"Liberals’ greatest threat is the Woke, who have taken over once-liberal institutions -- the ACLU, the New York Times, Yale University -- Some Conservatives cheer when Liberal institutions are ruined by the Woke, which is disastrously short-sighted."
I really want to be charitable with this sentiment, but I'm finding it difficult. Abigail, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, and others want to make a distinction between themselves (the liberals) and the woke. However, to conservatives, this distinction is far less obvious.
At nearly 50, I have endured years of alleged "liberals" (Democrats) saying the following about me and those like me:
Social security reform: "Republicans want to kill grandma"
Welfare reform: "Republicans just hate the poor"
Abortion: "Conservatives want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen"
Marriage: "Republicans oppose redefining marriage because they hate gay people"
Immigration: "Conservatives are racist for wanting the border enforced"
Liberals have been calling conservatives racists / grandma killers / poor haters / greedy / heartless pigs for as long as I can remember. Today the Woke are calling us all of those same names. Same song; new singers. Why should I care?
In fact, that some of you liberals are now being attacked by your own revolutionaries seems less tragic and more karmic.
The question I have in the back of my mind is this. Why should I stick my neck out in solidarity with liberals now, when I'm pretty sure you will happily slice off my head the moment the woke threat to your own side has abated? How can I now trust the very people who spent years calling us racists, bigots, haters, and Nazis just because we saw the world differently than they did?
This is not a rant. It is a serious question. We may all agree that the "woke" are evil, but we conservatives harbor not ungrounded suspicion that you liberals will happily throw us under the bus again when given the chance. What evidence can you provide that we are wrong?
Brian, This is a terrific post and a really good point. Also, I agree: The way that the Center Left has treated conservatives has been disgusting and disgraceful. It's impossible to blame conservatives who are cynical about the Center Left or the Democratic Party. The question is only whether you think that we're all sitting on the ruins of a once great civilization -- the question, in other words, is whether you surrender faith in the greatness of this country. I believe that's a mistake. I think there's a way of working with people who still profess faith in the bedrock commitments of American idealism. I'm not naive: I'm aware they will conservatives under the bus at the first available opportunity. We can return to those fights, after this war has ended and the American project is less threatened. But for now, we're in the middle of cultural revolution, and we need allies. One last thing:
Through my work on the Gender Ideology, I've watched as large numbers of Liberals abandoned the Democratic Party. There's a major shift going on -- one I attempted to describe -- and I don't think we should allow anger to blind us to that. I'm suggesting, in fact, that the Woke has alienated so many on the Center Left, it has created a new opportunity for alliance (even if temporary).
The Center Left vs the Conservatives is a red herring. It is one that is normally trotted out by those who have thrived in meritocracy. They are winners in the Hunger Games, and thus all that is left is to battle over culture wars, which I get it, is difficult to resist.
I appreciate the work that you do on the trans and woke stuff, Abigail. I do suspect that you do exist in a bubble of relative affluence.
As we saw with Trump and Bernie, these two factions, AKA the ESTABLISHMENT, both beholden to Corporations and both serving as Warmongering Assets of the Blob, align right quick to protect their shared donors. They do that first. Then and only then do they battle with each other over Woke vs. Traditional.
Make no mistake, this is one party when you clock where the money goes: always to Wall Street, always to corporate bailouts, and always, always, ALWAYS, to the military industrial complex.
Black Rock, Vanguard and State ST, and all of their oligarch shareholders all over the world, their pals in the WEF, the Davos crew bought this country. They are happy to watch culture wars keep the plebes diverted and posturing.
Thanks, Abigail. I'm very interested in your comment about liberals abandoning the Democratic Party. If so, it is happening in parallel with many Republicans becoming more willing to consider safety nets, unions, income inequality, class solidarity, and the use of governmental power in general.
If Josh Hawley's prediction ("the GOP is a working class party now") is proven correct long term, disaffected liberals may find a lot of common ground with the new GOP. If Hawley is wrong and the blue-blood / libertarian establishment reasserts itself in 2022 and 2024, there may be an opportunity for a newly combined party between disaffected liberals and outcast populists.
Don't count out the Woke though. N.S. Lyons has a great piece today on that:
Abigial, Great points above and a wonderful essay. Thank you. May I make a suggestion. I think a more effective counter point to Brian Villanueva argument would be straightforward and into his face (not in offensive way) - what is the alternative to cooperation at this point - assured mutual destruction? In working together there is at least a clear possibility to regain trust or carve a niche, however small in the beginning, of the solid common ground. The place where trust will live. Long behold, not only some things could be fixed together, trust could grow as all leaving things tend to, and more things get fixed.
I can share some information that I think will help provide insight into what you're seeing.
The biggest point that stands out to me is you mentioning that the same words being spoken by today's Woke are the same words you heard from yesterday's Liberals. I think that's an accurate assessment insofar as yesterday's "Liberals" (and I use those quotes deliberately) are the *same* people as today's Woke. The Woke represent radical left ideology, which isn't a new concept to the 21st century—or even the 20th century, for that matter. You can trace it back as far as at least Rousseau ("man is intrinsically good and it's the shackles of society that corrupt him"). Though, this part is less relevant.
If you go back to the 1960s and look at a lot of "civil rights" activists, you'll find a lot of radical left groups that were incredibly anti-establishment. They, just like the Woke, believed that the foundation of the US (and, more generally, Western society) is corrupt. Their solution to this was to try to tear down our systems so we could build something new. See, for example: Maulana Karenga (founded a group called US Organization), Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (Black Panther Party), Bill Ayers (Weather Underground), Angela Davis (CPUSA), and Susan Rosenberg (M19CO). Some of those, such as Weather Underground, were described by the FBI as terrorist organizations. These groups would rob banks or bomb buildings in service of their goals—very clearly violent methods of operation. So what happened to these individuals? Most of them went on to become college professors or join newer radical left groups, such as BLM.
These are the same individuals who, decades ago, said the exact same words you quoted Liberals as having spoken. It's the same vocal minority of anti-establishment individuals who opposed anything and everything conservatives said and did. After they moved on to becoming college professors, they continued the process of spreading this ideology to the newer generations, which eventually led to the Woke (or Critical Social Justice) ideology that we see today. This is most likely why you don't see any massive difference between the words of Liberals and the Woke, and it's why it's become so much more prevalent (started with a small group of then-college kids with a shared ideology and morphed into an insular group of thought leaders within academia passing this set of beliefs onto a broader audience).
If you want to dig into this more, check out "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
To answer your question of why you should stick your neck out in solidarity with liberals now, the answer to me is pretty straightforward: today's Liberals are not the same as yesterday's Liberals. Today's Liberals, exactly as Shrier articulated, oppose the radical left ideology running rampant throughout the Democratic party. Note that working with Liberals does not mean you're working with the Democratic Party—we, as Liberals, also oppose how the Democratic Party is operating. So I ask that you do not conflate the average Liberal US citizen with a member of the Woke ideology or the Democratic Party.
I agree with some of the sentiment of both your comment I'm replying to and the other one you left further down about how your average Liberal US citizen let radical leftists become the dominant voice of left-leaning US politics and overtake the Democratic Party. We bear the responsibility of not pushing back and speaking out against anti-liberalist values (and by "liberalist values", I'm referring to Classical Liberalism, as started by our country's Founding Fathers—the same ones Conservatives believe in). In that same vain, however, Conservatives also bear the responsibility of far right individuals becoming a loud voice of right-leaning US politics. See: the Tea Party movement that started in 2009 and eventually led to the nomination and election of Donald Trump.
There's been an escalating, almost arms race-like process, between the left and the right within the US. Each side has been feeding off one another and furthering the radicalization occurring at the extreme ends of the spectrum. The moderates on each side are responsible for allowing the rise of radicalism. I think that's essentially what Shrier's post was getting at, and I'm inclined to agree with her—moderates on both sides need to come together and support the foundation of our country.
In SF the son of a Weather Underground terrorist is destroying the city as district attorney - Chesa Boudin. In general, I think those who want to tear down our systems have moved from bombs to suits and law degrees. They do not have something good to build in place. But, I think they have overstepped by provoking the mama bears with Gender Ideology which is allowing the mentally ill to define our language, our medicine, and what is promoted in schools. It harms our children. The right has been very weak about this problem and I hope they grow some strength but at this point I think the left has lost control of the train which is running away.
Thanks for the response, Jake. I've read Pluckrose & Lindsay book and highly recommend it to everyone here. It explains how post-modernist drivel colonized the university and then society writ-large. James Lindsey's website is also wonderful.
You ground the anti-establishment strain in the civil rights / sexual revolution generation. Interestingly, most conservatives would agree. Chris Caldwell's "Age of Entitlement" is about exactly that. But where are the liberal voices willing to reconsider the policies of that era?
Let me give you some examples:
40% of all children today are born to unmarried women. Is that a sign of women's greater roll in society, or a sign of a collapse in family structure? Should it be cheered or lamented?
Is surrogacy empowering women to improve their lives, or is it a tool of oppression by which the powerful colonize poor women's bodies?
Is diversity really a strength? Should diversity be celebrated at all times, in all places, and where absent, enforced by law? Do individuals actually have freedom of association? Could a male-only / women-only / white-only / black-only / cis-only / straight-only group be permissible, or must diversity always win over freedom of association?
Is requiring a funeral parlor to allow a male funeral director to wear a dress justified because it empowers that person (Bostock decision), or is it an assault on grieving families who have a right to a final day with their deceased loved ones on their own terms?
The divorce rate has tripled in the last 60 years. Should the author of that story be celebrated or condemned for her behavior? Does it matter that she has children?
In each of these cases, the prevailing view of celebration is a logical extension of the 1960's civil rights & sexual revolutions. Are liberals willing to reconsider any of those policies? Or was everything hunky dory until 2015 when the T in LGBT started to make noise? Your answers to questions like these reveal the amount of potential common ground between disaffected liberals and conservatives. Abigail above seems to think there's quite a bit; I'm less optimistic but willing to look for it.
Trust will require time and small steps though. Probably on both sides, since I'm not unaware that my own side tended to hurl around "America haters", "baby killers", and various other insults as well. And certainly the last 12 months has illustrated that lunacy can infect both parties.
If there's real common ground, and a willingness on both sides to compromise and admit their past errors, there could be something here with time. However, if disaffected liberals are just looking for temporary allies who will help them defeat the woke lunatics they have created, count me out. If all you want is a return of 1990's liberalism, I want none of it. I would rather nail the coffin shut on whole Enlightenment, secular, liberal project and spent my energy charting a new post-liberal future.
I really object to the quasi religious term "cis". I used to think I was a "live and let live" sort of person before we were hit with GI. "Radical" feminists (who don't think men are women) and conservative Christian women (who also don't think men are "female"- like Assistant US Health Secretary Richard Levine- the first Female 4 Star Admiral) are seeing eye to eye on this one. You must have heard of TERFs? ("Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools") This is what Abigail is talking about.
