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In an absurd reaction to the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list earlier this week, New York writer Andrew Sullivan tweeted "We. All. Live. On Campus. Now." The problem, Sullivan said, was that the list had numerous "radical critical theory books, written by people deeply opposed to the foundations of liberal democracy that were now required reading for employees.

The following day, a thread of tweets arguing that doxxing racist students helped to stop them from attending a university that will allow them to become a racist healthcare worker, teacher, lawyer, real estate developer, politicians, etc. received a similar reaction from Sullivan. This is beyond chilling, he tweeted. Its the logic of purges and cultural revolution and mob justice. It has over 400K likes. Liberal democracy is extinct.

Sullivan and other contrarian thinkers with large salaries and gigantic platforms have spent an inordinate amount of time over the last decade obsessing over what teenagers at collegesBerkeley and Harvard are favoritesare doing on campus, whether thats getting racists disinvited from cushy speaking gigs or caring about intersectionality and social justice more generally speaking. The broad strokes of their argument are that one day the people pushing for their universities to be more inclusive and to not give platforms to racists will graduate from those universities and will become leaders in America and bring their ideologies with them. Sullivan and others say that this will be badbad for free speech, bad for liberal democracy, bad for America, and, most of all, bad for well-paid pundits. America as we know it will be consumed by campus. And that moment, where We. All. Live. On. Campus., is now, when hundreds of thousands of people are protesting Black people being killed by the police (or perhaps it was 2018).

Alone, this sort of hysteria is insignificant and also expected of Sullivan, who has spent years promoting and trying to legitimize racial science and declaring war on those who arent interested. It's part, though, of a larger wave of right-wing liberal and conservative writers warning that the American public is undergoing an authoritarian turn. State forces violently suppressing protests sparked by state violence isn't the concern here, nor is the president attempting to designate antifascists as terrorists. No, it's the specter of the campusan imagined site of oppression in the reactionary mind where free speech goes to die.

Never mind that its students who are bravely in the streets fighting against actual state authoritarianismmarching in the hundreds of thousands nationwide, storming and burning down Minneapolis 3rd Precinct (which one survey shows the majority of Americans think was justified), and creating an autonomous zone in Seattle spanning six city blocks that features an occupied Seattle police precinct along with vehicle barricades and armed protesters standing guard. Never mind, for that matter, that what's happening isn't the result of people avoiding uncomfortable ideas but of engaging with them and taking them seriously enough to take action in the name of a better and more just societyprecisely what liberal education and liberal democracy hold as an ideal. What matters is that the "campus" has taken over, and that this is bad.

If this campus is now everywhere, its worth taking stock of who seems terrified of it, and why. So far, it appears to be no one facing any type of oppression.

Take the staff revolt sparked by Tom Cottons New York Times op-ed "Send in the Troops" among staff over whether the fascist screed shouldve been published. Times op-ed editor and columnist Baris Weiss warned of a "civil war" between "the (mostly young) wokes [and] the (mostly 40+) liberals that resembled the "campus culture wars." Many have mocked her, Sullivan and other conservative thinkers for obsessively writing about campus, but this uprising at the Times, she said, proved her right all along. "This was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them." Weiss casts radical studentsor former onesas the real authoritarians for engaging in the marketplace of ideas by debating the merits of an article written by a sitting United States senator advocating for the actual deployment of the military against Americans exercising Enlightenment-era rights. (The original position that led to the Times soliciting this op-ed was that the troops should kill them.)

In Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff's book The Coddling of the American Mind, the fear that grips the reactionary mind is described as safetyism"a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns." For some, safetyism is an ever pervasive threat; for others, coronavirus ended this Age of Coddling, for some reason.

Clearly the young people in the streets facing down violent cops are not overly concerned with their safety. Nor are journalists risking their jobs to protest against their employers publishing government propaganda.The people who seem most obsessively concerned with being protected from ideas that challenge their worldview, in fact, seem to be coddled writers and thinkers who are worried about the safety of their social status as protests and calls for systemic upheaval and justice echo across the land.

