarian; you’re allowed to be an anti-liberal critical theorist; you’re allowed to be an anarchist. Liberalism will take it all, tolerate it, protect it and its voice, and because it will do so, it can glean the best from each. This opens it up to the threat of being overwhelmed by anti-liberalism, but it is willing to take this risk for reasons that are ultimately good and beneficial to nearly all (if not all) who live in liberal societies.
Taken from: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/identity-politics-civil-rights-movements/
HOW UNIVERSAL LIBERALISM HAS AIDED PROGRESS IN RACE, GENDER AND FEMINIST RIGHTS AND EQUALITY
It is essential to understand that “liberal” does not indicate a place on the left of the political spectrum, as it is often used in the United States. Neither does it indicate a place on the right of the political spectrum, as it is often used in Australia. Rather, it is a philosophical and ethical position with a long history which focuses on individuality, liberty, and equal opportunity. In fact, it is found in decidedly left-wing political positions, decidedly right-wing ones, libertarian ones, and among the unaffiliated but broadly centrist. Therefore, universal liberalism is a widely held principle, and it is one which grew out of Enlightenment thought and the founding of secular, liberal democracies. As such, it birthed the civil rights movements.
The Civil Rights Movement, second-wave liberal feminism, and Gay Pride functioned explicitly on these values of universal human rights and did so to forward the worth of the individual regardless of status of race, gender, sex, sexuality, or other markers of identity. They proceeded by appealing directly to universal human rights applying universally. They demanded that people of color, women, and sexual minorities no longer be discriminated against and treated as second class citizens. They insisted that within a liberal society that makes good on its promises to its citizens, everyone should be given the full range of rights, freedoms, and opportunities.
Martin Luther King, Jr., articulated this ethos of individuality and shared humanity explicitly when he said, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
These movements succeeded, but not because of a tiny minority of activists, even those as inspirational as Martin Luther King. They succeeded because they appealed to a universal liberal spirit through which liberal democracies proudly defined themselves, but which had not been extended to all their citizens. The civil rights movements explicitly called upon nations (and their institutions) to uphold the promise of precisely this ethos; an ethos that had been steadily growing (despite setbacks) since Renaissance humanism, was developed further during the Enlightenment, found explicit voice in philosophers from Mary Wollstonecraft to John Stuart Mill, was featured front, center, and central in the U.S. Constitution, and was perfectly primed to take a huge leap forward following the end of the World Wars, the collapse of Empire, and the end of Jim Crow.
The universal human rights and principles of not judging people by their race, gender, or sexuality—which have developed over the modern period and resulted in the civil rights movements, legal equality, and much social progress—are much more uncommon to us and must be consistently reinforced and maintained. If we allow identity politics in the form of Social Justice to undermine this fragile and precarious detente, we could undo decades of social progress and provide a rationale for a resurgence of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Given the novelty of egalitarian society, it is not at all clear that women and racial and sexual minorities could easily win these losses back.
Universality does not require assuming that racism, sexism, or homophobia does not exist. Neither does it assume that there is no work left to do to oppose these problems and defend vulnerable racial or religious minorities, protect women’s reproductive freedom, and hold on to LGBT rights. When the need to do all of those things is presented in terms of universal human rights and fairness, it will find much more support than when it is presented in terms of incomprehensible theory, irrationalism, biased interpretations of interactions, cruel irony, demands for reparative justice, and abandonment of the principle of non-discrimination against people by identity markers.
That is how the Civil Rights Movement, second-wave liberal feminism, and Gay Pride worked and inspired societies that valued universal human rights and equality of opportunity to support the speedy advance of social progress. They were not a form of identity politics and identity politics does not continue their work.
For more on the differences between CRT’s “anti-racism” and Liberalism, and most importantly how the former increases racial division, while the latter reduces it:
(4:11)
AND JUST SO WE’RE REALLY CLEAR THAT CLASSIC LIBERALS OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT STRIPE AREN’T SECRETLY WHITE SUPREMACISTS, HERE’S THE POSITION OF UNIVERSAL LIBERALISM ON RACISM:
We affirm that racism remains a problem in society and needs to be addressed.
We deny that critical race Theory and intersectionality provide the most useful tools to do so, since we believe that racial issues are best solved through the most rigorous analyses possible.
We contend that racism is defined as prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior against individuals or groups on the grounds of race and can be successfully addressed as such.
We deny that racism is hard-baked into society via discourses, that it is unavoidable and present in every interaction to be discovered and called out, and that this is part of a ubiquitous systemic problem that is everywhere, always, and all-pervasive.