For liberal and conservative parents who have been hit by the Trans bus, see Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans:
Matt Walsh was a panelist on Dr. Phil with a couple of trans activists recently - where he asked them the question "What is a woman?" Someone on is Twitter feed has responded to that question with "Whatever a man says it is."
I think you and I are probably in very strong alignment about the source of the problems we're seeing today. I've cited those very same topics with other folks I've conversed with in general about the current state of society.
Personally, I'm very pragmatic. I tend to focus less on the ideals or underlying reasoning and more on the outcomes of whatever decisions we make. Likewise, I generally have the stance of "live and let live", because who am I to tell other people how they should live their lives? But I won't pretend that this stance has no serious consequences. It's that very same attitude that led to the Civil Rights and Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s and all of the issues you cited that have stemmed from those since. My question for anyone who's thinking about this is: what values do you believe we, as a society, should hold?
I don't think seeing an increase in out-of-wedlock births or single-parent households is good. Both have clearly bad effects on the future of those children, and that's harming society considerably. It's caused a serious degradation of the working class, and to argue otherwise is a clear ignorance of history. Virtually every culture that's still alive today evolved to bind a man and a woman together because it yielded stronger outcomes for society as a whole.
I don't know enough about surrogacy to comment, unfortunately.
I think viewpoint diversity is important because an individual can only think of so many things on their own. I think the cultural amalgamation of the US is one of our strong suits, but we still have a clearly distinct "American" culture. The idea of separate, distinct cultures all occupying the same space simultaneously won't work because that's essentially just tribalism. I think any other form of diversity is superficial and largely irrelevant. There are some niche instances, such as if you're training a computer system on photo recognition of humans, but that's about it.
The divorce rate skyrocketing is a "fun" result if groups like NOW lobbying for things like No Fault Divorce. I'm not opposed to a couple getting divorced if they've determined they can't work together, but making it easier to divorce increases the rate at which people give up on their marriages. Humans are self-interested and will take the easiest path they believe is conducive to their goals, and I can't deny the reality of innate human nature. Thomas Sowell talks about this in his book "A Conflict of Visions", where one side feels we must operate within the limits of human nature (the Constrained Vision) and the other side feels we can take human nature and mold it in whatever ways we see fit (the Unconstrained Vision). I side with the Constrained Vision just by virtue of history. Additionally, the increase of divorce is having seriously bad outcomes on the children whose parents become divorced. I'm not a fan of this outcome because it harms society overall.
As part of the sexual revolution, I have no problem with people having sex with whomever they want and whenever they want, provided it's within the context of consent. I concede, however, that this doesn't yield a happier or more productive society, nor does it yield more successful, long-term relationships. I also don't agree with how heavily the left has tried to redefine "consent" (e.g., if two individuals are drunk and they have sex, they've now raped each other).
For most of these issues and more that've stemmed from the 60s and 70s, I don't believe legislative change is the main way to go. I think the majority of them are social issues that we have to work out among ourselves without the involvement of the government. For example, Jordan Peterson talks about the idea of socially-enforced monogamy—that we, as individuals within a society, implicitly promote monogamy for the betterment of both the individuals and society as a whole. I think this is the correct approach to take, as I don't see the government's involvement necessary here (for the most part).
I don't think the 90s were the ideal, not by any stretch. Granted, I'm only 30, so I didn't experience much of it first-hand, but I know that many of the issues of postmodernism that you mentioned really hit their stride in the 90s. For another example, see "The War Against Boys" by Christina Hoff Sommers, where she documents many educational changes that are having disastrous consequences on our boys and young men started in the 90s.
I also agree with you about the rise in secularism causing a lot of the problems we're seeing both in the US and across the West. Humans can't live without some kind of "religion" because it gives them three things: a moral anchor, a set of beliefs on how to derive purpose and meaning in one's life, and a community in which to serve. Personally, I don't care what "religion" people follow to obtain these. It can be Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Wicca, or whatever else I didn't list here. All I care about is: do these belief systems align with Western Liberalist values? The same ones that founded the US. If not, then they're going to cause us more problems, and we should discourage them/
I certainly can't speak for all Liberals by any stretch—I can only speak for myself. And, quite frankly, I'm probably more of a Centrist, but I largely don't care about the labels at the end of the day. I care about policies, decisions, and outcomes. As I mentioned at the start, I'm very pragmatic, and I think most issues will have options that yield better outcomes than others.
James, you're giving me hope, and I appreciate that.
After reading your comment, I found myself thinking today of other 60's liberals, and Tip O'Neil came to mind. Tip was a believer in the power of government to improve people's lives, and truly committed to seeking the common good. At the time, we quasi-libertarian, Goldwater / Reagan Republicans despised him, but looking back, he looks less partisan and more prophetic. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is another I would put in that category.
These men bemoaned how the collapsing black family was perpetuating multi-generational poverty. They voted in favor of the Hart-Celler immigration Act, supported the Bracero program for Mexican farm labor, but (like Caesar Chavez) opposed illegal immigration across the board. They believed in strong businesses but also strong unions. They supported progressive taxation to reduce income inequality and estate taxes to prevent aristocracy. Most importantly, they believed in America, the culture, the faith, the people. You may have thought Tip or Daniel were was wrong, but you couldn't think they were evil.
The new GOP today is open to -- in many cases supportive of --all of those things. Maybe the pre-60's liberals like O'Neil or Moynihan can help us find the road forward.
I'm not familiar with Tip O'Neil, so it sounds like I have some reading to do :) I'm certainly familiar with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, though, and the report he put out in 1965—exactly as you called attention to (and rightly so). I think there's reason to be hopeful and my belief stems from the everyday folks I talk to on both sides of the political spectrum, and the conversation I've had here with you is one such example.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk. Your perspective has given me additional insight and hope, and I'm thankful for gaining both.
James Linday's New Discourses is a great website and source of discussion. I have read the excellent works of Victor Davis Hanson, MarcLevin, and Ben Shapiro on these issues. Front Page Magazine is an excellent source for the latest on the excesses of the woke world as well, The WSJ editorial page, Commentary and some of the writers on National Review all provide excellent sources. As far as the NYT is concerned-the less the better-it is now a full blown expensive Twitter page, and has a long legacy of whitewashing Communism, Nazism , Holocaust minimization, support for the woke agenda and hostility to the right of Israel to defend itself.
In order to both defend yourself against the woke onslaught and to set forth a compelling argument in favor of traditional mores and American political values, I can only state and reiterate that you must be literate and read about these issues . An angry conscience only goes so far. I think that it also helps in no small point that you are anchored to a faith community that has a set of values that clearly rejects the woke ideology in its classical writings
"Maulana Karenga (founded a group called US Organization), Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (Black Panther Party), Bill Ayers (Weather Underground), Angela Davis (CPUSA), and Susan Rosenberg (M19CO)"were not part of the "civil rights establishment" whose leaders were Dr MLK.Jr. and Roy Wilkins
That's why I put "civil rights" in quotation marks. Much like the Woke individuals fight for what they believe to be modern civil rights (or even human rights) issues, the groups I referred to did the same. When the average person thinks of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, they think of the peaceful protests and of the primary and visible leaders (like MLK Jr and Roy Wilkins, whom you mentioned). There were plenty of other groups, however, that fought for their vision of "civil rights." Malcom X was a prominent figure who deviated quite notably from King, holding a much more radical ideology (he was against integration and instead pro-segregation, for example). Though, they shared strong socialist beliefs, funny enough. Regardless, I wouldn't classify Malcom X as "radical" in comparison to the other groups I mentioned.
It was the now-mainstream Civil Rights leaders who created the important changes we saw in the 60s, but it was the radical left activists, also operating in the name of "civil rights", who went on to become professors, scholars, and intellectuals. So while they had minimal influence in the outcomes of the 60s, they are key figures that have led to the current state of society. It's also why I referred to them as *anti-establishment*, because King and the like weren't opposed to the underlying establishments of the US. They instead thought there were clear problems in its then-current setup that needed to be addressed through change. They didn't, however, believe that every foundation or institution of the US needed to be torn down.
For what it's worth, we also saw this same thing with Feminism in the 60s and 70s. There are distinct "branches", so to speak, but it was mainly the liberalist feminists that won out, with the more radical left versions falling out of favor and moving onto academia.
I hope that helps clarify. Sorry if I wasn't very clear originally.
The radical left realized that it could not win at the polls,but instead began a long march through the educational institutions that was coupled with the ideology of radical feminism and its natural allies in the LGBT movement. The woke world is the product of that march and the failure of conservatives to confront it before it became powerful
Agreed. I think liberals also played a part of that failure since it's been far more common for left-leaning individuals to pursue higher education. You mentioned James Lindsay's podcast, New Discourses, in another comment, and that's where I found a good chunk of this information myself. Sounds like we're pulling from very similar sources :)
Malcom X in his writings and comments was not part of the mainstream civil rights movement. Noone who remembers MLK or Roy Wilkins would ever say that Farrakhan or Sharpton were "civil rights leaders"
I agree, he wasn't mainstream, but I still think he was prominent insofar as people I've talked with seem to readily recognize the name "Malcom X" and that he was quite distinct from MLK Jr and co. Maybe that's just my circle of friends and such, though.
Well said Brian! And, I couldn't agree more. Why is it when Liberals critique other Liberals they always feel it necessary to dump on Conservatives, usually disportionately? Sometimes there is no moral equivalency and one philosophy is just wrong--all of your bullet points are fine examples of Liberal transgressions. Sickening really.
What we have seen in regard to the Democratic Party is that the party of FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, HHH , Scoop Jackson , Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Joseph Lieberman who were liberals on domestic issues but anti Communists and neo conservatives has evolved since the Vietnam War and the McGovern reforms of the late 1960s into a party driven by public service unions and identity politics, and the emergence of radicals who don't believe in bipartisanship, traditional moral values or support for Israel's right to defend itself but who instead invoke the woke trinity of systemic racism, gender and climate change as the paramount issues of the day and use labels as racism ,bigotry and homophobic beliefs as a way of mainstreaming that which was previously decadent , considered mentally ill and perverted while delegitimizing valid opposing values that have defined Western society for thousands of years
"Liberals’ greatest threat is the Woke, who have taken over once-liberal institutions -- the ACLU, the New York Times, Yale University -- Some Conservatives cheer when Liberal institutions are ruined by the Woke, which is disastrously short-sighted."
Shrier is exactly correct. These were once great liberal institutions, and they once served important purposes. There's no ready replacement for them. Cheering on their implosion is very short-sighted, obtuse and reckless.
They were great "liberal" institutions, and that is the problem. Today's woke commissars did not arise spontaneously from the dust of the Earth; they were birthed in the universities, newsrooms, and think tanks run by the last 2 generations of liberals. That's what's so disturbing.