As Moira Weigel wrote in her review of Haidt and Lukianoffs book, their arguments are obsessed with balancing acts that do little other than "signal the distance between the authors and the partisans of identity who are too emotional to think clearly." They profess to be concerned with an ideological climate that stifles free expression, but in practice express concern over little other than the rules of the discourse. They want an atmosphere in which ideas can be freely debated; if anyone takes an idea seriously, though, it is held as evidence that no such atmosphere exists. The argument is an endlessly recursive argument about what it means to argue, the cri de coeur of a message-board user endlessly crying out for moderators to enforce the First Amendment written across the pages of America's best-paying and most influential publications.

Take Sullivans comparison of doxxing to the Cultural Revolution; the same comparison is made by Lukianoff and Haidt, who compared "witch-hunts" on college campuses to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but are more honest about their argument. "As historical events, the two movements are radically different, they wrote, most notably in that the Red Guards were responding to the call of a totalitarian dictator, who encouraged them to use violence, while the American college students have been self-organised and almost entirely nonviolent." And yet they shared some similarities, the author maintain, in that "both were movements initiated by idealistic young college students." What does this mean, ultimately? Nothing!

This whiny preeningironically, it's exactly what the campus is accused ofcharacterizes the overall line of argument. Sullivan is a prominent member of a group of scientific racists who regularly bemoan the natural social consequences of airing racist drivel publicly. Weisss warnings were publicly revealed to be fabricated by numerous colleagues who disputed her narrative, calling it "brazenly careerist and self-serving" and a "willful misrepresentation" of largely unified internal opposition to publishing Cottons op-ed. There is reportedly a Bret Stephens policy at the New York Times, a double standard which allows Stephens to drone about the virtues of free speech (and join Sullivan in advancing race science nonsense) but while constantly whining or complaining to higher-ups about any writer or editor that voices criticism of his ideas.

When Stephens, another campus culture hand-wringer, failed to get a professor at George Washington University fired for insulting him, he wrote an embarassing column trying to paint the joke as anti-Semitic. When the professor invited Stephens to a debate at GWU, Stephens canceled because the debate wouldn't be closed to the public. All of this looks much more like safetyism than reading critical theory books or fighting an authoritarian police force.

In a convincing case as to why safetyism doesnt even exist, Inside Higher Ed's John Warner wrote that "if you examine those who wield the charge of safetyism against others, they are always in positions of superior power accusing those without power of disrupting some important principle, a principle that protects the status quo." His critique also lines up with Weigels, which points out that these people enjoy the luxury of living free from discrimination and domination and insist that the crises moving young people to action are all in their heads.

It's hard to take seriously powerful, privileged people who insist that the marketplace of ideas can solve racism and sexism. It's even harder to do so when they insist that participants in the marketplace of ideas who follow the power of ideas they find convincing are behaving illegitimately. It's still harder when those whose entire project is pushing the idea that debateendless, endless debateis the way to improve the country rule out protests and uprisings as effective forms of debate. That protests inspired by and enacting ideas and ideals have been successful now and in the past (e.g. the 1960s protests and riots) does not hinder these people from making their arguments. Instead, thought leaders like Jonathan Chait use phrases like politics is a matter of life and death to make the case that nobody is entirely right, and that nothing should be done.

These thinkers are correctly labeled by Weigel as "right liberals" who, from "their safe space of TED talks and thinktanks and thinkpieces" create cultures and belief systems where the safety of valuing ideas you disagree with becomes a sacred value in theory, and where in practice disagreement is taken as a sort of violence, undermining the entire project of disagreement and debate which is held to be so sacred. Their position is exactly what they accuse their critics of, and as a result, their hysteria is founded in something real: They actually are being left behind by a society and by generations that are taking seriously the ideas they pay lip service to.

The campus, as envisioned by the reactionary mind doesnt exist. But the protests do. The uprisings do. The CHAZ in Seattle does. As right liberals and conservatives are forced to watch more protests and occupations grow and succeed, theyll slink back into their safe spaces. Theyll insist that their opinions be respected. Theyll demand that we engage in balancing acts to save liberalism"acts calibrated to preserve power, privilege, bigotry, and ignorance, and even liberalism itself.

We should see this for what it is: the coddling of the American pundit. And we should reject it.

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The Coddling of the American Pundit - VICE

A new chapter in the online culture wars has been opened as Gen Z, fed up with Boomers conflating them with their apparently loathsome forebears, the Millennials, have risen up with some truly savage memes.

It was only a matter of time, and now the uprising has begun after Millennials appear to have made the critical mistake of picking a fight on two fronts, managing to simultaneously piss off both Boomers and Zoomers with their avocado toast, Harry Potter obsession, and general whining.

Several Zoomers, those born in the late 90s and early 2000s, hit out at people who think that Harry Potter movies are a personality trait and unironically utter cringeworthy phrases like, ugh I hate adulting.

All they do is drink wine, post cringy 90s kid meme, talk about tech start-up and lie, said one TikToker, not pulling any punches.

Millennials were apparently caught unawares, almost choking on their kombucha, by the blistering broadside from their plucky TikToking, Fortnite-loving descendants.

Though others just took it in stride, having grown accustomed to being the internets favourite punching bag.

Some took matters into their own hands, returning fire over criticism of living conditions in their one bedroom apartments, warning Zoomers that the horror of the housing market, which could get a lot worse in a post-coronavirus depression, still awaits them.

Alliances apparently formed naturally, as the meme offensive raged across Twitter.

Some peaceniks called for unity against a common foe, but for now it appears their cries fell on deaf ears, ruined by listening to mumble rap or whatever.

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Every generation can agree, Millennials were a mistake: Shots fired as Gen Z rips 90s kids on TikTok - RT

Cardinal George Pell was released from prison after 400 days Photo: AFP

As New Zealand spent more than two months in various forms of house arrest, glued to the 1pm Jacinda and Ashley show, it seemed like the world had stopped. A global pandemic; new words in the lexicon coronavirus, lockdown, bubble, social distancing, team of five million. And the ever-present hand sanitiser.

But other things did happen while we were colouring in the Easter Bunny and making cardboard poppies.

Today on The Detail, Emile Donovan and Sharon Brettkelly take us through some of those events - national and international - that flew under the radar.

In New Zealand the most dramatic and the only event to kick Covid-19 off the front pages was the sudden guilty pleas of Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant. On March 26, the day after we went into level 4, he admitted 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and a charge of engaging in a terrorist act. A lawyer working with some of the victims families suggested that, while possible explanations for the move were speculative, terrorists often sought a sense of self-importance and attention to their cause that the pandemic had removed.

Less prominent was the resignation of Young ACT vice-president Ali Gammeter, saying shed been the victim of sexual harassment and her complaints were being ignored by the party. Soon afterwards an investigation was announced.

Also, the government revealed the details of the cannabis referendum, which New Zealand will vote on at election day. Unlike the other referendum on September 19, on euthanasia, the cannabis result is non-binding.

Royal New Zealand Air Force plane arrives in Port Vila with relief supplies bound for Vanuatu islands affected by Cyclone Harold. Photo: Hilaire Bule

As we went into lockdown Australia was still burning. News of the bushfires died down with the flames but another major climate event hit in relative silence the third major coral bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef in five years, and the worst of the three.

Also in Australia a bombshell over the jailed Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Pell. On April 7 he was freed from prison after spending more than 400 days behind bars, after the High Court unanimously found his conviction for child sex abuse was unsafe and should be overturned. He said culture wars and anti-Catholic sentiment could have played a part in the decision of Victoria police to pursue charges against him. Now journalists could face charges over their reporting of the case. However, the legal counsel for the alleged victim in the case says she has at least eight other civil claims ready to go against Pell.

