The Liberal View: Don’t Lose Sight of the Bigger Picture
We need to stand against postmodernism and theocratic authoritarianism at the same time
Welcome back to The Liberal View by TaraElla, where I react to things people write and say out there, from a liberal point of view. I believe this is needed because too many people have lost sight of what the liberal way is. We need to have a truly liberal discourse, and I’m doing my part here.
“This is a microcosm of what is happening nationally — the changes that are threatening American democracy,” said Reichardt, a Grand Haven businessperson who worked on the presidential campaigns of George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Pete McCloskey, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, a family friend. “This Christian nationalist movement truly frightens me.” Reichardt, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a centrist Republican in 2010 before leaving the GOP and becoming an independent last year, said, “They think they are doing God’s work, and they truly believe it. They are beyond right-wing. They are Proud Boys-ian. Clearly, that’s what they are, when they refer to diversity, equity and inclusion as being ‘divisive.’” -What It Looks Like When the Far Right Takes Control of Local Government by David Siders in Politico
The reality is that theocratic authoritarianism continues to be a concern. Even regular conservatives are scared of it. Which is why, while it’s legitimate and important to take a stand against postmodernism, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture and give ground to illiberal elements of the Right in the name of ‘anti-wokeism’.
The further left one moves from liberalism, the more radical and even revolutionary the proposed reform becomes; the further right one moves from liberalism, the more drastic and even counter-revolutionary the reaction to past and present efforts at reform becomes. Liberalism seeks to guide reform in a way that avoids the pitfalls of both of those alternative extremes. -How To Be a Liberal Today by Damon Linker
We must remember why liberalism is great, in order to defend it from the illiberal alternatives on both the Left and the Right currently threatening to end the liberal consensus in the West. The history of the West is full of tragedies caused by those who sought radical change, and it shows us the best way to prevent the unnecessary suffering is to stop radical extremists from taking over in the first place. Just to do that would be to fight the good fight, especially in times like these.
Two near-identical bills in South Carolina and Oklahoma go a step further, providing that a “physician or other healthcare professional shall not provide gender transition procedures” to anyone under the age of 26… “These are people who are old enough to enlist in the military, buy guns, buy alcohol, buy tobacco, get married, do a variety of other things that we leave to adults to do,” Oakley said. “And yet we would be forbidding them from being able to receive gender affirming care, as if that is in some way a more permanent decision.” The push to restrict gender-affirming care has been a central focus for a number of well-funded national right-wing groups, including the conservative American Principles Project. The group’s president, Terry Schilling, told CNN that it works with states to introduce and pass such bans, saying their overall goal is to eliminate gender-affirming care for all Americans, regardless of age. -GOP lawmakers escalate fight against gender-affirming care with bills seeking to expand the scope of bans by Devan Cole in CNN
Trans people, even those of us who believe in a more cautious approach towards young people with gender dysphoria, have been very nervous about the politicization of the trans kids issue by organized conservatism, for good reason. Indeed, some European countries have implemented a more cautious approach under the advise of doctors, but this is very different from the politician-led culture war approach that is happening in America. Trans people have been especially worried about bills that extend restrictions past the age of majority (e.g. to 26 years old), because they set a precedent for the government to be able to take away trans health care for all adults if they want to. The fact that extremist anti-trans forces, including those who want to ban all medical transition for everyone, like what is happening here, shows that our worries are well justified. Again, I do believe in taking a more cautious approach for trans youth, but we need to have a rational conversation over this, not a politicized culture war.
“Transmaxxing” is a subculture of young men who embrace trans identities not because they believe they were ‘born in the wrong body’ but simply because they can, and because they think it’ll make their lives better… Many transmaxxers, though, modify themselves just because they want to… The post-ideological feel of the phenomenon is underlined further by how often such individuals shift from embracing the ‘incel’ ideologies associated with the Right, to ‘trans’ identities associated with the Left. -Why are incels turning themselves into girls? by Mary Harrington in Unherd
The kind of misinformation about trans people coming out from ‘trans skeptical’ media outlets is becoming scarier by the day. Any person still in touch with reality would know that incels aren’t turning themselves into trans women en masse, yet this is what they want us to believe now. The problem with this kind of reporting is that it gives people the false impression that many trans people aren’t transitioning because of gender dysphoria nowadays. This is clearly false. Despite the rise of the postmodern ‘you don’t need dysphoria’ narrative, even nowadays, the vast majority of trans people report that they transition because of gender dysphoria. After all, most people wouldn’t want to go through all that pain for no good reason. The truth is, I’ve been part of the trans community for 20+ years, and I have never met a ‘transmaxxer’.
As I suggested in a recent post about several Republican presidential hopefuls not named Trump or DeSantis, Haley’s campaign is tailor made for an alternative-reality version of 2016-the race following Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 and the Republican National Committee’s notorious “autopsy” the following year…. Put it all together and I’m left shrugging my shoulders about Nikki Haley’s future. She might boost her speaking fees and increase what she can earn as a consultant. But she’s not going to be president. And she’s unlikely to revive an approach to Republican politicking that her former boss left dead in a ditch the better part of a decade ago. -Nikki Haley’s Failure to Launch by Damon Linker
This article argues that Haley won’t succeed because it’s not 2013 anymore, and Trump has already comprehensively changed things. It is this kind of pessimism that has led some to choose DeSantis as the ‘lesser evil’ over Trump, at least in the context of the 2024 Republican primaries. However, I’ve argued elsewhere that DeSantis is simply a continuation of Trumpism, and we must fight against it all until sanity returns. Haley might not be the one to do it, and it might not happen this cycle, but I’m sure the hold of Trumpism on the Republican Party will end one day, if we don’t give in to it before then.
The problem with the analytic philosophy that was created in the late 1940s, as logical positivism was amalgamated with other philosophical movements and shorn of its political dimension, is that its whole discourse takes place within the space of the liberal marketplace of ideas. This accounts for the strange convulsions that analytic philosophy is currently going through in its attempts to incorporate the insights of critical race theorists and feminists. It may be more receptive now than it was when Wiggins or Davis sought to bring similar insights in the 1950s or ’60s. But still, it cannot help but spew these insights back out in a strangely deformed shape: as moves in the liberal marketplace of ideas that those thinkers precisely seek to subvert and close down. -The Birth of Analytic Philosophy Out of the Spirit of McCarthyism by Christoph Schuringa in Jacobin
This, I think, comes closest to an honest admission of postmodern critical theory’s aim to ‘subvert and close down’ the liberal marketplace of ideas. This is why liberals need to resist the incorporation of postmodern critical theory type thinking into mainstream culture and politics. (I also disagree that identity-based postmodern critical theories could be thought of as victims of McCarthyism at all, because they didn’t exist, at least in their current form, back in the 1950s. As far as I’m aware, the Western Left wasn’t into identity politics and skeptical of free speech back then, at least.)
Note: The articles quoted above do not necessarily reflect my views, and I do not endorse their arguments outside of what I have specifically agreed with.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com on February 24, 2023.