Patrick Deenen and Ryszard Legutko suggest (from 2 different directions and not unconvincingly) that liberalism's quasi-religious commitment to individual autonomy is, by its nature, destructive of the common good. If the woke are simply the outcome of Enlightenment liberalism taken to its logical conclusion, restoring "liberal" institutions isn't going to fix anything.
More personally though, I am having a hard time trusting these liberals who now demand common-ground with those of us whom they disparaged as bigots until last week. I am inclined to answer such requests thus, "You're welcome in the conservative tent, but we're not changing to accommodate you. If you need our help to defeat the woke lunatics, begin by acknowledging your role in birthing them. Start by surrendering your old philosophies and policies and see what we can teach you about how society can be structured differently. Once you do that, I will help you defeat the woke. Until you do, I can not trust you."
As I said above, I'm trying to be charitable and forgiving and trusting. But after 30+ years of being called names by the very people who now solicit my help, it's beyond hard. I guess in the vernacular of this article, that makes me a cynic.
I responded to your excellent post at length above. No need to be charitable and forgiving or trusting. The Center Left has treated conservatives abominably for decades. I'm only suggesting in the middle of a war, you make the strategic alliances you need to. This one seems advantageous and workable to me.
I'm sorry, but the holocaust is not sacrosanct. History MUST be studied and understood in all its nuance. The Nazis ran Wilhelm Reich out of the country because his "Mass Psychology of Fascism" was essentially the precursor to today's "mass formation psychosis." I'm having a hard time believing there's any such thing as a principled leftist (though I consider myself one) when the likes of Elena Kagan and Amy Klobuchar endorse mandatory medical experimentation and spend all their political ammunition on fairy tales like January 6 rather than anything beneficial to the social fabric. Today's dems are totalitarian reactionaries that value only one thing: groupthink. Show me ONE at any level of elected government who stands openly against vaccine mandates, gender ideology, critical race theory or any other sacred cow. The fever must break by running every God-damned one of them out of office (I say this as a former dem who helped put some of them there). Then maybe a few of them can crawl back in through the doggy door when we find out what a disaster the Republicans are too.
I agree. I don’t think pushing vaccines, with their massive fail at containing covid and horrifying side affects trivializes the Holocaust. I think a lot of us, who for all kinds of different health reasons find vaccination inappropriate or with negative benefits, have said to ourselves oh okay, I see how the Germans let this happen.
I voted for Biden. I thought the mail-in ballot tsunami was hard to believe on election night, and with some further analysis find it warrants a real, open investigation. There are a lot of statistical anomalies that fell in Biden's favor. FWIW I think 2016 was stolen for Trump - lots of districts in states like Wisconsin with more votes than voters.
Trump was against Gender Ideology and Biden is pro having 9 year old children affirmed socially with nutty pronouns, drugged, and chopped up like Jazz Jennings. I feel we can take on other subjects after GI is put down.
It was censorship. You had the poll conducted in the weeks following the election in which had the press done it's job, 17% of Biden voters would have voted differently, of whom a quarter would have voted for Trump. Had that happened, Biden would have gotten 46.9% of the popular vote to Trump's 47.9%, and Trump would have won the electoral college.
It was a conspiracy between the swamp rats of DC, the DNC, the establishment faction of the RNC, the technocrats and the legacy press to put Biden into office.
And yes, Trump was against not only gender ideology, but wokeness as a whole.
Hardly. You are showcasing your own inability for discourse with unfounded ad hominem attacks.
My extended family fought and died fighting the Germans and their comrades the Soviet Russians from Day 1. My grandfather lead the Resistance in theLublin Province at the behest of Gen Sikorski despite the risks to his life, the lives of his family. His reward? 4.5 years of torture at Gestapo HQ, Auschwitz and Dachau and the installation by FDR & Churchill of a totalitarian regime — despite Poland fronting the 4th largest Allied Army. Stop your whitewashing of the Genocide that Germans inflicted pre and during WWII.
As US General Smedley Butler wrote, "war is a racket." I'm simply trying to absolve the "Germans" as an entire ethnos of the genocidal intent of imperialism, international financiers and cartels. Shall we ask who organized the first world war and foisted the crippling Treaty of Versailles reparations upon said Germans?
Germany was one of three rapacious neighbors that brutally colonized Poles for 123 years - right up to 1918. President Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles allowed for Poland to regain her Sovereignty, which of course the Germans and Russians would not let stand.
You do realize that the USSR was no better than Hitlerite Germany. Ask the Poles of Lwow and Wilno...oh wait, Stalin had them almost wholly murdered or deported. To think, in 1931, there were 2.5 million Poles in what would become Ukraine and 700,000 Ukrainians in what is now Poland. Now there are under 100,000 Poles in Ukraine when, based on population growth, there should be 4.5 million.
You also had the Yalta Sellout in which 25 million people were deported at gunpoint, mostly civilians, of whom 2.5 million died or were murdered, all as you had tens if not hundreds of thousands of death camp guards live.
As for the partitions, the former USSR holds all of the territory of what was partitioned Poland prior to the Congress of Vienna and then some. It has yet to return what was stolen.
Edit: France and Czechoslovakia combined share equal guilt with the German people for Hitler's rise. It was their combined arrogance and greed that created the necessary political climate. The US with the Klansman president who was obsessed with the League of Nations over forcing the French, Czechs and others to adhere to Self Determination and create a lasting peace also played a role.
I’m Jewish and I called Congressman Davis’s office to say he was absolutely correct in his comparison of what is being done to the unvaccinated today and how the Holocaust started for my relatives. Dehumanization, demonization, blame for spreading disease, exclusion from public life, prevention from earning a living. How can you not see it? To observe and state this does not trivialize the Holocaust; it is a warning of where this might lead. To hear the ignorance about viral transmission and dismissal of Constitutional concerns of Kagen, Sotomayor and Breyer was stunning, and so depressing—because I do believe in the history of American goodness.
check out Margaret Anna Alice Substack... alarming comparison of Holocaust to current situation... ‘10 stages of genocide’ collapsed into concurrent actions... it’s hard not to be cynical... purposeful harm has been imposed by governments on their citizens, resulting in purposeful deaths... and a compliant citizenry has allowed this to happen... and i’m supposed to still ‘believe’... i love the Constitution but it only works if the whole system is functional... praying i’m wrong.
Thank you for speaking up about the Holocaust analogies. I have been quartered on Twitter for my comparisons. Do people really think the Holocaust happened overnight?
" ignorance about viral transmission and dismissal of Constitutional concerns of Kagen, Sotomayor and Breyer was stunning"
Let's take those one at a time:
Sotomayor: "100,000 children currently hospitalized due to Covid". CDC: actual number is less than 5,000
Breyer: "736 million Covid cases in the US yesterday". US population is about 330 million, most did not get Covid twice in one day.
Kagan: "vaccine prevents infection and transmission" Israel health ministry: not anymore, vaccine prevents development of serious illness but many vaccinated people now test positive for Omicron and can transmit it.
The ignorance of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court about widely known facts since the discovery of the Omicron variant is, indeed, stunning.
if an intelligent individual, who was unsure of the correct numbers, wanted to make these statements they would generalize... yes, am more scared of these
Thank you for doing so, I feel the same way, and I too, will contact his office.
My grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo for leading the Resistance in his province and was tortured for 4.5 years at Gestapo HQ, Auschwitz and Dachau. The Germans dehumanized the entire population of Poland from the onset of WWII to lay the groundwork for their Lebensraum/Policy of Eastern expansion with the goal of purging 30-million Poles to Siberia to slave and die, making room for massive colonization.
I feel like this article is very close, but just misses the mark in execution. For starters, forced/coerced medical practices is very nazi like. Given a lot of the Western world is engaging in such practices, including my country Australia, it is not a specific slight on America. Secondly, vis a vis foreign policy, those three countries are very, very different situations. When the overblown Anti-Russian rhetoric is cast aside, Ukraine has no strategic or moral relevance to the USA. Plus, It doesn't take a cynic to observe 21st century American interventions have been poorly executed.
But the key point I think you miss is this- many, if not an overwhelming majority, of conservative leaning cynics DO believe in fundamental American values. The problem is, they look around and see a country that does not embody these values. The cynicism is merely a reflection of current realities.
I don't see everything in black (cynic) and white (believer) like you do--you act as if there's no middle. You are also too quick to dismiss what's happening in the US (totalitarian measures and most especially, the demonization and let-them-die type attitude and treatment towards the unvaccinated) is similar to the early pre-WWII Nazi treatment of Jews.
The hard left is doing everything it can to not only demonize the unvaxed but also republicans and Trump voters (and anyone who disagrees with them). They will take away our rights if we allow it…..telling the truth about something doesn’t deserve a derogatory label…..
I recently read a Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times columnist telling readers they should rejoice at the death of anti-vaxxers—because of all the people they have killed by not taking a vaccine that research shows does not prevent transmission. I guess he got the Pulitzer for meanness. It certainly can’t be for intelligence.
The facts are that the Germans murdered 20 million innocents in and over 42,500 !!!! pits, slave and death camps throughout Occupied Europe and Germany itself. They supported Hitler in his stated goal to Genocide their way into additional “living space”.
"Donald Trump, who often evinced as much “move fast and break things” contempt for our institutions as Silicon Valley titans."
Moving fast and breaking things is exactly what should be happening to the very much contemptible deep state. Other than that, I generally agree with the piece.
Let’s see, Pfizer paid the largest fine in Pharma history(2.3 billion) for fraud. It has zero liability for its Covid shots and recently sought via the captured FDA to seal the licensing/safety data for 70 years. So this is the product that we are mandated to inject regardless of age, previous infection etc. Just shut up and bring over your 6 year old or don’t try to take her to a museum or attempt to get her an education. This is pure evil. This is an agenda being pushed by Democrats whether you like it or not ( I am a lifelong Democrat by the way). So I don’t like your false equivalence. People being fired, losing their livelihood and being excommunicated from society is kinda a big thing. And all this, shockingly, for a vaccine that does not prevent transmission. In fact, in three recent studies it showed “negative effectiveness “. Get real. This is unprecedented. This is a type of totalitarianism and we don’t know where it will lead. Stop minimizing it. It has already had terrible effects on many.
it SHOULD be unconstitutional in the medical sector ALSO. ABSOLUTELY NO MEDICAL INTERVENTION WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT ... everything about this has been a gigantic pack of lies.
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will have eight months — not the 75 years it requested — to release all documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID vaccine, a federal judge ruled Thursday."
Interesting - and quite relevant - quote of JFK in the same article:
"In his ruling, Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, quoted President John F. Kennedy, writing, 'a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.' ...."
Yes, your comments should be shouted back at people who want us to 'join and get along to defeat the crazed woke, as well as the democrats who recently were polled and believe people who won't get vaxxed belong in camps, as well as other noxious ideas'. How can people who claim to be liberal support the democratic senators and representatives of today, who follow a president and party allowing our southern border being overwhelmed? People, we are being invaded, and the Democrats are welcoming this invasion at out southern border.