Israel elected a new government; Turkey and Russia announced a ceasefire; two big cyclones hit, Harold in the Pacific and Amphan in India, which killed 128 people.

And as if a plague hitting the world wasnt enough, to Africa, Asia and the Middle East came pestilence. Locusts decimated crops. The US meanwhile was hit by Murder Hornets yes, thats right, Murder Hornets.

The world's smallest dinosaur, encased in amber Photo: Xing Lida / CC BY-ND

But the best story you may have missed scientists found the smallest ever dinosaur fossil, in Myanmar. Its a tiny bird with teeth, trapped in amber for 99 million years. You see, lockdown could have been worse.

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What happened while you were sleeping in? - RNZ

Of all the arguments the history of slavery and racism has provoked, the spats about the comedy shows of the 2000s appear the least significant. Given the severity of the crisis that is upon us, surely its a distraction to worry away about the decision by the BBC and Netflix to pull Little Britain because its stars blacked up. Yet as we enter a global depression that the World Bank predicts will push 100 million people into extreme poverty, as unemployment in our corner of the globe heads towards 4 million, as food banks creak and charities collapse, the petty censorship raises a question of the utmost urgency: how will western societies respond to mass poverty?

After the crash of 2008, they punished the victims. Britain under David Cameron and Nick Clegg slashed benefits, targeting children who had shown their unworthiness when they failed to find rich parents who could raise them in comfort. The northern states of the EU justified leaving Spaniards, Italians and Greeks to suffer by characterising them as lazy southerners who had to learn that hard work comes before the siesta.

Even third-rate art can anticipate the future. In Little Britain and shows like it, you could sense the coming vindictiveness. They werent encouraging racial hatred but class hatred. What was meant to titillate viewers about Desiree DeVere, played by David Walliams with blackface and a fat suit, wasnt just that she was black, but that she was obese and as common as muck.

Television was reflecting the belief of millions that their money was going to scroungers

The idea that this grotesque figure thought herself a beauty was laughable. Another character pretended to be disabled to get sympathy, but jumped out of his wheelchair when no one was looking. A third ran a fat-fighters group while showing no awareness of how ugly her own greed was. After years of a Labour government redistributing wealth, television was reflecting the belief of millions that their money was going to scroungers, who faked disabilities and grabbed benefits so they could buy junk food and stuff it into their foul, fat faces.

Critics said as much at the time, thus passing a test that everyone caught up in our culture wars ought to set themselves. The cry from the right that were judging the past by the standards of the present can be as historically illiterate as the cry from the left that Britains history is irredeemably racist. Contemporaries we can admire and learn from contested the East India Company, slavery and empire. And in its small way the punitive turn in comedy of the 2000s was contested as it happened too.

Whereas wealthy media executives once sought to investigate poverty or arouse anger against it in documentaries and dramas such as Cathy Come Home or Boys from the Blackstuff, I wrote in 2008, now they commission programmes that laugh at it.

Thats not to excuse todays censorship. Comedians, like everyone else, have the right to punch up, punch down or punch themselves in the face (an option a few of them should exercise more often). Broadcasters are hiding an uncomfortable truth about Britain as they purge their archives. They and the talent they commissioned didnt mock the grasping poor because they were lying to viewers there are benefits cheats, after all, and, from Falstaff on, the fit have always found the fat risible. Nor were they trying to brainwash the audience with rightwing propaganda. The broadcasters of the day were merely operating in the entertainment market and giving a large section of the audience what it wanted. The BBC and Netflix now think that expunging the past will please the market of the 2020s. Puritans are only happy when someone is being silenced and doubtless they will be pleased. I suspect serious people will not be as happy. They will understand that the censorship of light entertainment trivialises their cause and allows their opponents to paint them as enemies of freedom.

