I actually do not have a fascination with, a creepy need to stalk, Erick Erickson.
Really.
But his post today was a very strong example of his utter unconsciousness about his own side’s place in the cosmos. Going through the post, all you had to do was replace ‘cancel culture,’ the current worry trigger for the right, with the word abortion, and it applied equally well to the far right fringe.
Worse yet, it has applied for decades, through punitive & dishonest legislation, bad reasoning, barbaric threats, and assassinations. Cancel culture is, what, a couple of years old and already causing chatter on the left that it may be overreach? I have confidence that its excesses will either cause it to be modified or discarded; and if Critical Race Theory, from which I believe it springs, is really as flawed as Andrew Sullivan and other suggest, then liberal critiques will eventually banish it to the hinterlands, if not beyond, in due time.
Because that’s how the liberal tradition works. I have no such confidence in the conservative tradition as it stands now.
But here’s the creme de la creme of Erickson’s post:
In America, a socially conservative person should be allowed to live in a socially conservative area that bans abortion centers and does not have transgender bathroom access or its bakers compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings. In America, a socially liberal person should be allowed to live in a community that funds the local abortion clinic, has transgender bathrooms, and encourages the whole town to turn out and celebrate the gay wedding. The only exception to what some may perceive as intolerance is race because our nation explicitly fought a war over that issue and the right side prevailed and amended the constitution accordingly.
That some will read the prior paragraph and refuse to acknowledge the validity of each side being able to live in communities governed by majority cultural interest is why the United States will not stay united and the disproportionate power of the left to end careers and wipe out livelihoods for failure to adhere to their cultural orthodoxy is why the United States is not going to survive unless something changes.
There are so many things wrong here that it’s hard to know where to start.
Let’s begin with his accusations that the left will be responsible if the nation splits into pieces. Yet, what he describes, In America, a socially conservative person should be allowed to live in a socially conservative area that bans abortion centers and does not have transgender bathroom access or its bakers compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings …, is strongly congruent with separate nations – not one united nation. In other words, I want to split the United States without taking the blame.
Next, what advantage to the nation is having it split so strongly as he envisions? In particular, he mistakes his strong anti-abortion stand as being a positive attribute, and it’s not. Unequal rights will discourage free migration within the nation and lead to even more polarization, bringing on exaggeration, lies, and hatred on both sides.
Sound familiar?
We improve when we mix, borrow ideas freely, explore how changes to morality improve or hurt society. Rigid orthodoxy, which is the result of unequal rights, benefits those who scramble to the top and enforce that orthodoxy, but few others; society stultifies; and when they see other parts of the country doing better in spite of violating orthodoxy, hatred follows.
I just can’t quite believe Erickson seriously wrote that nonsense. It’s not April 1st, so it’s unlikely to be a joke. That he actually believes it is one of those things that makes me wonder if we have a shared intellectual understanding of the world.
Or if it’s complete shat.
