As demonstrated in several of the comments to it so far, the main issue with this post is use of the ruined term 'liberal'. A lot of the people you might categorize as illiberal public intellectuals would not agree that many of your characterizations of liberal values do not describe their own too.
It seems to me that when you talk about 'the liberal game' you actually mean something closer to simple 'meritocracy', which is a lot more politically neutral-sounding, but with the implication that the 'liberal' society produces results which are close to the ideal version of it: about as fair, neutral, objective, equal opportunity, etc., as human societies can hope to achieve.
Your argument seems to be that people who don't win in actual meritocracy are hungry for excuses for why they should have won, and would have, if not for having been the victim of some unfair injustice. They are also hungry for opportunities to still 'win' by underhanded means, by knocking rightful winners down and being put in their place, with a cover-story that everyone is socially obliged to support - that instead of identity-based bias and favoritism this is actually a 'correction' in the direction of the ideal.
My point is that you are framing this as an attack on 'liberalism', as if anyone actually cares about the political philosophical debate about values except for a tiny number of intellectuals. But actually, the attack is really on meritocracy, and whatever 'liberal' values serve to make things more meritocratic are just a kind of mere infrastructure that must be demolished to hurt the real enemy. When you blow up a bridge or a ball-bearing factory so the enemy cannot use it, you are obviously not fighting a "war on bridges" or a "war on ball bearings", but a war on the real enemy via the mechanism of undermining the basis of their capacity to thwart your objectives.
Now, it is true that no one wants to admit they are attacking meritocracy, and so they indulge in some bogus cover stories about how it is worth blowing up traditional 'liberal' norms because those norms were inherently bad. I can see how a lot of people who were not in on the inside joke would thus never get the joke and thus start taking these positions seriously, especially in subsequent generations who never hear a word of disagreement about it, because disagreement gets crushed.
Still, while some of these people may be genuinely and self-consciously illiberals as an ideological matter, I think most of these folks are only consciously or subconsciously going along with it to the extent that it furthers their own interests in overcoming the obstacles that meritocracy places in the path of the furtherance of their interests.
If you define "it" broadly as the policing of speech for offense and orthodoxy, the undermining of meritocracy, and the woke inquisition, then I would say it's not "now" at all, and instead what we see is merely the logical extension of old principles and a continuance of long-standing trends which have been gradually building up steam for a long time. Some cancers start as just a few cells which take years to grow big enough to start being big problems.
Remember all the recent discussion of "CRT". Current problem that wasn't even on most normies' radar a few years back. But when you look into it, you see the foundation was all established 30-40 years ago, growing, spreading, waiting for its moment. Which is 'now'.
Imagine you are a radiologist who detected such a cancer very early and warned what was going to happen, and then, three years later, somebody at stage 4 asks, "Why now?" - "It's not 'now'. If you don't stop them, little tumors grow into big tumors. It was little a while back, we did nothing, and so, now, it's big."
But maybe you define 'now' in terms of the moment that kicked off the sudden explosion of woke jargon in news media as expertly researched, quantified, and documented by Zach Goldberg and others. You can just look at the graphs and see pretty clearly when that was.
It is a period which starts around early 2012 from the Trayvon Martin shooting and through the whole Presidential campaign season in which the racial agitprop strategy was refined to perfection, culminating in Obama's reelection victory which in turn unleashed a lot of mothballed initiatives that were too radical / controversial to pursue prior to that victory, and then explodes after mid 2013 right after SCOTUS announced the holding in Windsor.
The consequence were certainly accelerated by the interaction with the fast growing adoption of social media tech, and the legacy media wasteland left in the wake of the financial crisis which caused a lot of outlets to either go under or double down on propaganda.
Nevertheless, my position remains that the tech timing is mostly coincidental, and the watershed events described above are more pivotal as they were major factors in the breaching of long-standing and entrenched firewalls in the overall political situation and thus reset the entire political formula and tactical calculus by which the progressive agenda could be pursued much more intensely.
I think this is much easier for lawyers to appreciate, since it is a recurrent theme in the history of Constitutional Law. What looks like one holding in isolation actually sets a precedent and establishes a principle and gives rise to a hundred other important, albeit less famous, cases, and suddenly one finds oneself having experienced a total sea change. The deeper reasons behind this phenomenon are quite subtle and I will defer discussion of those until another time.