The worst of it is that we ought to be thinking about why the response to the 2008 crash turned into a catastrophe. Sweetening history, tidying it up as if broadcasters are schoolteachers and we are vulnerable children, is not only repellent in itself, it stops us understanding the folly that led to a disaster.

Any account of what needs to be done to avoid the destitution of large parts of society must begin with confronting the prejudice that poverty is the fault of the undeserving poor. The young need to go to and stay in universities and further education colleges until the storm passes or find work on local authority job creation schemes. Higher education and councils will need to be seen as deserving of public money, if they are to help them. The Resolution Foundation and other leftish thinktanks are telling the government that the private sector on its own will not be able to revive the economy fast enough. They are proposing that the state should bail out depressed regions in their entirety and that the emergency increases in universal credit benefits, introduced in April, should become permanent. Readers who believe the Tories are evil disaster capitalists will be surprised to hear that they are getting a fair hearing, although whether this government has the competence to act on what ministers are hearing is another matter. Meanwhile, readers who believe the electorate will not cheer on a government if it turns on the victims forget the lessons of the recent past and the unshakable prejudices the 2000s displayed.

In Europe, recessions have been mean times. Voters have elected leaders who have held the poor responsible for their poverty and encouraged the hatred of foreigners for stealing jobs and sponging off welfare states. I dont think it will happen this time, but I wont pretend to be certain. If the idea of blaming a slump caused by a virus on its victims sounds absurd, it was equally absurd to blame a slump caused by the financial system on benefit claimants. But the right managed it after 2008 and can manage it again.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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Blacking up was of a piece with 'comedy' that dealt in contempt - The Guardian

The state of American debate is not strong.

James Joyner Saturday, June 13, 2020 88 comments

Two interesting pieces today argue that American liberals have become significantly less liberalespecially in the case of the elite media.

Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi, whose writing style and topical choices make him hard to pigeonhole but is certainly well to my left politically, has an incredibly long and hard-to-excerpt essay at his personal website titled The American Press Is Destroying Itself. After two paragraphs bemoaning how awful things have gotten under President Trump, he gets to his argument-in-chief:

On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, were watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. Its become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.Theyve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and its established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation forreading Martin Luther Kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail out loudto a data scientistfired* from a research firmfor get this retweetingan academic studysuggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effectivethan violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues whod made politically problematic editorial or social media decisions.

The examples are far-ranging, with some more egregious than others. But Taibbi makes a good case that theres a heavy price to be paid for daring to deviate from the party line being set by young journalists and that its clouding and distorting news judgments. Indeed, he argues, its actually led to partisan, activist coverage:

The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comeys firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence whistleblowers, all those interminable months of Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.

Its been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the political goal is righteous. It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because Trump is scum. MSNBC could put Michael Avenattion live TVto air a gang rape allegation without vetting, because who cared about Brett Kavanaugh except press airing of that wild story ended up being a crucial factor in convincing key swing voter Maine Senator Susan Collins the anti-Kavanaugh campaign was a political hit job (the allegation illustrated, why the presumption of innocence is so important,she said). Reporters who were anxious to prevent Kavanaughs appointment, in other words, ended up helping it happen through overzealousness.

There were no press calls for self-audits after those episodes, just as there wont be a few weeks from now if Covid-19 cases spike, or a few months from now if Donald Trump wins re-election successfully painting the Democrats as supporters of violent protest who want to abolish police. No: press activism is limited to denouncing and shaming colleagues for insufficient fealty to the cheap knockoff of bullying campus Marxism that passes for leftist thought these days.

Now, I think Taibbi oversells this part of the argument a wee bit. In particular, Collins was almost certainly going find some excuse to toe the party line on Kavanaugh.

Taibbi also suggests that the desire to be politically correct meant there was insufficient coverage of the rioting and mayhem associated with the recent protests. Having written that the violence was threatening to take the focus off of the cause at hand (ultimately, it did not), Id have to disagree.

