E-Pluribus | Apr. 30, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Matt Bai: Dropping an author is one thing. Vanishing his book is another.
Publisher Simon & Schuster found itself in the public spotlight’s harsh glare recently with its decision to publish two books by former vice president Mike Pence shortly after cancelling a deal with congressman and Trump supporter Josh Hawley. A New York Times article called Simon & Schuster “a test case for how publishers are trying to draw a line over who is acceptable to publish.” Matt Bai of the Washington Post questions the wisdom and sustainability of the notion that an author’s (or other creator’s) personal character and behavior or even political or cultural views is an appropriate litmus test for the his or her publishability.
No, the only relevant question here is whether the artist can ever be separated from the art. Must only good people write or paint or record music, or do we let the work speak for itself and trust the public to decide what has merit?
The truth, as I argued recently in the case of Dr. Seuss, is that much (if not most) of our greatest art was created by people you probably wouldn’t want near your kids. Are we taking the works of Pablo Picasso and T.S. Eliot out of museums and libraries? (The former was said to have treated younger women as emotional slaves; the latter was a noted anti-Semite.)
Are we banning Charlie Chaplin films, since he apparently had a predilection for young girls? Should “Annie Hall” be disappeared because Woody Allen later married his ex-lover’s adopted daughter?
Why stop at art, for that matter? I’ve read enough about Steve Jobs to know that he practically pioneered the idea of the toxic work environment. Are we taking our iPhones out back and stomping on them?
Read it all here.
Matthew Yglesias: If you want to talk about racism, talk about racism
When it comes to discussions of political and cultural issues in today’s environment, sometimes it seems every issue is a Rorschach test for which every answer is “racism.” Matthew Yglesias, without diminishing the legitimate existence of racism in our society, warns against pulling race into areas where it is unjustified and even counterproductive.
But here’s the key thing — English and Kalla aren’t testing whether it’s a good idea to talk about racism. And I’m not saying politicians should shy away from tackling race-specific issues when they arise or seem important. The narrow — but important — question here is should you take an issue like the minimum wage that is not on its face about race and go out of your way to inject race into it? And the answer, I think, is no.
[…]
If you care to Google around, you can find more studies on different subjects. The main idea here is that these are topics where we don’t just observe racial “gaps” in outcomes, but rather actual evidence of discrimination. Oftentimes it’s what economists call “statistical discrimination,”1 or what when I was a kid we were taught to call “stereotyping” — people draw strong, often inaccurate, inferences about other people based on incomplete information. And that pattern of behavior can be a significant source of disadvantage.
[…]
A pet theory that I developed in the past but didn’t put into my previous piece is that we’re seeing carryover from college campus dynamics. If you convince an RA that a fellow student is doing something racist, the RA will probably put a stop to it, whereas simply observing that something is bad for poor people probably won’t get you anywhere. Connecting something to racism, in other words, can be a very powerful argument in certain contexts. But not in electoral politics.
Read the whole thing.
Bret Stephens: Race and the Coming Liberal Crackup
Also addressing overreach in matters of race, Bret Stephens foresees a slow-motion backlash against the stridency of the “anti-racism” juggernaut muscling its way into American culture and politics. Stephens believe the illiberal tendencies of that movement is turning off liberal-minded Americans and may eventually reverse the country’s leftward momentum.
That’s a thought that many, perhaps most, Americans share, even if they are increasingly reluctant to say it out loud. Why reluctant? Because in this era of with-us-or-against-us politics, to have misgivings about the left’s new “anti-racist” narrative is to run the risk of being denounced as a racist. Much better to nod along at your office’s diversity, equity and inclusion sessions than suggest that enforced political indoctrination should not become a staple of American workplace culture.
And yet those doubts and misgivings go to the heart of what used to be thought of as liberalism. The result will be a liberal crackup similar to the one in the late 1960s that broke liberalism as America’s dominant political force for a generation.
Morally and philosophically, liberalism believes in individual autonomy, which entails a concept of personal responsibility. The current model of anti-racism scoffs at this: It divides the world into racial identities, which in turn are governed by systems of privilege and powerlessness. Liberalism believes in process: A trial or contest is fair if standards are consistent and rules are equitable, irrespective of outcome. Anti-racism is determined to make a process achieve a desired outcome. Liberalism finds appeals to racial favoritism inherently suspect, even offensive. Anti-racism welcomes such favoritism, provided it’s in the name of righting past wrongs.
[…]
Ibram X. Kendi, the most important anti-racist thinker today, argues that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Some liberals will go along with this. Many others will find themselves drifting rightward, much as a past generation of disaffected liberals did.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
While Florida has some appetite for taking on “woke” corporations, apparently there are limits:
Government efforts to regulate speech through social media are by no means limited to the United States:
Glenn Greenwald on “content moderation”:
Long thread on pending legislation in Idaho involving education and free speech:
[click here to go to the whole thread, and also here’s a short conversation between the thread author and Casey Maddox]