But, metaphorically, a political formula in Mosca's sense is like a virus variant exploring the search space so thoroughly that it finally discovers the right mix of mutations to break through a population's established immunity, after which, case numbers quickly 'go parabolic'. Current Year Work is like the Delta or Omicron variant of 1990's style PC progressivism.
Are SJWs and SJW-adjacent professionals really illiberal, or are they simply more effective at using the existing tools of liberalism to outcompete their rivals? Under liberalism, social competition is sublimated to the courtroom, the boardroom, the legislature, and the banking house. Glory through combat is mostly forbidden and considered déclassé.
SJWs may oppose many components of the neoliberal agenda per se, but so did many archliberals: for most of the 19th century, the US ran tariffs of around 30%, while during the same time, Victorian Britain ran tariffs more like 5%. The line between liberal and illiberal is not really decided by something like neoliberal trade vs. List/Hamiltonomics, in the same way that liberal vs. illiberal is not determined by the presence of an income tax versus no income tax. Middle America is liberal: they are mostly disputing issues of internal structure and foreign policy rather than crying out to restore the Stuarts.
Being pressured by overeducated sans-culottes to forsake important meritocratic values is a battle within liberalism. Trying to define it as illiberal vs. liberal is the same sort of error as defining the Cold War as a fight between the liberal US versus the illiberal USSR. The Cold War was a struggle for the future of liberalism.
With the meritocracy stuff, the defense just didn't show up to fight and just immediately surrendered to Big Brother internally, like the meme with the dude who puts the stick in his own bike tire and then says "illiberalism did this." Nah man, they just didn't defend themselves and what happens when you don't defend yourself is you get killed by someone who wants to get rid of you. It's a lot like when someone gets a default judgment against them and doesn't realize what that means. If you don't show up, you lose.
The attack on liberal values by the illiberal left is far more dangerous, as you write, than criticism towards the elites expressed by the illiberal right. The illiberal left is revolutionary, the illiberal right is reformist. Do you entertain the possibility of an alliance between the liberal meritocracy and the illiberal right? Is this not the synthesis that Peter Thiel and his circle are pursuing?
Middle America is fighting for, not merely respect, but for its very survival, against the illiberal left's apparent aim to *liquidate* Middle America.
Social justice as I understand it is a core liberal value. That any society has an obligation to take care of the disadvantaged and any individual capable of helping the less fortunate should do so. For example, the Child Tax Credit/Allowance is a form of social justice that is consistent with liberal values.
I object to your use of "social justice" in your post. I think it's a misleading phrase and does not express what you are trying to say.
This criticism is off base because it derives from semantic confusion.
But, to be fair, this is kind of thing that always happens whenever people use the term 'liberal', which has been known to be a thoroughly ruined term for a long time as a descriptive matter of actual usage which is just all over the place. The "American sense" and "European sense" of the word diverged a long time ago, and for most of the 20th Century.
It would probably be less confusing to say "Libertarian Values", and I suspect that Arnold wouldn't identify any value that was liberal but not libertarian or vice-versa. But that might put off some boomer-style 'Old Liberals' who like to think of themselves as 'liberals' and prefer to imagine it as part of the moderate leftist tradition and wouldn't like categorizing that value-set more accurately, i.e., with 'libertarianism'.
In contrast, you seem to mean 'liberal' to be something like the term was used in American political talk from the 1930s to about a generation ago in the sense of 'liberal Democrats' which includes the ideological commitment to typically progressive leftist forms of state-centralized communitarianism, compulsory redistribution, and so forth. When Rush Limbaugh would complain about 'the liberals' in the mid 90's, he certainly wasn't talking about people who support free markets or who opposed PC!
The term should just be retired. People won't give up on it because in certain audiences it creates positive vibes that they want to evoke, regardless of what they really mean or how its understood. But that's part of how we got into this mess in the first place.
Where did "liberal Democrat" come from? The American meaning was the result of a Depression-era PR campaign specifically intended to try to leverage the public affection for the term while redefining it to mean practically its opposite. Liberty was the proud American tradition, and they certainly were no fans of liberty, but were fans of the esteem for the term.
So, they called it "New Deal Liberalism", which you'll see defined in various places as, "a belief in a government, large in size, that is active in regulating the economy and society to achieve what it perceives as fairness." "New Deal Liberalism" took over the term and became simply "liberalism" to Americans, but I think you can see how that definition is obviously not at all what Arnold means by 'liberal'!
Why not just call this 'Socialism' like everybody else in the world did at the time? To fool naive people with a euphemism, the same way we got 'progressive' for 'communist'.
Years ago, I thought that "social justice" was just code for "socialism". I'm not sure that's quite the case any more, but it is still closer to that than it is to "justice".
It should be obvious that, in referring to the social-justice rebels, Arnold is talking about a group touting its status as backers of "social-justice". There's *nothing* misleading about any of this, except perhaps in the fantasies of those who hate any criticism of these rebels.
Contrary to Arnold, these rebels don't just ignore middle America, they *hate* middle America, and all speech which fails to toe the rebels' Party Line.
Words are important. I wouldn't say today is Saturday based on my belief that you really thought I meant Friday. Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice Warrior. A fighter for a good thing.
"Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice Warrior."
Lol, come on man, no they are not. Language only works as a mechanism for communication on the basis of shared conventions. If you define "Social Justice Warrior" in that completely unconventional way then it's just your purely personal version that is completely distinct from the way that most people use and understand it.
For how people actually use and understand it, go look at the Urban Dictionary entries.
You might not like it or prefer it were otherwise, but SJW is now just a slang epithet for someone passionately obsessed with the woke progressive perspective in a very public way, identifying and complaining in a hysterical manner about every conceivable aspect of any situation which could be ideologically 'problematic' no matter how trivial or innocent, and with a nasty, gleefully sadistic mentality that seeks to rally a mob and appeal to management to penalize transgressors and heretics.
Sorry, "the moron haters who came in later ruined the brand" happens, a lot, and it happened with SJW too. C'est la guerre.
You can't honestly expect others to simply accept that 'social justice' has some absolute definition beyond dispute. Charles Coughlin promoted quasi-fascism and anti-semitism under the auspices of 'social justice' in the 30s and 40s. Why isn't that then the true definition of social justice? No, there isn't some consensus definition of 'social justice' as a non-controversial good thing, any more than there is such a definition for feminism or family values or what have you. This just sounds like a set up for a motte and bailey argument ('so you agree that food pantries are good? Then surely you must also agree with banning use of SATs for college admissions, because that's also social justice!').
Arnold is just assuming his audience is familiar with the many activists who promote illberal ideas under the auspices of social justice.
Is "Social Justice Warrior" a phrase meant to mock those who promote illiberal ideas? Why not call them leftist ideologues or something else appropriate?. Why taint the word "justice" and why be snarky when, with a little effort, you can achieve clarity?
Food pantries have existed for decades, and in the past the people who ran them weren't referred to as a Social Justice Warriors. They were charity workers.
This is particularly interesting in light of recent news that Harvard seems to have joined the UC system in no longer requiring SAT's.
Arnold, I'd be curious on your thoughts with respect to the consequences of that change.
My guess is it will undoubtedly be used to change the nature of students admitted to "elite" institutions and is perhaps tied to law suits alleging discrimination against Asians. I suspect that the average raw intellectual power of students at these institutions is going to plummet if this policy is kept in place as it will be used to accept not the most intellectually talented, but the most socially preferred (legacy, etc).
Will this over sufficient time lead to destruction in prestige of these universities? (Perhaps top tech/finance firms will no longer focus recruiting at these institutions as heavily?)
Will this lead to market opportunities for MIT/Caltech and or new institutions (U Austin?) that perhaps may more explicitly select for top academic students?
Re: "People flourish in liberal societies. We have achieved material and moral progress." Liberal societies have achieved moral progress by embracing ethical individualism, but they also have come to undermine ethics of individual responsibility by indulging a culture of social and psychological excuses for self-defeating behaviors.
Re: "people who are not satisfied with their status under the liberal-values game are trying to change the rules in order to gain status for themselves." A puzzle: Why do many successful people, who enjoy high status under the liberal-values game, want to change the rules in favor of those who aren't satisfied with their status under the liberal-values game? Perhaps they are confident that they themselves would succeed in any game, thanks to their high smarts, drive, and emotional intelligence?
One would think many people reflect on social justice issues because the recognition of their privileged status is valuable in an intellectual and interior way, rather than as a weapon to amass more status.
One certainly is entitled to reflect on his own privilege. It's when someone focuses on other people's privilege that social justice ideology gets weaponized.
