"The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so," wrote Andrew Sullivan earlier this month in "What Happened to You: The radicalization of the American elite against liberalism." Sullivan is correct that the left has turned sharply against freedom in recent years.
Student authoritarians - the same should be said of faculty and administration authoritarians - of this generation are the spiritual descendants of the student rebels of the 1960s.
Students' importuning universities to curb campus freedom today may seem like the opposite of students a half-century earlier who rebelled against university-imposed restrictions on freedom of expression, not least student attire.
Today's students, sustained by a campus culture in which that progressive sensibility prevails, wish to impose it on everybody - in part, by stifling free speech.
In line with Rousseau's thinking, his intellectual and political minions through the centuries have believed that imposing on people what they ought to want reflects the highest expression of freedom and the purest form of democracy.
In "If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals" - a short, perceptive essay to which Andrew Sullivan refers in his analysis of the left's intensifying illiberalism - progressive Kevin Drum provides evidence that his colleagues on the left would do well to take Rousseau's stern insistence to heart.
He is right that tempering its positions while exercising "Empathy and tact" would go a long way to enabling the left to reach out "To the vast middle of the country." But he fails to appreciate that the casual disdain for those who depart from the progressive party line has been assiduously cultivated by elite institutions since at least the late 1960s.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
The Roots of the Elite Left's Attack on Freedom
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment