Conor Friedersdorf is exceptionally smart and invariably polite. Both of these qualities are reflected in his reply to Noah Smith’s cartoon characterization of the intellectuals of the right and left. Conor provided a well-conceived argument on behalf of conservative intellectuals.
I admire Conor’s restraint. I do not, however, share it. First, Smith’s contention.
“On the left, the drive to purge racism, sexism, etc. from American society is very strong,” he tweeted, “and most discourse concerns this drive––either decrying examples of racism/sexism, discussing institutions that maintain these -isms, or discussing how to effect change.”
That may well be a fair characterization of the end game, the goals of the progressives. To the extent is suggests that anyone other than the left doesn’t support ending “racism, sexism, etc.,*” however, it’s bullshit. But more importantly, Smith uses the word “purge.” Does that mean that they will do anything, anything at all to eradicate “racism, sexism, etc.”?
There is no mention of what he means by those words. That’s a glaring omission given the tendency to turn over every rock to find racism and sexism, inventing it if there’s nothing to be found but worms. Are we talking about cops tossing black kids against walls in Harlem or microaggressions and cultural appropriation? He doesn’t say.
But then there’s the conservative side.
But because people on the right are, generally, afraid to express this idea in public, they instead talk about the idea of free speech. Basically, to the right, “free speech” is a proxy for “the right to say races and sexes are inherently different without fear of censure.” As far as I can tell, this is 100% of what the “free speech” debate is about – the idea of “group differences.” Every idea that people on the right seem to feel they can’t express in public boils down, eventually, to this.
This new twist, that free speech is a conservative “dog whistle” for racism, “due process” for sexism, has arisen quickly. How else to vilify constitutional rights that are used to challenge the good causes of purging “racism, sexism, etc.”?
Unlike Conor, I don’t defend the conservative point of view. Rather, I speak to the liberal perspective, having been there before Smith was a twinkle in his daddy’s eye, when he was in diapers, when he took his first step and uttered his first word.
How dare you claim that the left, whatever that is today, owns the fight against racism and sexism. And etc. In your twisted yet smug view, everything is some -ism, and everyone who isn’t ready for the purge is complicit in its commission. You wallow in the victimhood of the marginalized, as if it’s a virtue to be pathetic and miserable. You have an excuse for everything, and a solution for nothing. You wear your mantle of self-righteousness like a tin foil hat, oblivious of the irrationality of your adored beliefs.
You want to purge racism? But when black guys’ lives are ruined by white girls who accuse them of rape after their girlfriends ridicule them for their experimental sex, you “believe the women.” You want to purge sexism, but you infantalize women as so incompetent, fragile and stupid that they can’t manage to become scientists unless they dumb down the curriculum and print textbooks with pink covers.
And you castigate the very rights that we fought for, fought to protect, like due process and free speech not because you can’t bear the incipient racism and sexism of conservatives, but the voices of old-school liberals, old-school feminists, who tell you that you’re lying to yourself, you’ve created an absurd fantasy world that not only won’t work, but is every bit as authoritarian and harsh as your pretend enemies.
So unlike Conor, I won’t use the moderate language of a public intellectual, but the coarse words of the vulgarian, because I am not a conservative even though you believe me to be since I don’t adhere to your ideology. You’re full of shit, Noah. You and your cohort are a disgrace. Delete your account.
*The “etc.” may be necessary to express a very long list of -isms on the twitters, but it does a lot of work here.
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