Our major cities, all run by democratic politicians and voted there year after year by democrats -- are filled with drug-addicted homeless, gangs of marauders who crash into major shopping areas, filling their arms and cars with stolen merchandise. Where are the liberals on voting day? If you can't see the carnage and rot that were exposed here in our country instituted by left-loving politicians, and want to make nice now, while still accusing conservatives of silently letting this happen, then you need to finally, for once, admit your media, your politicians have created this corruption. They're even now lying about a voting rights bill and slipping it into another bill that was already approved -- this is sheer fraud. The liberal bureaucrats in our government and Democratic politicians, plus the media are also leading the fearful and scared parents of this once-great county into vaccinating even our smallest children and teens -- after these youngsters were being forced into distance learning and/or masked for over two years -- with an experimental drug -- that no one knows the long term outcome about.
This morning I was pointed to what Democratic women on the popular television show, The View, are spewing out through ABC networks -- according to the popular Whoopie Goldberg and Joy Behar, (Democratic great intellects and thought leaders of the moment): "Whoopi warns of the GOP's "big plan" to steal voting rights from black Americans then steal them from women. She goes on to claim that schools are no longer allowed to teach kids about Anne Frank, the Holocaust, and slavery, and Behar says the right wants to destroy the country." These are lies. These same women sat and pontificated the lies about President Trump being aligned with the Russians all during his presidency.
It's difficult to read a supposed 'thoughtful and serious' substack written about who will win America and believe in its seriousness when those of us ordinary voters have been swamped by the corrupt bilge and swill of these past years. And, notice, I didn't even say anything about the NYT or NPR and other icons of the left promoting the rhetoric of Critical Race Theory, led by writers like Robin DiAngelo or Barbara Applebaum, and its tentacles being taught in our schools to the youngest and most vulnerable students.
I'd say 95% of what I've just written wasn't edited and it came from my heart and emotion over watching what has happened to our country over these past years. But it is laughable to me for people, who claim to be liberals, to be blind to what is actually going on in this country.
One ofmy siblings is very woke and tried to get me to read a book that claimed that the treatment of slaves in the US was worse than what happened in the Holocaust. I refuted that by pointing out that the US came a long way from pre Civil War conditions and that there were no extermination camps like Auschwitz in the US. If asked, I tell anyone interested that I am a conservative Democrats looking for a party ,that Trump's policies were excellent , and that serious issues were raised as to the end around of the Elector's Clause and the absence of any consideration of the claims of fraud after 2020 , and remain enthusiastically committed to voting for the conservative candidate who has the most potential to win and who is committed to American values and traditional mores-two commodities that the woke has abandoned.
The woke world must be confronted by a coalition of disaffected liberals and conservatives ready for such an alliance to achieve political and cultural change
Cold, hard cynicism is a foundational principle of conservatives and the Founding Fathers. The Constitution was written based on the premise that all power would be abused and corrupting.
Many argued that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, because the rights it forbids the government to intrude on were already protected by the lack of authority to tread on them in the structure of government based on the Constitution. Nevertheless, others successfully argued that, where the Constitution did not forbid government authority, therein would power encroach.
The Bill of Rights itself did not originally apply to states whatsoever except to reserve for them all authority not granted to the federal government. Power hungry Supreme Court Justices invented a doctrine of incorporation to allow them to arrogate authority over state laws to themselves. Similarly, they invented absurdly broad definitions of things like interstate commerce to open the floodgates to federal power.
Seeing exactly the concentration and abuse of power the Founding Fathers expected isn't to betray their legacy: it is to confirm it. Cynicism of power is the foundational principle of this republic and straying from it has cost us our freedoms.
To go even a bit further, what distinguishes the American right from the European conservative traditions is radical mistrust of power. European conservatives of the Burke school believe in cautious reform and respect for traditions. American conservatives believe in individual liberty and constraints on government power even when those require a radical break from tradition and current institutions. The radical commitment to limited government isn't born out of some sort of faith in a piece of paper like the Constitution, but a deep and abiding mistrust of power in all it's forms. Conservatives ascribe to what Sowell calls the tragic view of human nature and eschew the belief that any human institution is perfectible-- no matter how well intentioned.
It is telling that your appeals to idealism involve military adventurism of the worst sort. As a veteran of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' I assure you that my cynicism about nation-building is quite well informed. If you'd like to provide a warm body for the preservation of international democratic traditions, please see your local recruiter at any time.
Very well stated. "You have yourselves a republic, if you can keep it." Well, we didn't keep it since some time ago and to pretend otherwise is not being a believer it's being a damn fool.
Are you against all review of any and all state laws by SCOTUS? The battle over incorporation was between Justices Black and Frankfurter in their understanding of the meaning of the 14th Amendment. How far doctrines like incorporation and interstate commerce can be utilized is still a case by case application but not an arrogation of power. Once you go down that road, you might as well question the entire premises of judicial review of acts of Congress which in and of itself was created by CJ Marshall in Marbury v Madison.
Yes, I am against SCOTUS review of state laws except where they conflict with expressly granted federal government powers. State law should be subject to the constitution of each state and not a piecemeal enforcement of the Bill of Rights when it suits a few justices. I doubt even Supreme Court justices would deny that their interpretations of due process under the 14th Amendment are muddled at best.
That they arrogated power by the incorporation doctrine is practically tautological: where they had no authority to judge, they gave themselves such by smuggling in under due process whatever they wanted to at any particular time. There's no rhyme or rule to it. They will continue to expand their authority as it suits their vanity.
I don't see how we jump from whether the Bill of Rights restrains state law in contrast to the express reservation of state power in the 10th Amendment to whether or not judges can review the constitutionality of federal laws. If there is no review of constitutionality of federal law, then there is no check on federal legislative and executive power. State legislative and executive power would be considered against state constitutions, where they are free to actually incorporate the Bill of Rights, and many do.
In light of the mess that incorporation and civil rights law has made of the republic in the 20th century, I find myself coming to this same conclusion.
David Brooks (not particularly conservative) recently suggested that only a radical federalism could bridge our current divides. In order to make this work though, both sides must be willing to allow the other to exist. It is far from clear that the Left is interested in coexistence, and the universalism inherent in their philosophy makes that uniquely hard for them to embrace.
This is indeed the problem with the left-there is no room for dissenting from or questioning the views of the left on their not so holy trinity of systemic racism, gender or climate change
Drive across CO with a spliff - no problem; drive across TX with it, you go to jail. Does that make sense to you?
State government is no less corrupt, power-hungry, and incompetent than fed government.
The Constitution should have been crafted to bind down not only the fed gov, but ALL government, state and local - individual rights should take precedence.
Without the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clauses being held applicable to state laws, this great country would still be suffering from racial segregation at all levels and racial violence such as lynchings and worse that would make the summer of 2020 look bucolic by comparison.
It was only LBJ, who as majority leader, who realized that in order to be seen as acceptable to liberals that the passage of some watered down civil rights law, required him to work around Southern Democrats and to get Northern Democrats to work together with Republicans who were making inroads in the African American urban communities, to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act.( Read Master of the Senate for howLBJ did what Schumer can't do and why McConnell was the best majority leader since LBJ in holding his caucus together in supporting Trump's judicial nominees and other aspects of Trump's agenda.)
What will be Trump's legacy-I think that his real legacy will be his unifying the various strains of the conservative movement, a sustained ,never give in challenge to the woke left and the confirmation of three Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh ( who replaced Anthony Kennedy ) on most issues is a wonderful change from Kennedy.. Gorsuch and Barrett are certainly more conservative than their predecessors and don't write with ideological blinders like Breyer,Kagan and Sotomayor and understand that certain issues are more complex than others and certain issues should not be addressed by SCOTUSbut rather decided by Congress.
Yes, I would have loved to see SCOTUS hear a case about 2020-the Democrats ran an unconstitutional end around the Electors Clause and there was a lot of evidence of fraud, but Trump's lawyers failed to present the case in a manner where a judge would have to make a ruling on the merits.
I was raised as a supporter of the Democratic agenda, but I have moved to the conservative perspective over the years. Yes, I would vote again for Trump, but I would even more enthusiastically vote for DeSantis who is a superb governor, a conservative and absolutely willing to fight the woke world, as opposed to just seeking revenge for what happened in 2020.
Like it or not, these are the political choices that I think that conservatives must make if they wish to win elections -make coalitions with recent allies ,even if it means that you are not ideologically in tune and agreement on all issues. When RFK was running the campaign for JFK, I think that he told the far left Reform Democrats that you don't win elections by ideologically pure.The conservative movement must learn this lesson if it wishes to win elections
State legislatures can and do pass laws that afford individuals more protection than the Federal government in a wide range of areas. Yet, the judicial enforcement of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses make sure that states do not go below a base line of constitutional acceptability.
Please spend a bit of time on how jurisprudence around the interstate commerce clause has been used to expand the scope of federal interventions under the supremacy clause. Justice Thomas has been rightfully chipping away at that line of cases. If you can put the federal government back into its enumerated powers constraints, you can have real federalism again. But it starts with the interstate commerce clause.
I'm sorry. Comparing vaccine mandates to Nuremberg is not whitewashing. The mandates are LITERALLY against the NUREMBERG CODE. It appears Ms. Shrier wants to portray herself as above the fray when she just has not paid attention to the actual arguments.
Wow, I loved the first piece that you wrote, but I held off on financially supporting your Substack, because I wanted to see if you were a one hit wonder. Now I know that to be the case and I am so glad that I did not send money.
If you actually understood what was going on, you would be thanking God every day for the work that the "cynics" are doing to block the imposition of vaccine passports. Clearly, you are in denial of what is going on.
You are 100% correct. I was very disappointed in this piece by Abigail. It’s a very forced equivalency between left & right. The FACT is that the mainstream Left has been captured by the radical Left & is on a mission to destroy our constitutional republic. Just ask them.
The Cynics are destroyers, The Believers are builders. Sane people go with the Believers. The corporate state driven dehuminzation of the unvaccinated is far more dangerous than conservatives saying mean things and Orange Man's mean tweets.
I agree. Although I did notice that as she tried to include both sides in her argument it falls flat because as you said the dehumanizing of the vaccine-free and deplatforming right wing thoughts is MUCH more dangerous to the West than mean tweets. I believe she has good points criticizing the left but her attempt to try and make the right just as dangerous in this context just doesn't work.
I haven't lost hope though and suspect her future writings will be more accurate.
I agree. Trying to be even handed when almost all of the fault lies with the hard left doesn’t fly. Establishment republicans are barely even fighting back….and I don’t see many “liberals” standing up for peoples rights either.