It’s a grim view of conversation that views it to be primarily about status. And 99.9% of all this is conversational, with no effect on politics or society.
I pretty much agree although I don't see the need for a meta opinion or whether right illiberalism is worse than left illiberalism). I will point out that, "they started it." :) Republicand appealing to social conservative arguments -- crime drugs, terrorism, same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration [a caricature version of each issue, to be sure] -- to oppose Democrats tax and transfer policies.
I don't want to get into a "who's worse" discussion, but I will point out that the illiberal Right came within a hair's breath of overthrowing the government and may well succeed in 2024. I wish the "illiberal Left" in universities, etc. understood what a tiny minority it is and how much it NEEDS the protection of Liberal norms which the illiberal Right is happy to dispense with.
If you truly believe that 1/6 was "within a hair's breadth of overthrowing the government", you are nuts. USA has many defects, but if there is one thing USA is not, it is a banana republic where whoever stands behind the senatorial lectern is the ruler and lawgiver.
At this point, maybe we should just give Lecternism a go. Yeah, they'll have to turn the capitol into Fort Knox with defense in depth security measures, tight access controls, a clearly permanent and mission-dedicated domestic intelligence collection effort, and long-term barricades and whatnot. Not like we have now.
As demonstrated in several of the comments to it so far, the main issue with this post is use of the ruined term 'liberal'. A lot of the people you might categorize as illiberal public intellectuals would not agree that many of your characterizations of liberal values do not describe their own too.
It seems to me that when you talk about 'the liberal game' you actually mean something closer to simple 'meritocracy', which is a lot more politically neutral-sounding, but with the implication that the 'liberal' society produces results which are close to the ideal version of it: about as fair, neutral, objective, equal opportunity, etc., as human societies can hope to achieve.
Your argument seems to be that people who don't win in actual meritocracy are hungry for excuses for why they should have won, and would have, if not for having been the victim of some unfair injustice. They are also hungry for opportunities to still 'win' by underhanded means, by knocking rightful winners down and being put in their place, with a cover-story that everyone is socially obliged to support - that instead of identity-based bias and favoritism this is actually a 'correction' in the direction of the ideal.
My point is that you are framing this as an attack on 'liberalism', as if anyone actually cares about the political philosophical debate about values except for a tiny number of intellectuals. But actually, the attack is really on meritocracy, and whatever 'liberal' values serve to make things more meritocratic are just a kind of mere infrastructure that must be demolished to hurt the real enemy. When you blow up a bridge or a ball-bearing factory so the enemy cannot use it, you are obviously not fighting a "war on bridges" or a "war on ball bearings", but a war on the real enemy via the mechanism of undermining the basis of their capacity to thwart your objectives.
Now, it is true that no one wants to admit they are attacking meritocracy, and so they indulge in some bogus cover stories about how it is worth blowing up traditional 'liberal' norms because those norms were inherently bad. I can see how a lot of people who were not in on the inside joke would thus never get the joke and thus start taking these positions seriously, especially in subsequent generations who never hear a word of disagreement about it, because disagreement gets crushed.
Still, while some of these people may be genuinely and self-consciously illiberals as an ideological matter, I think most of these folks are only consciously or subconsciously going along with it to the extent that it furthers their own interests in overcoming the obstacles that meritocracy places in the path of the furtherance of their interests.
Did I avoid it? Not intentionally if so.
My answer depends how you define "it".
If you define "it" broadly as the policing of speech for offense and orthodoxy, the undermining of meritocracy, and the woke inquisition, then I would say it's not "now" at all, and instead what we see is merely the logical extension of old principles and a continuance of long-standing trends which have been gradually building up steam for a long time. Some cancers start as just a few cells which take years to grow big enough to start being big problems.
Remember all the recent discussion of "CRT". Current problem that wasn't even on most normies' radar a few years back. But when you look into it, you see the foundation was all established 30-40 years ago, growing, spreading, waiting for its moment. Which is 'now'.
Imagine you are a radiologist who detected such a cancer very early and warned what was going to happen, and then, three years later, somebody at stage 4 asks, "Why now?" - "It's not 'now'. If you don't stop them, little tumors grow into big tumors. It was little a while back, we did nothing, and so, now, it's big."
But maybe you define 'now' in terms of the moment that kicked off the sudden explosion of woke jargon in news media as expertly researched, quantified, and documented by Zach Goldberg and others. You can just look at the graphs and see pretty clearly when that was.
