You shouldn’t have sympathy for them. Let no one make you feel ashamed for pushing back against their postliberal tyranny. The populists with their will to undermine the judiciary with threats to defy their rulings whether by continuing race-based affirmative action or federalizing abortion; sabotage the separation of powers by perhaps abolishing the filibuster; or using the 14th amendment to give the executive absolute power to appropriate money--will turn America into Erdogan’s Turkey sooner or later, unless we critique their complete absence of principle, and illuminate the perverseness of their moral logic and make a sustained case for maintaining the republic the way the founders designed it.
And we can only fight them without pity. Bc populist politics is rooted in manipulative pity, borne of a bad conscience: beliefs that the planet is more important than people; that the “identity,” however one defines it, of transgender men takes precedence over women’s biology; that white people today are guilty for slavery 200 years ago. Etc. By showing compassion for them we only give them more power, as we also contradict ourselves by falling victim to our own bad conscience.
We should emulate Hume Swift and Voltaire who defended humanity from the violent excesses of religious superstition, with appeals to reason, commonsense, open debate and empirical argument.
If populists use grievance and pathos to secure their irrational innumerable wants through administrative fiat, then we must combat this tyranny of progressive earnestness with irony and parable. It has never been more important since the dawn of the european enlightenment, that the west aggressively sideline the tribal morality rationalizing the collectivist politics of direct action in its every trace and vestige.
You shouldn’t have sympathy for them. Let no one make you feel ashamed for pushing back against their postliberal tyranny. The populists with their will to undermine the judiciary with threats to defy their rulings whether by continuing race-based affirmative action or federalizing abortion; sabotage the separation of powers by perhaps abolishing the filibuster; or using the 14th amendment to give the executive absolute power to appropriate money--will turn America into Erdogan’s Turkey sooner or later, unless we critique their complete absence of principle, and illuminate the perverseness of their moral logic and make a sustained case for maintaining the republic the way the founders designed it.
And we can only fight them without pity. Bc populist politics is rooted in manipulative pity, borne of a bad conscience: beliefs that the planet is more important than people; that the “identity,” however one defines it, of transgender men takes precedence over women’s biology; that white people today are guilty for slavery 200 years ago. Etc. By showing compassion for them we only give them more power, as we also contradict ourselves by falling victim to our own bad conscience.
We should emulate Hume Swift and Voltaire who defended humanity from the violent excesses of religious superstition, with appeals to reason, commonsense, open debate and empirical argument.
If populists use grievance and pathos to secure their irrational innumerable wants through administrative fiat, then we must combat this tyranny of progressive earnestness with irony and parable. It has never been more important since the dawn of the european enlightenment, that the west aggressively sideline the tribal morality rationalizing the collectivist politics of direct action in its every trace and vestige.