I care more about the children who are suffering in this country, presenting themselves at ERs as suicidal and not getting educated than I do about those suffering in other countries. I certainly sympathize with the other countries’ people but I can’t do a anything about it. Here I can vote, volunteer and demonstrate for those suffering in the US including the homeless, the young men who are being left behind, the girls who have lost their identities as you write about. Let’s help our own country folks first.
Jan 17, 2022·edited Jan 17, 2022Liked by Abigail Shrier
Enjoyed the article very much.
I think Abigail’s points are absolutely correct….
The political divide is being massively redefined as a division between those who believe in America’s aspirational promise, its institutions and its form of decision-making (she calls those folks the believers) versus those who believe America is irredeemably flawed to the point that everything - literally everything - needs to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt (she calls these folks the Cynics).
She then points out the policy positions people are advocating for are based on whether they’re believers or cynics. She points out that the political fault line is now shaping up to be less and less about what was previously thought of as “right” vs “left” and more and more about whether America still works and is worth saving or not.
In this regard, she is exactly correct….
I am a believer and I hope many more people will understand the very dark path that the cynics wish to take society…
For a post made on MLK Day (who was a believer!), she points out how much the political fault lines have changed.
Aye, but there's more to it, isn't there. This will be a slog, for us dissidents, since there seems to be no authority to whom we can appeal.
Don't get me wrong; I know how to drive on. I'm a 22 year Army vet. What I don't see is the prize. Freedom yes, but we're not looking to restore something we believe in. It's all gone bad--what are we struggling to do?
Abigail I respect you but I find this analysis to be very muddled. I can’t figure out to which of these distinct & opposing “camps” I belong according to your descriptions of them. For example, I cherish our founding principles as codified in our founding documents, love this country like family & know it is the greatest nation ever created on this earth. However, I’m angry & disgusted by what is being done to it by cynical, destructive & intentional forces & firmly believe we are on the precipice of losing the republic. So which am I, a believer or a cynic?
You've honed in beautifully on the main problem with Abigail's piece. It slices and dices, but offers no unified picture of what is happening right now. It's more like a letter from a kidnapper using letters cut from a number of newspapers and magazines.
What were Trump’s attacks on the “institutions” that warrants his inclusion on the list of cynics? Doesn’t the attacks on Trump by the institutions of the DOJ, FBI, CIA, the Brookings Institute warrant a mention? Surely Hilary Clinton’s creation of the Russifate scandal from whole cloth counts as cynical, yet no mention of her unique poison here
"Liberals’ greatest threat is the Woke, who have taken over once-liberal institutions -- the ACLU, the New York Times, Yale University -- Some Conservatives cheer when Liberal institutions are ruined by the Woke, which is disastrously short-sighted."
I really want to be charitable with this sentiment, but I'm finding it difficult. Abigail, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, and others want to make a distinction between themselves (the liberals) and the woke. However, to conservatives, this distinction is far less obvious.
At nearly 50, I have endured years of alleged "liberals" (Democrats) saying the following about me and those like me:
Social security reform: "Republicans want to kill grandma"
Welfare reform: "Republicans just hate the poor"
Abortion: "Conservatives want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen"
Marriage: "Republicans oppose redefining marriage because they hate gay people"
Immigration: "Conservatives are racist for wanting the border enforced"
Liberals have been calling conservatives racists / grandma killers / poor haters / greedy / heartless pigs for as long as I can remember. Today the Woke are calling us all of those same names. Same song; new singers. Why should I care?
In fact, that some of you liberals are now being attacked by your own revolutionaries seems less tragic and more karmic.
The question I have in the back of my mind is this. Why should I stick my neck out in solidarity with liberals now, when I'm pretty sure you will happily slice off my head the moment the woke threat to your own side has abated? How can I now trust the very people who spent years calling us racists, bigots, haters, and Nazis just because we saw the world differently than they did?
This is not a rant. It is a serious question. We may all agree that the "woke" are evil, but we conservatives harbor not ungrounded suspicion that you liberals will happily throw us under the bus again when given the chance. What evidence can you provide that we are wrong?
Brian, This is a terrific post and a really good point. Also, I agree: The way that the Center Left has treated conservatives has been disgusting and disgraceful. It's impossible to blame conservatives who are cynical about the Center Left or the Democratic Party. The question is only whether you think that we're all sitting on the ruins of a once great civilization -- the question, in other words, is whether you surrender faith in the greatness of this country. I believe that's a mistake. I think there's a way of working with people who still profess faith in the bedrock commitments of American idealism. I'm not naive: I'm aware they will conservatives under the bus at the first available opportunity. We can return to those fights, after this war has ended and the American project is less threatened. But for now, we're in the middle of cultural revolution, and we need allies. One last thing:
Through my work on the Gender Ideology, I've watched as large numbers of Liberals abandoned the Democratic Party. There's a major shift going on -- one I attempted to describe -- and I don't think we should allow anger to blind us to that. I'm suggesting, in fact, that the Woke has alienated so many on the Center Left, it has created a new opportunity for alliance (even if temporary).
Warmly, Abigail
The Center Left vs the Conservatives is a red herring. It is one that is normally trotted out by those who have thrived in meritocracy. They are winners in the Hunger Games, and thus all that is left is to battle over culture wars, which I get it, is difficult to resist.
I appreciate the work that you do on the trans and woke stuff, Abigail. I do suspect that you do exist in a bubble of relative affluence.
As we saw with Trump and Bernie, these two factions, AKA the ESTABLISHMENT, both beholden to Corporations and both serving as Warmongering Assets of the Blob, align right quick to protect their shared donors. They do that first. Then and only then do they battle with each other over Woke vs. Traditional.
Make no mistake, this is one party when you clock where the money goes: always to Wall Street, always to corporate bailouts, and always, always, ALWAYS, to the military industrial complex.
Black Rock, Vanguard and State ST, and all of their oligarch shareholders all over the world, their pals in the WEF, the Davos crew bought this country. They are happy to watch culture wars keep the plebes diverted and posturing.
Thanks, Abigail. I'm very interested in your comment about liberals abandoning the Democratic Party. If so, it is happening in parallel with many Republicans becoming more willing to consider safety nets, unions, income inequality, class solidarity, and the use of governmental power in general.
If Josh Hawley's prediction ("the GOP is a working class party now") is proven correct long term, disaffected liberals may find a lot of common ground with the new GOP. If Hawley is wrong and the blue-blood / libertarian establishment reasserts itself in 2022 and 2024, there may be an opportunity for a newly combined party between disaffected liberals and outcast populists.
Don't count out the Woke though. N.S. Lyons has a great piece today on that:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-over
I'm not as pessimistic as he is, but anyone who believes this is the beginning of the end of the woke is fooling himself.
Neither party is the working class party, get serious. We live in an oligarchy.
There is a reason Liz Cheney is a lib darling now, and that Nicolle Wallace sits the desk at "Lefty" MSNBC along with her Security State pals.
As George Carling aptly stated years ago. They don't give a fuck about you. At all. At all. At all.
Abigial, Great points above and a wonderful essay. Thank you. May I make a suggestion. I think a more effective counter point to Brian Villanueva argument would be straightforward and into his face (not in offensive way) - what is the alternative to cooperation at this point - assured mutual destruction? In working together there is at least a clear possibility to regain trust or carve a niche, however small in the beginning, of the solid common ground. The place where trust will live. Long behold, not only some things could be fixed together, trust could grow as all leaving things tend to, and more things get fixed.
Well said by Abigail and Brian.
I worked as a newspaper reporter in Maine during the 60s and 70s.
Citizens and politicians back then where far more willing to find common ground on which they could build a consensus.
Now, as an old man I yearn for a return to such a wonderful sense of civil discourse, and that such a society will be available to my grandchildren.
Thank you both.
I can share some information that I think will help provide insight into what you're seeing.
The biggest point that stands out to me is you mentioning that the same words being spoken by today's Woke are the same words you heard from yesterday's Liberals. I think that's an accurate assessment insofar as yesterday's "Liberals" (and I use those quotes deliberately) are the *same* people as today's Woke. The Woke represent radical left ideology, which isn't a new concept to the 21st century—or even the 20th century, for that matter. You can trace it back as far as at least Rousseau ("man is intrinsically good and it's the shackles of society that corrupt him"). Though, this part is less relevant.
If you go back to the 1960s and look at a lot of "civil rights" activists, you'll find a lot of radical left groups that were incredibly anti-establishment. They, just like the Woke, believed that the foundation of the US (and, more generally, Western society) is corrupt. Their solution to this was to try to tear down our systems so we could build something new. See, for example: Maulana Karenga (founded a group called US Organization), Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (Black Panther Party), Bill Ayers (Weather Underground), Angela Davis (CPUSA), and Susan Rosenberg (M19CO). Some of those, such as Weather Underground, were described by the FBI as terrorist organizations. These groups would rob banks or bomb buildings in service of their goals—very clearly violent methods of operation. So what happened to these individuals? Most of them went on to become college professors or join newer radical left groups, such as BLM.
These are the same individuals who, decades ago, said the exact same words you quoted Liberals as having spoken. It's the same vocal minority of anti-establishment individuals who opposed anything and everything conservatives said and did. After they moved on to becoming college professors, they continued the process of spreading this ideology to the newer generations, which eventually led to the Woke (or Critical Social Justice) ideology that we see today. This is most likely why you don't see any massive difference between the words of Liberals and the Woke, and it's why it's become so much more prevalent (started with a small group of then-college kids with a shared ideology and morphed into an insular group of thought leaders within academia passing this set of beliefs onto a broader audience).
If you want to dig into this more, check out "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
To answer your question of why you should stick your neck out in solidarity with liberals now, the answer to me is pretty straightforward: today's Liberals are not the same as yesterday's Liberals. Today's Liberals, exactly as Shrier articulated, oppose the radical left ideology running rampant throughout the Democratic party. Note that working with Liberals does not mean you're working with the Democratic Party—we, as Liberals, also oppose how the Democratic Party is operating. So I ask that you do not conflate the average Liberal US citizen with a member of the Woke ideology or the Democratic Party.
I agree with some of the sentiment of both your comment I'm replying to and the other one you left further down about how your average Liberal US citizen let radical leftists become the dominant voice of left-leaning US politics and overtake the Democratic Party. We bear the responsibility of not pushing back and speaking out against anti-liberalist values (and by "liberalist values", I'm referring to Classical Liberalism, as started by our country's Founding Fathers—the same ones Conservatives believe in). In that same vain, however, Conservatives also bear the responsibility of far right individuals becoming a loud voice of right-leaning US politics. See: the Tea Party movement that started in 2009 and eventually led to the nomination and election of Donald Trump.
There's been an escalating, almost arms race-like process, between the left and the right within the US. Each side has been feeding off one another and furthering the radicalization occurring at the extreme ends of the spectrum. The moderates on each side are responsible for allowing the rise of radicalism. I think that's essentially what Shrier's post was getting at, and I'm inclined to agree with her—moderates on both sides need to come together and support the foundation of our country.
I'm curious how you see it and whether you agree.
