21 Comments
Feb 6, 2022·edited Feb 6, 2022

"Defeating Wokeism"? What does that even mean? When I try to get the dandelions out of my lawn, I am not trying to drive the entire species into extinction. Am I not supposed to even try to keep my own little patch green unless I am convinced my actions are contributing to the Final Solution To The Weed Question? Good grief.

Rufo Laws aren't about that, just throttling down the nasty CRT lies getting shoved down the throats of public school kids. Just like noted liberal (I guess?) Andrew Sullivan says should happen, in this very article. If these laws aren't going to accomplish anything (as Sullivan says they won't if they are too specific), then why all the protest?

That article of his is a piece of work, about as inconsistent and incoherent and gullible as he's ever been. It's certainly possible to be torn or ambivalent about some controversy without contradicting yourself every other sentence.

"A better way is to insist that any course or lesson that involves critical theory must include an alternative counterpoint."

Nice, he discovers adversarial pedagogy! But he hasn't thought it through. How is this going to work in practice without "restricting the discourse"?

He extends the Overton Window all the way to Hurston, McWhorter, and Loury. How very generous of him! But, you know, why stop there? The spectrum of opposition to CRT goes so much further. Are the kids going to read some choice excerpts from Calhoun and Dabney? And why stop at NHJ or Kendi on the left? Frankly, they are pretty tame and mediocre compared to their more serious predecessors - and likely successors - they are mere Mensheviks, paving the way for the Bolsheviks. Dessalines and Malema have lots more to say, and they don't even have bronze medals if you want to get really hard core about it.

Sullivan's been on the internet long enough to know that this is merely the tip of the iceberg, so, what about all the other stuff - all good for Mrs. Johnson's sixth grade history class? All of it gets in, indeed, all of it *must* get in? Poor little Jessica and Tommy, I don't think they were quite ready for all those graphic extremes of extremes, but you know, wouldn't want to restrict the discourse.

Well, duh, obviously that is not workable even in theory, so the discourse is gonna get restricted, but then, we are right back to the whole big question: if we are going to have public schools at all, then who decides?

"And I absolutely get where the parents are coming from. What else are they supposed to do, confronted with a woke educational establishment that lies to them, and brooks no compromise?"

Well, I guess Sullivan isn't going to go with "the educational establishment" as the answer! But then, what other principle does his very non-ugly "ban CRT outright" 'liberalism' have, besides, uh, parents and voters, through, um, laws ... But, but ... liberal=!liberal => syntax error, does not compute!

Speaking of both incoherence and of laws:

"If your kid, black or white, is treated differently by a school or a teacher in class because of his or her race, there is already a remedy: the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... If your son is told he is inherently toxic because he is a boy, or straight, sue."

What about if he's told he's privileged because he's white, no matter how rough his life has been? Sue? Did Sullivan get this from that liar French? What about if the Asian kid has to meet a much higher standard than a Latino kid to get accepted to a *state* university?

You don't need a CRA for that, it's right there in the 14th Amendment! The constitution is even better at protecting your right to not be deprived of the "equal protection of the laws" than some mere act, right? Surely you can just sue in federal court for ... oh ... wait ... yeah, you can't. See, the judges who interpret the constitution and the CRA said *that* kind of unequal treatment is ok, for reasons, and that, as judges, they can make exceptions to rights, when they think it's really important for there for be an exception, "which we promise we'll only grant in extreme circumstances, trust us!"

At any rate, the CRA obviously doesn't provide a remedy for *any* of the stuff people are complaining about. Show me the lawsuit wins. Just one! See, if it did, people would be suing and winning all the time, and teachers and administrators would be intimidated and chilled, and they would be censoring the CRT on their own. Which, duh, they are not at all, that - and all the lawsuit wins - are all on the other side. Huh, funny about that.

But let's imagine some theoretical world in which the suing under the CRA was effective. Ok, now let's imagine that the CRA didn't exist yet, and the teachers were doing these nasty things in the public schools. What would Sullivan suggest those desperate parents do to rein in that terrible educational establishment?

Well, I guess they would have to organize politically and elect people so that they could ... pass the CRA, a law, that would ban the nasty activity, by giving the parents the right to sue to stop it. And that's 'liberal' and not 'ugliness', because it's the cool status quo and what Sullivan suggests they do, yes? No? Maybe? Was the language of the Civil Rights Act a power grab from the left wing or the right wing, too general or too specific, or Goldilocks-approved on all counts? Why is the 'liberal' line right there, but not a millimeter further towards parents determining for themselves where the lines for the inevitable discourse restriction should be drawn?

Expand full comment

Battles of wit and contests of opinion between competing political and social interests can be engaging and entertaining, but the outcomes don't change the tide. Change will come as people are given a choice to leave corrupt institutions for something better. For public education, the growth of "school choice" may prove to be the game-changer. Granted, fully blue states will restrict such growth and I am resigned to think the populations of these states will become ever more rigid in their worldview. However, as a whole for American society, I expect the argument for personal Liberty and Freedom of Conscience to gain momentum and to change the social trajectory.

Thomas Paine observed: "Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered." (The American Crisis, 1776)

The moral collapse of American society has peaked with Covid and "blue state" officials demanding citizens mask to protect themselves from what has now - based on actual CDC data - become the common cold. Please note, I am not claiming SARS-COV2 was a cold, but that the viral evolution and widespread community exposure / immunity has made the virus endemic and akin to a common cold.