It is a period which starts around early 2012 from the Trayvon Martin shooting and through the whole Presidential campaign season in which the racial agitprop strategy was refined to perfection, culminating in Obama's reelection victory which in turn unleashed a lot of mothballed initiatives that were too radical / controversial to pursue prior to that victory, and then explodes after mid 2013 right after SCOTUS announced the holding in Windsor.
The consequence were certainly accelerated by the interaction with the fast growing adoption of social media tech, and the legacy media wasteland left in the wake of the financial crisis which caused a lot of outlets to either go under or double down on propaganda.
Nevertheless, my position remains that the tech timing is mostly coincidental, and the watershed events described above are more pivotal as they were major factors in the breaching of long-standing and entrenched firewalls in the overall political situation and thus reset the entire political formula and tactical calculus by which the progressive agenda could be pursued much more intensely.
I think this is much easier for lawyers to appreciate, since it is a recurrent theme in the history of Constitutional Law. What looks like one holding in isolation actually sets a precedent and establishes a principle and gives rise to a hundred other important, albeit less famous, cases, and suddenly one finds oneself having experienced a total sea change. The deeper reasons behind this phenomenon are quite subtle and I will defer discussion of those until another time.
But, metaphorically, a political formula in Mosca's sense is like a virus variant exploring the search space so thoroughly that it finally discovers the right mix of mutations to break through a population's established immunity, after which, case numbers quickly 'go parabolic'. Current Year Work is like the Delta or Omicron variant of 1990's style PC progressivism.
Just wanted to chime in and offer a high five for Mosca! Love that guy, and he’s totally underrated.
Are SJWs and SJW-adjacent professionals really illiberal, or are they simply more effective at using the existing tools of liberalism to outcompete their rivals? Under liberalism, social competition is sublimated to the courtroom, the boardroom, the legislature, and the banking house. Glory through combat is mostly forbidden and considered déclassé.
SJWs may oppose many components of the neoliberal agenda per se, but so did many archliberals: for most of the 19th century, the US ran tariffs of around 30%, while during the same time, Victorian Britain ran tariffs more like 5%. The line between liberal and illiberal is not really decided by something like neoliberal trade vs. List/Hamiltonomics, in the same way that liberal vs. illiberal is not determined by the presence of an income tax versus no income tax. Middle America is liberal: they are mostly disputing issues of internal structure and foreign policy rather than crying out to restore the Stuarts.
Being pressured by overeducated sans-culottes to forsake important meritocratic values is a battle within liberalism. Trying to define it as illiberal vs. liberal is the same sort of error as defining the Cold War as a fight between the liberal US versus the illiberal USSR. The Cold War was a struggle for the future of liberalism.
With the meritocracy stuff, the defense just didn't show up to fight and just immediately surrendered to Big Brother internally, like the meme with the dude who puts the stick in his own bike tire and then says "illiberalism did this." Nah man, they just didn't defend themselves and what happens when you don't defend yourself is you get killed by someone who wants to get rid of you. It's a lot like when someone gets a default judgment against them and doesn't realize what that means. If you don't show up, you lose.
The attack on liberal values by the illiberal left is far more dangerous, as you write, than criticism towards the elites expressed by the illiberal right. The illiberal left is revolutionary, the illiberal right is reformist. Do you entertain the possibility of an alliance between the liberal meritocracy and the illiberal right? Is this not the synthesis that Peter Thiel and his circle are pursuing?
Indeed, the illiberal left is revolutionary, esp. in its demonization of all speech which fails to toe the Party Line.
Whereas, the "illiberal" right is (rather tepidly?) reformist, esp. in its critiques of free trade/ markets.
And, as [redacted] says below, the illiberal left has a lot of institutional power, while the "illiberal" left has none.
Middle America is fighting for, not merely respect, but for its very survival, against the illiberal left's apparent aim to *liquidate* Middle America.
Where Arnold writes, that "the illiberal left is trying to change the rules in order to gain status for themselves", he's likely being generous.
The clear pleasure that so many of them take, in demonizing those whose speech fails to toe the rebels' Party Line, suggests that the
leaders' more common motive likely is, to torment those who refuse to kiss their Precious (snowflake) Asses.