In SF the son of a Weather Underground terrorist is destroying the city as district attorney - Chesa Boudin. In general, I think those who want to tear down our systems have moved from bombs to suits and law degrees. They do not have something good to build in place. But, I think they have overstepped by provoking the mama bears with Gender Ideology which is allowing the mentally ill to define our language, our medicine, and what is promoted in schools. It harms our children. The right has been very weak about this problem and I hope they grow some strength but at this point I think the left has lost control of the train which is running away.
Thanks for the response, Jake. I've read Pluckrose & Lindsay book and highly recommend it to everyone here. It explains how post-modernist drivel colonized the university and then society writ-large. James Lindsey's website is also wonderful.
You ground the anti-establishment strain in the civil rights / sexual revolution generation. Interestingly, most conservatives would agree. Chris Caldwell's "Age of Entitlement" is about exactly that. But where are the liberal voices willing to reconsider the policies of that era?
Let me give you some examples:
40% of all children today are born to unmarried women. Is that a sign of women's greater roll in society, or a sign of a collapse in family structure? Should it be cheered or lamented?
Is surrogacy empowering women to improve their lives, or is it a tool of oppression by which the powerful colonize poor women's bodies?
Is diversity really a strength? Should diversity be celebrated at all times, in all places, and where absent, enforced by law? Do individuals actually have freedom of association? Could a male-only / women-only / white-only / black-only / cis-only / straight-only group be permissible, or must diversity always win over freedom of association?
Is requiring a funeral parlor to allow a male funeral director to wear a dress justified because it empowers that person (Bostock decision), or is it an assault on grieving families who have a right to a final day with their deceased loved ones on their own terms?
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/12/divorce-parenting/621054/
The divorce rate has tripled in the last 60 years. Should the author of that story be celebrated or condemned for her behavior? Does it matter that she has children?
In each of these cases, the prevailing view of celebration is a logical extension of the 1960's civil rights & sexual revolutions. Are liberals willing to reconsider any of those policies? Or was everything hunky dory until 2015 when the T in LGBT started to make noise? Your answers to questions like these reveal the amount of potential common ground between disaffected liberals and conservatives. Abigail above seems to think there's quite a bit; I'm less optimistic but willing to look for it.
Trust will require time and small steps though. Probably on both sides, since I'm not unaware that my own side tended to hurl around "America haters", "baby killers", and various other insults as well. And certainly the last 12 months has illustrated that lunacy can infect both parties.
If there's real common ground, and a willingness on both sides to compromise and admit their past errors, there could be something here with time. However, if disaffected liberals are just looking for temporary allies who will help them defeat the woke lunatics they have created, count me out. If all you want is a return of 1990's liberalism, I want none of it. I would rather nail the coffin shut on whole Enlightenment, secular, liberal project and spent my energy charting a new post-liberal future.
I really object to the quasi religious term "cis". I used to think I was a "live and let live" sort of person before we were hit with GI. "Radical" feminists (who don't think men are women) and conservative Christian women (who also don't think men are "female"- like Assistant US Health Secretary Richard Levine- the first Female 4 Star Admiral) are seeing eye to eye on this one. You must have heard of TERFs? ("Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools") This is what Abigail is talking about.
For liberal and conservative parents who have been hit by the Trans bus, see Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans:
https://pitt.substack.com/
Matt Walsh was a panelist on Dr. Phil with a couple of trans activists recently - where he asked them the question "What is a woman?" Someone on is Twitter feed has responded to that question with "Whatever a man says it is."
I think you and I are probably in very strong alignment about the source of the problems we're seeing today. I've cited those very same topics with other folks I've conversed with in general about the current state of society.
Personally, I'm very pragmatic. I tend to focus less on the ideals or underlying reasoning and more on the outcomes of whatever decisions we make. Likewise, I generally have the stance of "live and let live", because who am I to tell other people how they should live their lives? But I won't pretend that this stance has no serious consequences. It's that very same attitude that led to the Civil Rights and Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s and all of the issues you cited that have stemmed from those since. My question for anyone who's thinking about this is: what values do you believe we, as a society, should hold?
I don't think seeing an increase in out-of-wedlock births or single-parent households is good. Both have clearly bad effects on the future of those children, and that's harming society considerably. It's caused a serious degradation of the working class, and to argue otherwise is a clear ignorance of history. Virtually every culture that's still alive today evolved to bind a man and a woman together because it yielded stronger outcomes for society as a whole.
I don't know enough about surrogacy to comment, unfortunately.
I think viewpoint diversity is important because an individual can only think of so many things on their own. I think the cultural amalgamation of the US is one of our strong suits, but we still have a clearly distinct "American" culture. The idea of separate, distinct cultures all occupying the same space simultaneously won't work because that's essentially just tribalism. I think any other form of diversity is superficial and largely irrelevant. There are some niche instances, such as if you're training a computer system on photo recognition of humans, but that's about it.
The divorce rate skyrocketing is a "fun" result if groups like NOW lobbying for things like No Fault Divorce. I'm not opposed to a couple getting divorced if they've determined they can't work together, but making it easier to divorce increases the rate at which people give up on their marriages. Humans are self-interested and will take the easiest path they believe is conducive to their goals, and I can't deny the reality of innate human nature. Thomas Sowell talks about this in his book "A Conflict of Visions", where one side feels we must operate within the limits of human nature (the Constrained Vision) and the other side feels we can take human nature and mold it in whatever ways we see fit (the Unconstrained Vision). I side with the Constrained Vision just by virtue of history. Additionally, the increase of divorce is having seriously bad outcomes on the children whose parents become divorced. I'm not a fan of this outcome because it harms society overall.
As part of the sexual revolution, I have no problem with people having sex with whomever they want and whenever they want, provided it's within the context of consent. I concede, however, that this doesn't yield a happier or more productive society, nor does it yield more successful, long-term relationships. I also don't agree with how heavily the left has tried to redefine "consent" (e.g., if two individuals are drunk and they have sex, they've now raped each other).
For most of these issues and more that've stemmed from the 60s and 70s, I don't believe legislative change is the main way to go. I think the majority of them are social issues that we have to work out among ourselves without the involvement of the government. For example, Jordan Peterson talks about the idea of socially-enforced monogamy—that we, as individuals within a society, implicitly promote monogamy for the betterment of both the individuals and society as a whole. I think this is the correct approach to take, as I don't see the government's involvement necessary here (for the most part).
I don't think the 90s were the ideal, not by any stretch. Granted, I'm only 30, so I didn't experience much of it first-hand, but I know that many of the issues of postmodernism that you mentioned really hit their stride in the 90s. For another example, see "The War Against Boys" by Christina Hoff Sommers, where she documents many educational changes that are having disastrous consequences on our boys and young men started in the 90s.
I also agree with you about the rise in secularism causing a lot of the problems we're seeing both in the US and across the West. Humans can't live without some kind of "religion" because it gives them three things: a moral anchor, a set of beliefs on how to derive purpose and meaning in one's life, and a community in which to serve. Personally, I don't care what "religion" people follow to obtain these. It can be Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Wicca, or whatever else I didn't list here. All I care about is: do these belief systems align with Western Liberalist values? The same ones that founded the US. If not, then they're going to cause us more problems, and we should discourage them/
I certainly can't speak for all Liberals by any stretch—I can only speak for myself. And, quite frankly, I'm probably more of a Centrist, but I largely don't care about the labels at the end of the day. I care about policies, decisions, and outcomes. As I mentioned at the start, I'm very pragmatic, and I think most issues will have options that yield better outcomes than others.
James, you're giving me hope, and I appreciate that.
After reading your comment, I found myself thinking today of other 60's liberals, and Tip O'Neil came to mind. Tip was a believer in the power of government to improve people's lives, and truly committed to seeking the common good. At the time, we quasi-libertarian, Goldwater / Reagan Republicans despised him, but looking back, he looks less partisan and more prophetic. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is another I would put in that category.
These men bemoaned how the collapsing black family was perpetuating multi-generational poverty. They voted in favor of the Hart-Celler immigration Act, supported the Bracero program for Mexican farm labor, but (like Caesar Chavez) opposed illegal immigration across the board. They believed in strong businesses but also strong unions. They supported progressive taxation to reduce income inequality and estate taxes to prevent aristocracy. Most importantly, they believed in America, the culture, the faith, the people. You may have thought Tip or Daniel were was wrong, but you couldn't think they were evil.
The new GOP today is open to -- in many cases supportive of --all of those things. Maybe the pre-60's liberals like O'Neil or Moynihan can help us find the road forward.
I'm not familiar with Tip O'Neil, so it sounds like I have some reading to do :) I'm certainly familiar with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, though, and the report he put out in 1965—exactly as you called attention to (and rightly so). I think there's reason to be hopeful and my belief stems from the everyday folks I talk to on both sides of the political spectrum, and the conversation I've had here with you is one such example.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk. Your perspective has given me additional insight and hope, and I'm thankful for gaining both.
James Linday's New Discourses is a great website and source of discussion. I have read the excellent works of Victor Davis Hanson, MarcLevin, and Ben Shapiro on these issues. Front Page Magazine is an excellent source for the latest on the excesses of the woke world as well, The WSJ editorial page, Commentary and some of the writers on National Review all provide excellent sources. As far as the NYT is concerned-the less the better-it is now a full blown expensive Twitter page, and has a long legacy of whitewashing Communism, Nazism , Holocaust minimization, support for the woke agenda and hostility to the right of Israel to defend itself.
In order to both defend yourself against the woke onslaught and to set forth a compelling argument in favor of traditional mores and American political values, I can only state and reiterate that you must be literate and read about these issues . An angry conscience only goes so far. I think that it also helps in no small point that you are anchored to a faith community that has a set of values that clearly rejects the woke ideology in its classical writings
"Maulana Karenga (founded a group called US Organization), Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (Black Panther Party), Bill Ayers (Weather Underground), Angela Davis (CPUSA), and Susan Rosenberg (M19CO)"were not part of the "civil rights establishment" whose leaders were Dr MLK.Jr. and Roy Wilkins
That's why I put "civil rights" in quotation marks. Much like the Woke individuals fight for what they believe to be modern civil rights (or even human rights) issues, the groups I referred to did the same. When the average person thinks of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, they think of the peaceful protests and of the primary and visible leaders (like MLK Jr and Roy Wilkins, whom you mentioned). There were plenty of other groups, however, that fought for their vision of "civil rights." Malcom X was a prominent figure who deviated quite notably from King, holding a much more radical ideology (he was against integration and instead pro-segregation, for example). Though, they shared strong socialist beliefs, funny enough. Regardless, I wouldn't classify Malcom X as "radical" in comparison to the other groups I mentioned.
