One of the reasons I like Andrew Sullivan is purely pragmatic: he has the time and exposure to issues that I, a working dude, don’t have. Consider his critique of the latest rejection of liberalism to come down the pike:
The new orthodoxy — what the writer Wesley Yang has described as the “successor ideology” to liberalism — seems to be rooted in what journalist Wesley Lowery calls “moral clarity.” He told Times media columnist Ben Smith this week that journalism needs to be rebuilt around that moral clarity, which means ending its attempt to see all sides of a story, when there is only one, and dropping even an attempt at objectivity (however unattainable that ideal might be). And what is the foundational belief of such moral clarity? That America is systemically racist, and a white-supremacist project from the start, that, as Lowery put it in The Atlantic, “the justice system — in fact, the entire American experiment — was from its inception designed to perpetuate racial inequality.” (Wesley Lowery objected to this characterization of his beliefs — read his Twitter thread about it here.)
This is an argument that deserves to be aired openly in a liberal society, especially one with such racial terror and darkness in its past and inequality in the present. But it is an argument that equally deserves to be engaged, challenged, questioned, interrogated. There is truth in it, truth that it’s incumbent on us to understand more deeply and empathize with more thoroughly. But there is also an awful amount of truth it ignores or elides or simply denies.
It sees America as in its essence not about freedom but oppression. It argues, in fact, that all the ideals about individual liberty, religious freedom, limited government, and the equality of all human beings were always a falsehood to cover for and justify and entrench the enslavement of human beings under the fiction of race. It wasn’t that these values competed with the poison of slavery, and eventually overcame it, in an epic, bloody civil war whose casualties were overwhelmingly white. It’s that the liberal system is itself a form of white supremacy — which is why racial inequality endures and why liberalism’s core values and institutions cannot be reformed and can only be dismantled.
This view of the world certainly has “moral clarity.” What it lacks is moral complexity. No country can be so reduced to one single prism and damned because of it. American society has far more complexity and history has far more contingency than can be jammed into this rubric. No racial group is homogeneous, and every individual has agency. No one is entirely a victim or entirely privileged. And we are not defined by black and white any longer; we are home to every race and ethnicity, from Asia through Africa to Europe and South America.
And the critique continues. But it’s not a traditional critique from what passes for a conservative these days – condemnatory, in a word. Sullivan does what I try to do, and that is see both sides of the argument. Sullivan does it better and more eloquently than I do, and I love his usually nuanced responses.
And if, indeed, the anti-racists are for rooting out the liberal project along with racism, then I must say that while their overall goals are right, the collateral damage will doom them.
It’s worth asking why the old aphorism that liberal democracy has been the best performer of all types of government is true, and I think my reader should try to answer that for themselves. For me, there are many reasons, and I can’t put any one of them first, although I suspect that all are over-emphasized: the pursuit of freedom, of free speech, of prosperity, these are all elements of the liberal project.
I have, but have not read, How To Be An Anti-Racist (after reading a review by >ahem< Andrew Sullivan – sometimes I wonder if I’m a groupie along with being a Dish head), so I have no idea if this is an element of the anti-racist creed, but the slave clause of the Constitution is certainly a ripe target. For me, the response is this – drawing from my software engineer background, the Constitution, as originally written, is Version 1. While a good representation of the idea of liberal democracy, it’s not great. The particularly foul slave clause, however, is not an element of liberal democracy, but instead symptomatic of a moral failing of part of the soon-to-be United States – the belief that morality is defined by wealth. Even today, many cling to this notion, and for those who have been poverty-stricken for long periods of time, there’s a lot to be said for not wondering where your next meal will come from. However, it’s a flaw – a major abyss – in anyone’s moral system to believe that enslavement of someone else for any reason whatsoever is permissible.
But such was the South’s moral system, and the North faced a problem: Without the South, it could not survive another British assault, such as that of the War of 1812, and thus they would then face being subjects of a monarchy that, in King George, featured a mentally ill man with theological delusions of grandeur and no limits on his political power, a monarchical system could easily feature more such creatures. Having shaken off the monarchy and its claims to being backed by God – a God who self-evidently was a little touched itself – trading one moral failure for another might have seemed the best course to choose.
Then came the Civil War, which resulted in a big step forward, but then we pulled back when President Johnson, Lincoln’s VP, miserably rescinded the promise to issue 40 acres and a mule to all freed slaves, economically stranding most of those formerly enslaved people, as was seen in subsequent years: sharecroppers, segregation, miscegenation laws, outright bigotry and mistreatment were all the evil consequences of the devout belief that one race was superior to another, despite outstanding black contributions to multiple war efforts.
But liberal democracy remains the best hope for a free people who are mentally prepared for it, as demonstrated in all countries where people were able to embrace its opportunities and responsibilities. Their people are free, they are prosperous, and they value freedom. Other countries? Not so much; some even deplore the idea.
I can’t claim to have made a convincing case here, as that would take more of a book. However, I can ask my reader, before embracing a project which may dismantle the liberal society, to consider alternative viewpoints to that of the prevailing sentiment. A sober thought to the future of each experiment is critical to making good decisions, and going along to get along may be a disastrous course to take, no matter how good the ultimate objective of the movement might be.
Means matter.