Social justice as I understand it is a core liberal value. That any society has an obligation to take care of the disadvantaged and any individual capable of helping the less fortunate should do so. For example, the Child Tax Credit/Allowance is a form of social justice that is consistent with liberal values.
I object to your use of "social justice" in your post. I think it's a misleading phrase and does not express what you are trying to say.
This criticism is off base because it derives from semantic confusion.
But, to be fair, this is kind of thing that always happens whenever people use the term 'liberal', which has been known to be a thoroughly ruined term for a long time as a descriptive matter of actual usage which is just all over the place. The "American sense" and "European sense" of the word diverged a long time ago, and for most of the 20th Century.
It would probably be less confusing to say "Libertarian Values", and I suspect that Arnold wouldn't identify any value that was liberal but not libertarian or vice-versa. But that might put off some boomer-style 'Old Liberals' who like to think of themselves as 'liberals' and prefer to imagine it as part of the moderate leftist tradition and wouldn't like categorizing that value-set more accurately, i.e., with 'libertarianism'.
In contrast, you seem to mean 'liberal' to be something like the term was used in American political talk from the 1930s to about a generation ago in the sense of 'liberal Democrats' which includes the ideological commitment to typically progressive leftist forms of state-centralized communitarianism, compulsory redistribution, and so forth. When Rush Limbaugh would complain about 'the liberals' in the mid 90's, he certainly wasn't talking about people who support free markets or who opposed PC!
The term should just be retired. People won't give up on it because in certain audiences it creates positive vibes that they want to evoke, regardless of what they really mean or how its understood. But that's part of how we got into this mess in the first place.
Where did "liberal Democrat" come from? The American meaning was the result of a Depression-era PR campaign specifically intended to try to leverage the public affection for the term while redefining it to mean practically its opposite. Liberty was the proud American tradition, and they certainly were no fans of liberty, but were fans of the esteem for the term.
So, they called it "New Deal Liberalism", which you'll see defined in various places as, "a belief in a government, large in size, that is active in regulating the economy and society to achieve what it perceives as fairness." "New Deal Liberalism" took over the term and became simply "liberalism" to Americans, but I think you can see how that definition is obviously not at all what Arnold means by 'liberal'!
Why not just call this 'Socialism' like everybody else in the world did at the time? To fool naive people with a euphemism, the same way we got 'progressive' for 'communist'.
Years ago, I thought that "social justice" was just code for "socialism". I'm not sure that's quite the case any more, but it is still closer to that than it is to "justice".
It should be obvious that, in referring to the social-justice rebels, Arnold is talking about a group touting its status as backers of "social-justice". There's *nothing* misleading about any of this, except perhaps in the fantasies of those who hate any criticism of these rebels.
Contrary to Arnold, these rebels don't just ignore middle America, they *hate* middle America, and all speech which fails to toe the rebels' Party Line.
Words are important. I wouldn't say today is Saturday based on my belief that you really thought I meant Friday. Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice Warrior. A fighter for a good thing.
"Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice Warrior."
Lol, come on man, no they are not. Language only works as a mechanism for communication on the basis of shared conventions. If you define "Social Justice Warrior" in that completely unconventional way then it's just your purely personal version that is completely distinct from the way that most people use and understand it.
For how people actually use and understand it, go look at the Urban Dictionary entries.
You might not like it or prefer it were otherwise, but SJW is now just a slang epithet for someone passionately obsessed with the woke progressive perspective in a very public way, identifying and complaining in a hysterical manner about every conceivable aspect of any situation which could be ideologically 'problematic' no matter how trivial or innocent, and with a nasty, gleefully sadistic mentality that seeks to rally a mob and appeal to management to penalize transgressors and heretics.
Sorry, "the moron haters who came in later ruined the brand" happens, a lot, and it happened with SJW too. C'est la guerre.
"but SJW is now just a slang epithet...."
Slang epithets are just not my cup of tea. And your definition if SJW is quite a doozy.
"I fear these big words, which make us so unhappy."
You can't honestly expect others to simply accept that 'social justice' has some absolute definition beyond dispute. Charles Coughlin promoted quasi-fascism and anti-semitism under the auspices of 'social justice' in the 30s and 40s. Why isn't that then the true definition of social justice? No, there isn't some consensus definition of 'social justice' as a non-controversial good thing, any more than there is such a definition for feminism or family values or what have you. This just sounds like a set up for a motte and bailey argument ('so you agree that food pantries are good? Then surely you must also agree with banning use of SATs for college admissions, because that's also social justice!').