Coming from the other end of the spectrum, Andrew Sullivan asks a similar question: Is There Still Room for Debate? Maybe precisely because hes not of the left, his take is less persuasive than Taibbis.

. . . Americans have always been good at policing uniformity by and among themselves. The puritanical streak of shaming and stigmatizing and threatening runs deep. This is the country of extraordinary political and cultural freedom, but it is also the country of religious fanaticism, moral panics, and crusades against vice. Its the country ofThe Scarlet Letterand Prohibition and the Hollywood blacklist and the Lavender Scare. The kind of stifling, suffocating, and nerve-racking atmosphere that Havel evokes is chillingly recognizable in American history and increasingly in the American present.

The new orthodoxy what the writer Wesley Yang has described as the successor ideology to liberalism seems to be rooted in what journalist Wesley Lowerycallsmoral clarity. He toldTimesmedia columnist Ben Smith this week that journalism needs to be rebuilt around that moral clarity, which means ending its attempt to see all sides of a story, when there is only one, and dropping even an attempt at objectivity (however unattainable that ideal might be). And what is the foundational belief of such moral clarity? That America is systemically racist, and a white-supremacist project from the start, that, as Loweryput it inThe Atlantic,the justice system in fact, the entire American experiment was from its inception designed to perpetuate racial inequality.

He spends several paragraphs challenging this argument as insufficiently nuanced on the website of the prestigious New York magazine, which would suggest that there is indeed room for debate. And, indeed, he not-so-subtly alludes to the race/IQ debate for which he has regularly been excoriated for being on the wrong side of for the last quarter-century.

So whats the problem?

In this manic, Manichean world youre not even given the space to say nothing. White Silence = Violence is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. Its very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didnt put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. The cultishness of this can be seen in the way people are actually cutting off contact with their own families if they dont awaken and see the truth and repeat its formulae. Ibram X. Kendi insists that there is no room in our society for neutrality or reticence. If you are not doing antiracist work youareipso factoa racist. By antiracist work he means fully accepting his version of human society and American history, integrating it into your own life, confessing your own racism, and publicly voicing your continued support.

That belief is indeed out there. And we have indeed seen a lot of celebrities flagellate themselves on the altar of white guilt. But Ive neither replaced my social media avatars with #BlackLivesMatter symbology nor defriended those who are less than woke and, thus far at least, I have not been drubbed out of polite society.

Thats why this past week has seen so many individuals issue public apologies as to their previous life and resolutions to do the work to more actively dismantle structures of oppression. Its why corporate America has rushed to adopt every plank of this ideology and display its allegiance publicly. If you do this, and do it emphatically, you can display your virtue to your customers and clients, and you might even be left alone. Or not. There is no one this movement suspects more than the insincere individual, the person who it deems is merely performing these public oaths and doesnt follow through. Every single aspect of life, every word you speak or write, every tweet you might send, every private conversation you may have had, any email you might have sent, every friend you love is either a function of your racism or anti-racism. And this is why flawed human beings are now subjected to such brutal public shamings, outings, and inquisitions in order to root out the structural evil they represent.

If you argue that you believe that much of this ideology is postmodern gobbledygook, you are guilty of white fragility. If you say you are not fragile, and merely disagree, this isproofyou are fragile. It is the same circular argument that was once used to burn witches. And it has the samereligious undertones. To be woke is to wake up to the truth the blinding truth that liberal society doesnt exist, that everything is a form of oppression or resistance, and that there is no third option. You are either with us or you are to be cast into darkness.

Im closer to Sullivans views on this than Lowerys. I fundamentally believe that civil discourse and persuasion are the only way democracy works. So, I simultaneously support radical reform of policing such that the black community doesnt see law enforcement as a threat to their lives and condemn rioting and looting associated with the protests seeking that end. I simultaneously think we should remove monuments that were specifically put up to signal to black citizens that they were lesser beings and that we should do so according to the rule of law, not the actions of the mob. I simultaneously think we should rename Army bases named after Confederate generals and not inflame matters further by naming them after William Tecumseh Sherman.