It was the now-mainstream Civil Rights leaders who created the important changes we saw in the 60s, but it was the radical left activists, also operating in the name of "civil rights", who went on to become professors, scholars, and intellectuals. So while they had minimal influence in the outcomes of the 60s, they are key figures that have led to the current state of society. It's also why I referred to them as *anti-establishment*, because King and the like weren't opposed to the underlying establishments of the US. They instead thought there were clear problems in its then-current setup that needed to be addressed through change. They didn't, however, believe that every foundation or institution of the US needed to be torn down.
For what it's worth, we also saw this same thing with Feminism in the 60s and 70s. There are distinct "branches", so to speak, but it was mainly the liberalist feminists that won out, with the more radical left versions falling out of favor and moving onto academia.
I hope that helps clarify. Sorry if I wasn't very clear originally.
The radical left realized that it could not win at the polls,but instead began a long march through the educational institutions that was coupled with the ideology of radical feminism and its natural allies in the LGBT movement. The woke world is the product of that march and the failure of conservatives to confront it before it became powerful
Agreed. I think liberals also played a part of that failure since it's been far more common for left-leaning individuals to pursue higher education. You mentioned James Lindsay's podcast, New Discourses, in another comment, and that's where I found a good chunk of this information myself. Sounds like we're pulling from very similar sources :)
Malcom X in his writings and comments was not part of the mainstream civil rights movement. Noone who remembers MLK or Roy Wilkins would ever say that Farrakhan or Sharpton were "civil rights leaders"
I agree, he wasn't mainstream, but I still think he was prominent insofar as people I've talked with seem to readily recognize the name "Malcom X" and that he was quite distinct from MLK Jr and co. Maybe that's just my circle of friends and such, though.
Well said Brian! And, I couldn't agree more. Why is it when Liberals critique other Liberals they always feel it necessary to dump on Conservatives, usually disportionately? Sometimes there is no moral equivalency and one philosophy is just wrong--all of your bullet points are fine examples of Liberal transgressions. Sickening really.
Excellent comment, very insightful & I agree with you 100%.
What we have seen in regard to the Democratic Party is that the party of FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, HHH , Scoop Jackson , Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Joseph Lieberman who were liberals on domestic issues but anti Communists and neo conservatives has evolved since the Vietnam War and the McGovern reforms of the late 1960s into a party driven by public service unions and identity politics, and the emergence of radicals who don't believe in bipartisanship, traditional moral values or support for Israel's right to defend itself but who instead invoke the woke trinity of systemic racism, gender and climate change as the paramount issues of the day and use labels as racism ,bigotry and homophobic beliefs as a way of mainstreaming that which was previously decadent , considered mentally ill and perverted while delegitimizing valid opposing values that have defined Western society for thousands of years
Excellent, thought provoking remarks.
"Liberals’ greatest threat is the Woke, who have taken over once-liberal institutions -- the ACLU, the New York Times, Yale University -- Some Conservatives cheer when Liberal institutions are ruined by the Woke, which is disastrously short-sighted."
Shrier is exactly correct. These were once great liberal institutions, and they once served important purposes. There's no ready replacement for them. Cheering on their implosion is very short-sighted, obtuse and reckless.
They were great "liberal" institutions, and that is the problem. Today's woke commissars did not arise spontaneously from the dust of the Earth; they were birthed in the universities, newsrooms, and think tanks run by the last 2 generations of liberals. That's what's so disturbing.
Patrick Deenen and Ryszard Legutko suggest (from 2 different directions and not unconvincingly) that liberalism's quasi-religious commitment to individual autonomy is, by its nature, destructive of the common good. If the woke are simply the outcome of Enlightenment liberalism taken to its logical conclusion, restoring "liberal" institutions isn't going to fix anything.
More personally though, I am having a hard time trusting these liberals who now demand common-ground with those of us whom they disparaged as bigots until last week. I am inclined to answer such requests thus, "You're welcome in the conservative tent, but we're not changing to accommodate you. If you need our help to defeat the woke lunatics, begin by acknowledging your role in birthing them. Start by surrendering your old philosophies and policies and see what we can teach you about how society can be structured differently. Once you do that, I will help you defeat the woke. Until you do, I can not trust you."
As I said above, I'm trying to be charitable and forgiving and trusting. But after 30+ years of being called names by the very people who now solicit my help, it's beyond hard. I guess in the vernacular of this article, that makes me a cynic.
I responded to your excellent post at length above. No need to be charitable and forgiving or trusting. The Center Left has treated conservatives abominably for decades. I'm only suggesting in the middle of a war, you make the strategic alliances you need to. This one seems advantageous and workable to me.
I'm sorry, but the holocaust is not sacrosanct. History MUST be studied and understood in all its nuance. The Nazis ran Wilhelm Reich out of the country because his "Mass Psychology of Fascism" was essentially the precursor to today's "mass formation psychosis." I'm having a hard time believing there's any such thing as a principled leftist (though I consider myself one) when the likes of Elena Kagan and Amy Klobuchar endorse mandatory medical experimentation and spend all their political ammunition on fairy tales like January 6 rather than anything beneficial to the social fabric. Today's dems are totalitarian reactionaries that value only one thing: groupthink. Show me ONE at any level of elected government who stands openly against vaccine mandates, gender ideology, critical race theory or any other sacred cow. The fever must break by running every God-damned one of them out of office (I say this as a former dem who helped put some of them there). Then maybe a few of them can crawl back in through the doggy door when we find out what a disaster the Republicans are too.
I agree. I don’t think pushing vaccines, with their massive fail at containing covid and horrifying side affects trivializes the Holocaust. I think a lot of us, who for all kinds of different health reasons find vaccination inappropriate or with negative benefits, have said to ourselves oh okay, I see how the Germans let this happen.
Yes!
Now do it for Republicans and the "stolen election"
I voted for Biden. I thought the mail-in ballot tsunami was hard to believe on election night, and with some further analysis find it warrants a real, open investigation. There are a lot of statistical anomalies that fell in Biden's favor. FWIW I think 2016 was stolen for Trump - lots of districts in states like Wisconsin with more votes than voters.
Trump was against Gender Ideology and Biden is pro having 9 year old children affirmed socially with nutty pronouns, drugged, and chopped up like Jazz Jennings. I feel we can take on other subjects after GI is put down.
See Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans:
https://pitt.substack.com/
Of course, helping Americans have confidence in elections rather than calling them names would be good.
It was censorship. You had the poll conducted in the weeks following the election in which had the press done it's job, 17% of Biden voters would have voted differently, of whom a quarter would have voted for Trump. Had that happened, Biden would have gotten 46.9% of the popular vote to Trump's 47.9%, and Trump would have won the electoral college.
It was a conspiracy between the swamp rats of DC, the DNC, the establishment faction of the RNC, the technocrats and the legacy press to put Biden into office.
And yes, Trump was against not only gender ideology, but wokeness as a whole.
Germans… not stateless ‘Nazis’ from Hitlerland
You are a racist who does not understand history or political dynamics.
Straight out of the left wing playbook....If you can't win the argument, call your opponent a racist.
Hardly. You are showcasing your own inability for discourse with unfounded ad hominem attacks.
My extended family fought and died fighting the Germans and their comrades the Soviet Russians from Day 1. My grandfather lead the Resistance in theLublin Province at the behest of Gen Sikorski despite the risks to his life, the lives of his family. His reward? 4.5 years of torture at Gestapo HQ, Auschwitz and Dachau and the installation by FDR & Churchill of a totalitarian regime — despite Poland fronting the 4th largest Allied Army. Stop your whitewashing of the Genocide that Germans inflicted pre and during WWII.
As US General Smedley Butler wrote, "war is a racket." I'm simply trying to absolve the "Germans" as an entire ethnos of the genocidal intent of imperialism, international financiers and cartels. Shall we ask who organized the first world war and foisted the crippling Treaty of Versailles reparations upon said Germans?
Germany was one of three rapacious neighbors that brutally colonized Poles for 123 years - right up to 1918. President Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles allowed for Poland to regain her Sovereignty, which of course the Germans and Russians would not let stand.
You do realize that the USSR was no better than Hitlerite Germany. Ask the Poles of Lwow and Wilno...oh wait, Stalin had them almost wholly murdered or deported. To think, in 1931, there were 2.5 million Poles in what would become Ukraine and 700,000 Ukrainians in what is now Poland. Now there are under 100,000 Poles in Ukraine when, based on population growth, there should be 4.5 million.
You also had the Yalta Sellout in which 25 million people were deported at gunpoint, mostly civilians, of whom 2.5 million died or were murdered, all as you had tens if not hundreds of thousands of death camp guards live.
As for the partitions, the former USSR holds all of the territory of what was partitioned Poland prior to the Congress of Vienna and then some. It has yet to return what was stolen.
Edit: France and Czechoslovakia combined share equal guilt with the German people for Hitler's rise. It was their combined arrogance and greed that created the necessary political climate. The US with the Klansman president who was obsessed with the League of Nations over forcing the French, Czechs and others to adhere to Self Determination and create a lasting peace also played a role.
I’m Jewish and I called Congressman Davis’s office to say he was absolutely correct in his comparison of what is being done to the unvaccinated today and how the Holocaust started for my relatives. Dehumanization, demonization, blame for spreading disease, exclusion from public life, prevention from earning a living. How can you not see it? To observe and state this does not trivialize the Holocaust; it is a warning of where this might lead. To hear the ignorance about viral transmission and dismissal of Constitutional concerns of Kagen, Sotomayor and Breyer was stunning, and so depressing—because I do believe in the history of American goodness.
check out Margaret Anna Alice Substack... alarming comparison of Holocaust to current situation... ‘10 stages of genocide’ collapsed into concurrent actions... it’s hard not to be cynical... purposeful harm has been imposed by governments on their citizens, resulting in purposeful deaths... and a compliant citizenry has allowed this to happen... and i’m supposed to still ‘believe’... i love the Constitution but it only works if the whole system is functional... praying i’m wrong.
Thank you for speaking up about the Holocaust analogies. I have been quartered on Twitter for my comparisons. Do people really think the Holocaust happened overnight?
" ignorance about viral transmission and dismissal of Constitutional concerns of Kagen, Sotomayor and Breyer was stunning"
Let's take those one at a time:
Sotomayor: "100,000 children currently hospitalized due to Covid". CDC: actual number is less than 5,000
Breyer: "736 million Covid cases in the US yesterday". US population is about 330 million, most did not get Covid twice in one day.
Kagan: "vaccine prevents infection and transmission" Israel health ministry: not anymore, vaccine prevents development of serious illness but many vaccinated people now test positive for Omicron and can transmit it.
The ignorance of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court about widely known facts since the discovery of the Omicron variant is, indeed, stunning.
if an intelligent individual, who was unsure of the correct numbers, wanted to make these statements they would generalize... yes, am more scared of these
powerful idiots than i am of the virus.
Omicron lasts a few days, autocracy lasts a lifetime
Apparently Abigail believes it’s really not that big a deal & you shouldn’t worry much about it. You’re such a cynic, you see.
