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A liberal who counts more enemies on the left than the right


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2017 Dec 21, 7:11am   2,782 views  9 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/21/mark-lilla-identity-politics-liberals
Lilla, a Columbia professor of humanities, published a New York Times op-ed, The End of Identity Liberalism. It became the Times’ most read political op-ed of the year and marked his transition from academic and occasional public intellectual to polemicist.

Addressed to liberal Democrats, the op-ed was both a call to arms and a rebuke. Trump’s accession to the White House, Lilla argued, was a backlash against an obsession with identity politics on the part of the American left.

“American liberalism,” he wrote, “has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”

...

Lilla believes students’ lack of exposure to conservative ideas does them a serious disservice. Progressive activists today are poorly equipped to combat the right, he thinks, in part because one cannot debate an adversary one doesn’t understand. “You have to learn about what people actually think and not rely on a fantasy sense of what they think.”


#politics

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1   mell   2017 Dec 21, 10:11am  

Do you have the link? Thanks!
2   marcus   2017 Dec 21, 12:06pm  

He's making a point that many liberals (myself included) agree with. Democratic priorities need to represent more united working class and middle class priorities. Instead they have focused too much on identity politics battles, some of which have triggered certain folks.

Yeah, he's right.


Lilla believes students’ lack of exposure to conservative ideas does them a serious disservice. Progressive activists today are poorly equipped to combat the right, he thinks, in part because one cannot debate an adversary one doesn’t understand. “You have to learn about what people actually think and not rely on a fantasy sense of what they think.”


Although I have honestly tried, and the explanations I get from republican relatives and friends, and the more whacked out ones I hear here, never satisfy as being understandable.

Ultimately, the identity politics focus is politically wrong because it focuses on voters that are already voting democrat anyway. The perspective of many voters is that policies directed towards helping low income folks are already seen as helping minorities, even without mentioning ethnicity, so talking up the identity aspect only serves to trigger those folks that have issues with America's changing demographics.
3   marcus   2017 Dec 21, 12:24pm  

As for the sexual identity politics, I think what's happened there is that there are a lot of so called "humanists" in the democratic party that have beliefs about overpopulation and are perhaps overly interested in supporting evolving cultural norms, that is in supporting an evolution rather than leaving the change it to its own slow moving devices.

Tolerance or acceptance of differences is admirable, but if policies are backed to try to make change happen faster than it would naturally, then you get a backlash from the Fort Wayne's of the world who see it as literally promoting perversion. If redefining the cultural norms or lines of what's perverted and what's "healthy" is going to happen, it probably needs to be a slow process with a minimal amount of political intervention.

But what about their rights ?

Yeah, I know. But we've got gay marriage. Let's just slow down and breathe for a minute.

Patrick says
A liberal who counts more enemies on the left than the right


Not more enemies, but worse (or more significant) enemies, because they help the right wingers to win and because it should be easier to address than it would be to change the true goals and practical effects of a successful right wing governance (i.e. increasing inequality).
4   Y   2017 Dec 21, 1:20pm  

That's the fringe benefit of owning > 5000 nukes.
Let em come and try to collect...

HEYYOU says
$1,500,000,000,000 additional debt that no one has to pay back?
5   Heraclitusstudent   2017 Dec 21, 5:18pm  

marcus says
Democratic priorities need to represent more united working class and middle class priorities. Instead they have focused too much on identity politics battles, some of which have triggered certain folks.

You are missing the point. Dividing people while you fleece them is the point.
Better a race war than a class war.
6   Goran_K   2017 Dec 21, 5:54pm  

Democrats are eating their own with #metoo

They've completely ignored any economic policies (most important), and have simply let Trump take the lead while they try to "snipe" with criticism.

The passing of tax reform, and abolishing the individual mandate though? That might be in the nail in the coffin of Democrat efforts for a while. If Ruth Ginsberg were to croak? It might be the end of their efforts for a generation.
7   curious2   2017 Dec 21, 6:10pm  

marcus says
gay marriage


If that had been the only issue on the ballot, the Democrats' position would have won by a landslide.

Instead, Democrats insisted on terribly self-destructive policies and decried any criticism as racism and/or sexism. The pattern is obvious on PatNet, including your own comments. The Democrats nominated a former Secretary of State who campaigned on a disastrous foreign policy record, including horrifying wars on behalf of her corporate and Saudi clients and TPP which she called the "gold standard" on behalf of her corporate clients. In debate against the Republican nominee, she denied calling TPP the gold standard, but anyone with a search engine could find she did call it exactly that.

Islam is a hateful fraud perpetrated by a dead charlatan, and it says to kill or enslave us. When people try to point out the actual history of the Barbary Wars, you claim to be the only "truthful" one by denying the facts. When followers of the dead charlatan Mohamad kill non-Muslims as per Islam, voters notice. The Democrats put hijabs literally on center stage in prime time and elsewhere throughout the convention. The Republican nominee called attention to the hijab, showing the Democrats' priorities. Oh, they lost a son, who was killed by their fellow Muslims? Tell that to the families of the soldiers murdered by Muslims at Fort Hood and elsewhere in the name of Islam.
8   Goran_K   2017 Dec 21, 6:34pm  

Islam had held back a region of half a billion people 300 years socially.
9   Patrick   2017 Dec 21, 7:36pm  

Sorry I didn't have the original article link up at first. Now added above. And here:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/21/mark-lilla-identity-politics-liberals

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