This is a fight we need to join without delay, but which track or approach is most effective varies a lot depending on context. By “we” I mean pro-Enlightenment liberals. Some of us are going to be more liberal; some will be more conservative. But I think what many of us are seeing with ever greater clarity is the complimentary sort of yin yang dynamic of more liberal and conservative instincts and insights within that broader, shared Enlightenment rubric. One can be a civil libertarian and old-school ACLU supporter like me, and, as long as you aren’t blinded by ideology and groupthink and can incorporate changing objective policy impacts and an appreciation of the role of ideology and radically shifting balance of power within major institutions, it’s not too hard to see where a recalibration is needed. The ACLU, at least as it used to exist, was an extremely important, principled, and effective counterweight to unchecked state power. That doesn’t mean you want the current ACLU to effectively set the rules that increasingly beleaguered police departments must follow in some of the largest, highest-crime cities. It doesn’t mean we need effectively two public defenders’ offices per jurisdiction and no prosecutors actually willing to hold dangerous criminals accountable for serially preying on the public. We can see before our very eyes Edmund Burke’s admonition that public order which actually supports and enables liberty is difficult to achieve and all too easy to take for granted and thus lose. One somewhat hopeful approach I’ve found with some generally more progressive-leaning friends who are nonetheless still guided by what I think of as the common decency, humility, and real tolerance of Enlightenment liberalism is to avoid responding to tribal signaling or venting and instead look for more subtle ways of confirming and solidifying shared values. It can be as simple as expressing discomfort at the tendency on both sides to retreat into echo chambers and othering or even condemning people en masse for disagreeing about even issues of great personal concern. One friend replied simply that othering people in this knee-jerk, totalizing way was “not constructive or kind”. With another friend who was instinctively sympathetic to BLM, but had seen and even experienced directly how simply ceding the epistemic high-ground and all moral authority to anyone who wants to use their identity as a dare and a bludgeon and even a basis to smear and extort with impunity - while claiming to always in every situation that they are being oppressed - obviously just empowers and enables the most cynical, divisive, dishonest behaviors by bad actors (who come in all colors). Joking with a friend who is an English teacher about how ending her texts with punctuation is hurtful and harmful and aggressive, opened up a relatively light but meaningful discussion about how real kindness and compassion and inclusion is not the same as creating a dynamic in which one must cave and cater to a never-ending series of increasingly ridiculous demands. That it’s actually not good for either individual human beings or a community to incentivize extreme fragility and encourage endless accusations and demands as the default means of solving problems. That it’s particularly weird and counterintuitive to do so at the same time (thank you Haidt and Lukianoff) cognitive behavioral therapy is largely ascendant in clinical psychology and day to day therapy. In other words, I’m not going to overreact if a left-leaning person vents something about Ron DeSantis’s policies which may or may not be true. I’m going to look for signs of and openings to discuss and reaffirm more subtle but fundamental shared values.
This is a fight we need to join without delay, but which track or approach is most effective varies a lot depending on context. By “we” I mean pro-Enlightenment liberals. Some of us are going to be more liberal; some will be more conservative. But I think what many of us are seeing with ever greater clarity is the complimentary sort of yin yang dynamic of more liberal and conservative instincts and insights within that broader, shared Enlightenment rubric. One can be a civil libertarian and old-school ACLU supporter like me, and, as long as you aren’t blinded by ideology and groupthink and can incorporate changing objective policy impacts and an appreciation of the role of ideology and radically shifting balance of power within major institutions, it’s not too hard to see where a recalibration is needed. The ACLU, at least as it used to exist, was an extremely important, principled, and effective counterweight to unchecked state power. That doesn’t mean you want the current ACLU to effectively set the rules that increasingly beleaguered police departments must follow in some of the largest, highest-crime cities. It doesn’t mean we need effectively two public defenders’ offices per jurisdiction and no prosecutors actually willing to hold dangerous criminals accountable for serially preying on the public. We can see before our very eyes Edmund Burke’s admonition that public order which actually supports and enables liberty is difficult to achieve and all too easy to take for granted and thus lose. One somewhat hopeful approach I’ve found with some generally more progressive-leaning friends who are nonetheless still guided by what I think of as the common decency, humility, and real tolerance of Enlightenment liberalism is to avoid responding to tribal signaling or venting and instead look for more subtle ways of confirming and solidifying shared values. It can be as simple as expressing discomfort at the tendency on both sides to retreat into echo chambers and othering or even condemning people en masse for disagreeing about even issues of great personal concern. One friend replied simply that othering people in this knee-jerk, totalizing way was “not constructive or kind”. With another friend who was instinctively sympathetic to BLM, but had seen and even experienced directly how simply ceding the epistemic high-ground and all moral authority to anyone who wants to use their identity as a dare and a bludgeon and even a basis to smear and extort with impunity - while claiming to always in every situation that they are being oppressed - obviously just empowers and enables the most cynical, divisive, dishonest behaviors by bad actors (who come in all colors). Joking with a friend who is an English teacher about how ending her texts with punctuation is hurtful and harmful and aggressive, opened up a relatively light but meaningful discussion about how real kindness and compassion and inclusion is not the same as creating a dynamic in which one must cave and cater to a never-ending series of increasingly ridiculous demands. That it’s actually not good for either individual human beings or a community to incentivize extreme fragility and encourage endless accusations and demands as the default means of solving problems. That it’s particularly weird and counterintuitive to do so at the same time (thank you Haidt and Lukianoff) cognitive behavioral therapy is largely ascendant in clinical psychology and day to day therapy. In other words, I’m not going to overreact if a left-leaning person vents something about Ron DeSantis’s policies which may or may not be true. I’m going to look for signs of and openings to discuss and reaffirm more subtle but fundamental shared values.
Wonderfully put.