Inside Student Radicalism
“Working my piece of land somewhere and living autonomously — that’s the dream,” another says. “Just getting … out of America. It’s a sinking ship.”
.. On the other hand they want a moral life that is more vehement, more strenuous than anything being offered by their elders. Oberlin College is as progressive as the day is long. But in mid-December
.. The identity politics the students have produced inverts the values of the meritocracy. The meritocracy is striving toward excellence; identity politics is deeply egalitarian. The meritocracy measures you by how much you’ve accomplished; identity politics measures you by how much you’ve been oppressed. In the meritocracy your right to be heard is earned through long learning and quality insight; in identity politics your right to be heard is earned by your experience of discrimination. The meritocracy places tremendous emphasis on individual agency; identity politics argues that agency is limited within a system of oppression.
.. The students Heller describes sense the moral emptiness of the current meritocracy and are groping for lives of purpose. At the same time they feel fragile and want protection — protection from rejection, failure or opposing or disturbing ideas.
.. On the other hand, this movement does not emerge from a place of confidence and strength. It emerges from a place of anxiety, lostness and fragility. It is distorted by that soil. Movements that grant themselves the status of victim lack both the confidence to lead change and the humility to converse with others. People who try to use politics to fill emotional and personal voids get more and more extreme and end up as fanatics.
‘The Left’s Priority Is Identity Politics, Not Labor,’ Cont’d
Even though I’m gay, I have come to feel identity politics have become camouflage for the Democratic party’s sellout of the poor, organized labor, and the middle class.
.. My great fear, as a Democrat, is that we will wind up with a party where the elites can invoke social issues relating to identity politics come election time to produce a victorious presidential mandate that allows them to push pro-corporate policies that undermine their own electorate. And that they will be able to get away with this again and again because there’s only two choices in our democracy, which means they will always be able to point a finger at the Trumps of the world to justify themselves as the lesser evil.
Cruz, Rubio, and the Moral Bankruptcy of Progressive Identity Politics
Because white progressives have engineered a cultural system where black and Latino politicians deserve respect only if they get with the progressive program — the entire progressive program.
.. Just ask formerly pro-life Jesse Jackson. Not even marching with Martin Luther King Jr. could protect him from the intolerant demands of progressive sexual revolutionaries. He had to switch sides.