We deny that the best way to deal with racism is by restoring social significance to racial categories and radically heightening their salience.
We contend that each individual can choose not to hold racist views and should be expected to do so, that racism is declining over time and becoming rarer, that we can and should see one another as humans first and members of certain races second, that issues of race are best dealt with by being honest about racialized experiences, while still working towards shared goals and a common vision, and that the principle of not discriminating by race should be universally upheld.
Taken from https://amzn.to/3aGC0xp
CIRCLING BACK TO CYNICAL THEORIES TO BRING IT ALL HOME:
Maintaining our commitment to and belief in liberalism in the face of Theory is possible, and it is to our benefit. It can be difficult, however. For one thing, new, radical answers have a certain appeal. They get people excited, especially when things seem bad. Problems that feel big and pressing seem to invite revolutionary new solutions. Incremental improvements feel desperately slow when there are people suffering right now.
As ever, the perfect is the enemy of the good -- including the unrealistic expectation that a good system should have been able to produce better results by now. This is an invitation to radicalism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, and cynicism. This is what makes Theory seductive—or populism, or Marxism, or any other form of Utopianism that looks good on paper and is ruinous in practice.
It seems like the necessary solution to the world’s myriad problems, some of which feel like (or are) emergencies. The answer to these problems isn’t new, though, and perhaps that’s why it isn’t immediately gratifying. The solution is liberalism, both political (universal liberalism is an antidote to the postmodern political principle) and in terms of knowledge production (Jonathan Rauch’s “liberal science” is the remedy for the postmodern knowledge principle). You don’t need to become an expert on Jonathan Rauch’s work, or on John Stuart Mill, or on any of the great liberal thinkers. Nor do you need to become well versed in Theory and Social Justice scholarship, so that you can confidently refute it. But you do need to have a little bit of courage to stand up to something with a lot of power. You need to recognize Theory when you see it, and side with the liberal responses to it—which might be no more complicated than saying, “No, that’s your ideological belief and I don’t have to go along with it.”
Pluckrose and Lindsay moderately call Critical Theory and its subsets an “ideological belief.” But that doesn’t explain its viral spread, its wonton destruction of lives and institutions, its rabid doxing and harassment and violence; its superstition and irrationalism, its shunning of acolytes who fall away, its mandate to convert or cancel. It is a religion in religion’s worst form.
As we’ve focused so much on Critical Race Theory, I’ll leave the last expert’s word to John McWhorter as he applies the definition to that mad practice.
Taken from https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists
Something must be understood: I do not mean that these people’s ideology is “like” a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in the comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion. A naïve anthropologist would see no difference in type between Mormonism and this new form of antiracism. Language is always imprecise, and thus we have traditionally restricted the word religion to certain ideologies founded in creation myths, guided by ancient texts, and requiring that one subscribe to certain beliefs beyond the reach of empirical experience. This, however, is an accident, just as it is that we call tomatoes vegetables rather than fruits. If we rolled the tape again, the word religion could easily apply as well to more secular and recently emerged ways of thinking. One of them is this extremist version of antiracism today.
IN MY END IS MY BEGINNING
So to those who follow Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory and all subsets: I reject them all out of hand. My reply, with no explanation, defense, or apology is:
“No, that’s your ideological belief (and your religion) and I don’t have to go along with it.”
MY THANKS
To James Lindsay, John McWhorter, Helen Pluckrose and the Institute for Humane Studies for providing the lion’s share of the material here. Any connective tissue provided by me is as a consequence of what you and others have taught me.
To that end, my deep thanks also goes out to these people and organizations for enriching my mind: Coleman Hughes, Free Black Thought, Glenn Loury, The Theory of Enchantment, Irshad Manji, Francis Foster, The Fire.org, Chloe S. Valdary, Seerut Chawla, Obaid Omer, Calvin Robinson, Counterweight, Gad Saad, Andrew Doyle, Thomas Chattterton Williams, Zuby, The Equiano Project, Thomas Sowell, Ayishat Akanbi, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heterodox Academy, Inaya Folerin, Gothix, Hotep Jesus, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Jodi Shaw, Tom MacDonald, Douglas Murray, Andrew Doyle, Stephen Hicks, Brett Weinstein, Enlitenment, Heather Heying, Triggernometry, Travis Brown, Konstantin Kisin, and Dr. James Ford Lewis, a great, and greatly flawed man, who taught me that the right thing to do was to speak up.
A final thanks to these authors, for showing me what speaking up looks like: Douglas Murray for The Madness of Crowds, to Andrew Doyle for Free Speech and Why It Matters, and to James Lindsay & Helen Pluckrose for Cynical Theories.