But I also think Lowery and others have a point, even if they go too far. The nature of institutional racism is that a level playing field isnt truly level.

And, in fairness, Sullivan seems to agree:

Mercifully, we are far freer than Havel was under Communism. We have no secret police. The state is not requiring adherence to this doctrine. And it is not a lie that this country has some deep reckoning to do on the legacy of slavery and segregation.In so far as this movement has made us more aware and cognizantof the darkness of the past, it is a very good thing, and overdue. But in so far as it has insisted we are defined entirely by that darkness, it has the crudeness of a kind of evangelist doctrine with the similar penalties for waywardness. We have co-workers eager to weaponize their ideology to purge the workforce. We have employers demanding our attendance at seminars and workshops to teach this ideology. We have journalists (of all people) poring through other writers work or records to get them in trouble, demoted, or fired. We have faculty members at colleges signing petitions to rid their departments of those few left not fully onboard. We have human-resources departments that have adopted this ideology whole and are imposing it as a condition for employment. And, critically, we have a Twitter mob to hound people into submission.

Too many in journalism and the academymyself includeddraw conclusions from Twitter that are too broad. Twitter, as has been frequently noted, is not real life. But, increasingly, for those of us who make our living in the intellectual space, it seems that way.

Still, I agree with Sullivan here:

Liberalism is not just a set of rules. Theres a spirit to it. A spirit that believes that there are whole spheres of human life that lie beyond ideology friendship, art, love, sex, scholarship, family. A spirit that seeks not to impose orthodoxy but to open up the possibilities of the human mind and soul. A spirit that seeks moral clarity but understands that this is very hard, that life and history are complex, and it is this complexity that a truly liberal society seeks to understand if it wants to advance. It is a spirit that deals with an argument and not a person and that counters that argument with logic, not abuse. Its a spirit that allows for various ideas to clash and evolve, and treats citizens as equal, regardless of their race, rather than insisting on equity for designated racial groups. Its a spirit that delights sometimes in being wrong because it offers an opportunity to figure out whats right. And its generous, humorous, and graceful in its love of argument and debate. It gives you space to think and reflect and deliberate. Twitter, of course, is the antithesis of all this and its mercy-free, moblike qualities when combined with a moral panic are, quite frankly, terrifying.

Heres a caveat, though: the fight for black Americans to be treated as full and equal citizens has been ongoing for at least 155 years. And, while were undeniably a lot closer than we were 50, even 25, years ago its understandable that people have simply run out of patience.

I dont like that people who dare to offer counterarguments are shouted down. And I positively loathe when ordinary people are suddenly turned into public figures and have their lives ruined for a single, thoughtless act.

Sullivan closes:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values, President Kennedy once said. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. Lets keep that market open. Lets not be intimidated by those who want it closed.

I long for that ideal to be realized but despair that its impossible.

And, as much as cancel culture is making it harder, the main culprit right now is coming from the right. Whatever pressures are being placed on the editors of the New York Times and Washington Postor even Vox and New Yorkto take sides in the culture wars, I get a reasonable sense of the debate from reading those sources. Fox News, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, and the like dont even pretend anymore to show both sides of the story.

Still, while I dont operate from fear of being cancelled online, I do find myself self-censoring more often. Even though my views on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues are likely somewhat left-of-center at this point, certainly in my age cohort, its just not worth the aggravation to respond to the Twitter mob. Presumably, those with views further out of favor with the woke left that dominates the medium do so more often.

To that extent, the mob has won. And thats not good for the country or our state of discourse.

Now, again, this threat pales in comparison to a President that fans the flames of racial outrage and threatens the rule of law and the freedom of expression. But I do fear that the backlash against cancel culture will alienate people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Joe Biden to stay home or even vote to re-elect Trump.

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Cancel Cancel Culture - Outside The Beltway - Mobile Edition