The masking and vaccine demands of progressive leaders (most extreme at Ivy league schools, of all things!) has brought to light the extreme illogical superstitious beliefs of the "Woke" crowd. The choice between the two worlds has been made stark and clear. The progressives embrace a society of made up rules arbitrarily created and enforced with puritanical zeal. Their world is attractive to zealots, Machiavellians, and weak-minded sycophants. The alternative is a world that expects individuals to make their own choices and accept personal responsibility for failure.

Now that people are seeing with clear vision what a culture of socialized blame provides, a culture of personal accountability becomes a lot more attractive. I agree that the institutional control held by progressives is daunting. But progressive management is leading those institutions to collapse. I believe the collapse will be more sudden than we anticipate - we need to remember how quickly the Soviet Union fell apart once the cracks of its control appeared.

Lastly, "Conservatives" must realize that they don't win by defeating "Liberalism". Victory occurs when principles of Liberty and Freedom are adopted as core beliefs for government and social institutions. Any politician or pundit who engages in the argument with replacing mandate 'X' with mandate 'Y' is an obstacle to progress.

Expand full comment

I'm also skeptical that banning CRT is going to work, but the argument that banning specific ideas has never worked is just plain silly. Lots of ideas have been successfully banned from classrooms, including all religions (except wokeism), pornography, fascism, etc. The list is probably endless.

People will simultaneously say that you shouldn't ban wokeism in classrooms and that it's a religion (as is done in this post). Those views are, at best, in tension. Teaching religion in public classrooms is already banned!

Expand full comment

Wokeism is political. If a political movement is defeated it will be a political defeat. The headline here is phrased in a silly way. I believe what Kling means is that that this war isn't simply at the ballot box, it's in the culture, the legal system, the institutions, and the bureaucracies. That is true, but all of those things are political.

The word "ban" is defined in Merriam Webster as "to prohibit especially by legal means". That literally applies to any and every law and regulation and policy. You might as well say the political right wing should forfeit any efforts to have any voice or influence in elected government whatsoever. Every policy one could possibly enact could be described as a ban.

If members of the public don't like what the government is doing, they should vote for the changes that they want. If you want to label those changes as "bans", you are free to do so, but that doesn't change that people should vote for the government that they want.

Expand full comment

Christopher Rufo made a very convincing argument in the interview - that state legislatures are literally the place where curriculum decisions are supposed to be made. It’s their job to determine what gets taught and what doesn’t, and how. So the CRT bans are not out of place or illiberal in that context. This interview changed my opinion in that regard. How effective they will be in practice is a different question for all the cultural reasons in this post.

Expand full comment
Feb 5, 2022·edited Feb 5, 2022

The ultimate solution to Wokeism is MacDonough’s Song. Let’s not let it get to that point.

Expand full comment

Speaking as someone who undoubtedly spends more time than anyone here with a wide variety of kids 15-19 in all races, incomes, and intelligence levels, I can say that kids today are no more of a mess than usual, which is to say not much.. But then, far too many people confuse anecdata with reality.

Expand full comment

Lawsuits need to be filed (1) - and won (2). Here's an example of men filing a complaint against Cornell University.

https://www.change.org/p/oppose-discrimination-against-men-cornell-university

Politics will decide if the lawsuit wins, or not. It is becoming more clear to more people that the current system is unjust. And we all do want, real, Justice.

Expand full comment

If find the Lyams sentence you quote puzzling. "In this revolution the liberation and safety of the individual by the state becomes the greatest good." This revolution is almost defined by its systematic rejection of individualism and individual liberty. I don't think it could be clearer in its embrace of communitarianism.

Expand full comment

If banning the teaching of racism (against certain races, at least) in schools is illberal, why isn't the ban on teaching Christianity in schools illiberal? Separation of church and satate also 'restricts discourse.' Are secularists forfeiting the moral highground by opposing prayer in schools? The point seems to be lost on such critics: children aren't smart or knowledgeable enough to meaningfully debate politics, especially with adults - like their teachers. We understand this with religion, why do so many fail to understand it with politics? Teaching kids about politics is, inevitably, indoctrination, not discourse. That's why we strive for apolitical neutrality in curriculum. If by the time kids reach 18 they've been consistently taught the racialist dogma, it's too late, they'll never deconvert, just like how most people raised in Christian or Muslim dogma never leave their religion.

Expand full comment

Hmm, just yesterday I commented that politics matters because governments, their legislation and their personel do a lot to create the conditions in which cultures evolve.

It's also just batty to say "The opposition is still only political." Some people are winning political victories, others are trying to build new institutions, others are learning to stand their ground within existing instutitions while others are writing erudite blog posts.

All of these are happening and worth doing. Of them, I suspect the blog posts have the most impact. When todays toddlers have the power to fix the world the millenials made for them, they wlil still require the wisdom. And body of intellectual work predicting what went wrong and explaining why will be invaluable to them.

Expand full comment

I do think the cultural pushback against wokeness has begun, but agree that it will likley take 20 years or so for that to combat wokism properly. Wokeness metastasized over about a 20-year timeframe (it was clearly there and semi-established when I went to college in '06, but has grown since then). Being "based" now may be associated with weird memes and online subcultures, but this was true of most of the "woke" subculture 20 years ago.

But I do have hope. Kids rebel, and wokeness is filled/has co-opted such obvious contradictions that it'll be easy for kids to see through it. That's the hopeful option. Alternatively it could get entrenched via a merger of state and corporate interests along with a social credit score or similar system, or it could lead to a fiery collapse as warring grievance groups burn everything to the ground.

Expand full comment

One might think of some legislative improvements like strengthening due process in university discipline rule enforcement.

Expand full comment