Arnold is just assuming his audience is familiar with the many activists who promote illberal ideas under the auspices of social justice.
Is "Social Justice Warrior" a phrase meant to mock those who promote illiberal ideas? Why not call them leftist ideologues or something else appropriate?. Why taint the word "justice" and why be snarky when, with a little effort, you can achieve clarity?
Food pantries have existed for decades, and in the past the people who ran them weren't referred to as a Social Justice Warriors. They were charity workers.
"Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice Warrior."
Disingenuous.
Someone who runs a food pantry is a Social justice activist, but not a *Warrior*.
The Warriors are those who *Fight* for the "oppressed".
"A fighter for a good thing."
Not when the fight is really about, not helping the "oppressed", but (as per Arnold's drift) status-climbing (at the expense of the "oppressors").
This is particularly interesting in light of recent news that Harvard seems to have joined the UC system in no longer requiring SAT's.
Arnold, I'd be curious on your thoughts with respect to the consequences of that change.
My guess is it will undoubtedly be used to change the nature of students admitted to "elite" institutions and is perhaps tied to law suits alleging discrimination against Asians. I suspect that the average raw intellectual power of students at these institutions is going to plummet if this policy is kept in place as it will be used to accept not the most intellectually talented, but the most socially preferred (legacy, etc).
Will this over sufficient time lead to destruction in prestige of these universities? (Perhaps top tech/finance firms will no longer focus recruiting at these institutions as heavily?)
Will this lead to market opportunities for MIT/Caltech and or new institutions (U Austin?) that perhaps may more explicitly select for top academic students?
An observation and a question:
Re: "People flourish in liberal societies. We have achieved material and moral progress." Liberal societies have achieved moral progress by embracing ethical individualism, but they also have come to undermine ethics of individual responsibility by indulging a culture of social and psychological excuses for self-defeating behaviors.
Re: "people who are not satisfied with their status under the liberal-values game are trying to change the rules in order to gain status for themselves." A puzzle: Why do many successful people, who enjoy high status under the liberal-values game, want to change the rules in favor of those who aren't satisfied with their status under the liberal-values game? Perhaps they are confident that they themselves would succeed in any game, thanks to their high smarts, drive, and emotional intelligence?
One would think many people reflect on social justice issues because the recognition of their privileged status is valuable in an intellectual and interior way, rather than as a weapon to amass more status.
One certainly is entitled to reflect on his own privilege. It's when someone focuses on other people's privilege that social justice ideology gets weaponized.
"It's when someone focuses on other people's privilege that social justice ideology gets weaponized."
Yeah, esp. when this focusing/ weaponization is systematically unfair/ dishonest.
It’s a grim view of conversation that views it to be primarily about status. And 99.9% of all this is conversational, with no effect on politics or society.
I pretty much agree although I don't see the need for a meta opinion or whether right illiberalism is worse than left illiberalism). I will point out that, "they started it." :) Republicand appealing to social conservative arguments -- crime drugs, terrorism, same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration [a caricature version of each issue, to be sure] -- to oppose Democrats tax and transfer policies.
Why even bother asserting that there's no need to do X, before immediately doing X in the very next sentence?
My next sentence was chronological, trying to asses the chain of events, not a judgement of which is best or worst.
I don't want to get into a "who's worse" discussion, but I will point out that the illiberal Right came within a hair's breath of overthrowing the government and may well succeed in 2024. I wish the "illiberal Left" in universities, etc. understood what a tiny minority it is and how much it NEEDS the protection of Liberal norms which the illiberal Right is happy to dispense with.
> the illiberal Right came within a hair's breath of overthrowing the government
Are you talking about 1/6?
Yes.
If you truly believe that 1/6 was "within a hair's breadth of overthrowing the government", you are nuts. USA has many defects, but if there is one thing USA is not, it is a banana republic where whoever stands behind the senatorial lectern is the ruler and lawgiver.
At this point, maybe we should just give Lecternism a go. Yeah, they'll have to turn the capitol into Fort Knox with defense in depth security measures, tight access controls, a clearly permanent and mission-dedicated domestic intelligence collection effort, and long-term barricades and whatnot. Not like we have now.
Granted we ARE not, but that was the point of the coup attempt, get Congress to install Trump as President notwithstanding the election results.