The Loneliness Of the Social Justice Warrior / The Leftist Threat To Liberalism
For the love of God, American liberalism...it's not too late...
Don't go down this path...
This is the political correctness debacle part deux.
Although, by the standards of this stuff, this letter is pretty tame, it still represents mindless, brainless moral fanaticism. In some cases, it's moral fanaticism about issues that are, in their non-fanatical form, worthy (e.g. anti-racism, anti-sexism). In other cases, it's moral fanaticism about insane, fabricated sins (e.g. "cultural appropriation").
Like the PC fiasco, this is, in a way, a test of liberalism. To what degree will it allow itself to be swayed by this irrational, illiberal movement? Sadly, the answer is: at least to some non-zero degree...
I wonder whether this is some kind of weird balancing effect... Just as the American right seems to have become so irrational that a massive backlash against it seems unavoidable...madness emerges on the left wing of American liberalism...
In my experience, it doesn't take much left-crazy to balance out a whole bunch of right-crazy... It might be that the U.S. is just a lot more used to/tolerant of craziness on the right. OTOH, speaking for myself, I seem to find left-wing craziness more inherently nauseating than right-wing craziness. Perhaps that's unreasonable...or perhaps my friend McCarthy is right when he says "the right just wants you to behave...the left wants your soul..." I value my right to misbehave...but I value my soul (my metaphorical soul, that is) more. Right-wing crazy I kinda sorta understand, and accept as part of the human condition: sit down, shut up, toe the line, greed, God, guns, conformity, nationalism... Left-wing crazy comes with theories... Creepy, creepy theories... The cult of culture, the social construction of reality, Worfian linguistic determinism, queer theory, critical theory, "theory" theory, neo-Marxist views about class struggle, feminist epistemology...and on and on... It's the difference between fighting a Neanderthal and fighting a demented religious lunatic who aims to kidnap you and brainwash you until there's no you anymore... The former might be more dangerous--even much more dangerous--in bottom-line terms...but god damn that latter one is much more sinister...
Don't go down this path...
This is the political correctness debacle part deux.
Although, by the standards of this stuff, this letter is pretty tame, it still represents mindless, brainless moral fanaticism. In some cases, it's moral fanaticism about issues that are, in their non-fanatical form, worthy (e.g. anti-racism, anti-sexism). In other cases, it's moral fanaticism about insane, fabricated sins (e.g. "cultural appropriation").
Like the PC fiasco, this is, in a way, a test of liberalism. To what degree will it allow itself to be swayed by this irrational, illiberal movement? Sadly, the answer is: at least to some non-zero degree...
I wonder whether this is some kind of weird balancing effect... Just as the American right seems to have become so irrational that a massive backlash against it seems unavoidable...madness emerges on the left wing of American liberalism...
In my experience, it doesn't take much left-crazy to balance out a whole bunch of right-crazy... It might be that the U.S. is just a lot more used to/tolerant of craziness on the right. OTOH, speaking for myself, I seem to find left-wing craziness more inherently nauseating than right-wing craziness. Perhaps that's unreasonable...or perhaps my friend McCarthy is right when he says "the right just wants you to behave...the left wants your soul..." I value my right to misbehave...but I value my soul (my metaphorical soul, that is) more. Right-wing crazy I kinda sorta understand, and accept as part of the human condition: sit down, shut up, toe the line, greed, God, guns, conformity, nationalism... Left-wing crazy comes with theories... Creepy, creepy theories... The cult of culture, the social construction of reality, Worfian linguistic determinism, queer theory, critical theory, "theory" theory, neo-Marxist views about class struggle, feminist epistemology...and on and on... It's the difference between fighting a Neanderthal and fighting a demented religious lunatic who aims to kidnap you and brainwash you until there's no you anymore... The former might be more dangerous--even much more dangerous--in bottom-line terms...but god damn that latter one is much more sinister...
posted by Winston Smith at
9:32 AM
2 Comments:
Knuckle dragging vs scifi culty creepy. I think that is the demarcation of right wing vs left wing crazy right there.
One other key...right wing crazy doesn't care if there is a real you there inside, as long as you toe the line. Left wing crazy denies the reality of "you". "You" is just a social construct and they want to control that. They want to truly define the "you" to their ends of "justice".
I very much agree (except I'm not sure that RWC doesn't care about the real you inside...)
But yeah: the LWC wants to see to the needs of your body while believing that you, in any significant sense of "you", has never existed...
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