Thank you for doing so, I feel the same way, and I too, will contact his office.
My grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo for leading the Resistance in his province and was tortured for 4.5 years at Gestapo HQ, Auschwitz and Dachau. The Germans dehumanized the entire population of Poland from the onset of WWII to lay the groundwork for their Lebensraum/Policy of Eastern expansion with the goal of purging 30-million Poles to Siberia to slave and die, making room for massive colonization.
I’m sorry for your grandfather’s suffering—and grateful for his courage.
I feel like this article is very close, but just misses the mark in execution. For starters, forced/coerced medical practices is very nazi like. Given a lot of the Western world is engaging in such practices, including my country Australia, it is not a specific slight on America. Secondly, vis a vis foreign policy, those three countries are very, very different situations. When the overblown Anti-Russian rhetoric is cast aside, Ukraine has no strategic or moral relevance to the USA. Plus, It doesn't take a cynic to observe 21st century American interventions have been poorly executed.
But the key point I think you miss is this- many, if not an overwhelming majority, of conservative leaning cynics DO believe in fundamental American values. The problem is, they look around and see a country that does not embody these values. The cynicism is merely a reflection of current realities.
Wake up and smell the coffee-the mandates in the private sector are unconstitutional
My comment above reflects your final paragraph.
I don't see everything in black (cynic) and white (believer) like you do--you act as if there's no middle. You are also too quick to dismiss what's happening in the US (totalitarian measures and most especially, the demonization and let-them-die type attitude and treatment towards the unvaccinated) is similar to the early pre-WWII Nazi treatment of Jews.
The hard left is doing everything it can to not only demonize the unvaxed but also republicans and Trump voters (and anyone who disagrees with them). They will take away our rights if we allow it…..telling the truth about something doesn’t deserve a derogatory label…..
I recently read a Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times columnist telling readers they should rejoice at the death of anti-vaxxers—because of all the people they have killed by not taking a vaccine that research shows does not prevent transmission. I guess he got the Pulitzer for meanness. It certainly can’t be for intelligence.
with you kitty cat.
Germans! Not stateless’Nazis’ from Hitlerland murdered 20,000,000 innocents
I said EARLY in the process. EARLY means EARLY. And what's the difference between Germans being ruled by Nazis and Nazis?
Read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Read The Eagle Unbowed
The facts are that the Germans murdered 20 million innocents in and over 42,500 !!!! pits, slave and death camps throughout Occupied Europe and Germany itself. They supported Hitler in his stated goal to Genocide their way into additional “living space”.
"Donald Trump, who often evinced as much “move fast and break things” contempt for our institutions as Silicon Valley titans."
Moving fast and breaking things is exactly what should be happening to the very much contemptible deep state. Other than that, I generally agree with the piece.
Let’s see, Pfizer paid the largest fine in Pharma history(2.3 billion) for fraud. It has zero liability for its Covid shots and recently sought via the captured FDA to seal the licensing/safety data for 70 years. So this is the product that we are mandated to inject regardless of age, previous infection etc. Just shut up and bring over your 6 year old or don’t try to take her to a museum or attempt to get her an education. This is pure evil. This is an agenda being pushed by Democrats whether you like it or not ( I am a lifelong Democrat by the way). So I don’t like your false equivalence. People being fired, losing their livelihood and being excommunicated from society is kinda a big thing. And all this, shockingly, for a vaccine that does not prevent transmission. In fact, in three recent studies it showed “negative effectiveness “. Get real. This is unprecedented. This is a type of totalitarianism and we don’t know where it will lead. Stop minimizing it. It has already had terrible effects on many.
If you work in the private sector, the mandate is unconstitutional.
it SHOULD be unconstitutional in the medical sector ALSO. ABSOLUTELY NO MEDICAL INTERVENTION WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT ... everything about this has been a gigantic pack of lies.
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will have eight months — not the 75 years it requested — to release all documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID vaccine, a federal judge ruled Thursday."
Interesting - and quite relevant - quote of JFK in the same article:
"In his ruling, Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, quoted President John F. Kennedy, writing, 'a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.' ...."
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-eight-months-produce-pfizer-safety-data/
But "Big Pharma" is almost as much of a problem as the proverbial "Military-Industrial Complex" of yesteryear.
Yes, your comments should be shouted back at people who want us to 'join and get along to defeat the crazed woke, as well as the democrats who recently were polled and believe people who won't get vaxxed belong in camps, as well as other noxious ideas'. How can people who claim to be liberal support the democratic senators and representatives of today, who follow a president and party allowing our southern border being overwhelmed? People, we are being invaded, and the Democrats are welcoming this invasion at out southern border.
Our major cities, all run by democratic politicians and voted there year after year by democrats -- are filled with drug-addicted homeless, gangs of marauders who crash into major shopping areas, filling their arms and cars with stolen merchandise. Where are the liberals on voting day? If you can't see the carnage and rot that were exposed here in our country instituted by left-loving politicians, and want to make nice now, while still accusing conservatives of silently letting this happen, then you need to finally, for once, admit your media, your politicians have created this corruption. They're even now lying about a voting rights bill and slipping it into another bill that was already approved -- this is sheer fraud. The liberal bureaucrats in our government and Democratic politicians, plus the media are also leading the fearful and scared parents of this once-great county into vaccinating even our smallest children and teens -- after these youngsters were being forced into distance learning and/or masked for over two years -- with an experimental drug -- that no one knows the long term outcome about.
This morning I was pointed to what Democratic women on the popular television show, The View, are spewing out through ABC networks -- according to the popular Whoopie Goldberg and Joy Behar, (Democratic great intellects and thought leaders of the moment): "Whoopi warns of the GOP's "big plan" to steal voting rights from black Americans then steal them from women. She goes on to claim that schools are no longer allowed to teach kids about Anne Frank, the Holocaust, and slavery, and Behar says the right wants to destroy the country." These are lies. These same women sat and pontificated the lies about President Trump being aligned with the Russians all during his presidency.
It's difficult to read a supposed 'thoughtful and serious' substack written about who will win America and believe in its seriousness when those of us ordinary voters have been swamped by the corrupt bilge and swill of these past years. And, notice, I didn't even say anything about the NYT or NPR and other icons of the left promoting the rhetoric of Critical Race Theory, led by writers like Robin DiAngelo or Barbara Applebaum, and its tentacles being taught in our schools to the youngest and most vulnerable students.
I'd say 95% of what I've just written wasn't edited and it came from my heart and emotion over watching what has happened to our country over these past years. But it is laughable to me for people, who claim to be liberals, to be blind to what is actually going on in this country.
One ofmy siblings is very woke and tried to get me to read a book that claimed that the treatment of slaves in the US was worse than what happened in the Holocaust. I refuted that by pointing out that the US came a long way from pre Civil War conditions and that there were no extermination camps like Auschwitz in the US. If asked, I tell anyone interested that I am a conservative Democrats looking for a party ,that Trump's policies were excellent , and that serious issues were raised as to the end around of the Elector's Clause and the absence of any consideration of the claims of fraud after 2020 , and remain enthusiastically committed to voting for the conservative candidate who has the most potential to win and who is committed to American values and traditional mores-two commodities that the woke has abandoned.
The woke world must be confronted by a coalition of disaffected liberals and conservatives ready for such an alliance to achieve political and cultural change
Cold, hard cynicism is a foundational principle of conservatives and the Founding Fathers. The Constitution was written based on the premise that all power would be abused and corrupting.
Many argued that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, because the rights it forbids the government to intrude on were already protected by the lack of authority to tread on them in the structure of government based on the Constitution. Nevertheless, others successfully argued that, where the Constitution did not forbid government authority, therein would power encroach.
The Bill of Rights itself did not originally apply to states whatsoever except to reserve for them all authority not granted to the federal government. Power hungry Supreme Court Justices invented a doctrine of incorporation to allow them to arrogate authority over state laws to themselves. Similarly, they invented absurdly broad definitions of things like interstate commerce to open the floodgates to federal power.
Seeing exactly the concentration and abuse of power the Founding Fathers expected isn't to betray their legacy: it is to confirm it. Cynicism of power is the foundational principle of this republic and straying from it has cost us our freedoms.
To go even a bit further, what distinguishes the American right from the European conservative traditions is radical mistrust of power. European conservatives of the Burke school believe in cautious reform and respect for traditions. American conservatives believe in individual liberty and constraints on government power even when those require a radical break from tradition and current institutions. The radical commitment to limited government isn't born out of some sort of faith in a piece of paper like the Constitution, but a deep and abiding mistrust of power in all it's forms. Conservatives ascribe to what Sowell calls the tragic view of human nature and eschew the belief that any human institution is perfectible-- no matter how well intentioned.
It is telling that your appeals to idealism involve military adventurism of the worst sort. As a veteran of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' I assure you that my cynicism about nation-building is quite well informed. If you'd like to provide a warm body for the preservation of international democratic traditions, please see your local recruiter at any time.
Very well stated. "You have yourselves a republic, if you can keep it." Well, we didn't keep it since some time ago and to pretend otherwise is not being a believer it's being a damn fool.
Extremely cogent comment . Thank you.
Reserved to the states OR to the people.
Are you against all review of any and all state laws by SCOTUS? The battle over incorporation was between Justices Black and Frankfurter in their understanding of the meaning of the 14th Amendment. How far doctrines like incorporation and interstate commerce can be utilized is still a case by case application but not an arrogation of power. Once you go down that road, you might as well question the entire premises of judicial review of acts of Congress which in and of itself was created by CJ Marshall in Marbury v Madison.
Yes, I am against SCOTUS review of state laws except where they conflict with expressly granted federal government powers. State law should be subject to the constitution of each state and not a piecemeal enforcement of the Bill of Rights when it suits a few justices. I doubt even Supreme Court justices would deny that their interpretations of due process under the 14th Amendment are muddled at best.
That they arrogated power by the incorporation doctrine is practically tautological: where they had no authority to judge, they gave themselves such by smuggling in under due process whatever they wanted to at any particular time. There's no rhyme or rule to it. They will continue to expand their authority as it suits their vanity.
I don't see how we jump from whether the Bill of Rights restrains state law in contrast to the express reservation of state power in the 10th Amendment to whether or not judges can review the constitutionality of federal laws. If there is no review of constitutionality of federal law, then there is no check on federal legislative and executive power. State legislative and executive power would be considered against state constitutions, where they are free to actually incorporate the Bill of Rights, and many do.
In light of the mess that incorporation and civil rights law has made of the republic in the 20th century, I find myself coming to this same conclusion.
David Brooks (not particularly conservative) recently suggested that only a radical federalism could bridge our current divides. In order to make this work though, both sides must be willing to allow the other to exist. It is far from clear that the Left is interested in coexistence, and the universalism inherent in their philosophy makes that uniquely hard for them to embrace.
This is indeed the problem with the left-there is no room for dissenting from or questioning the views of the left on their not so holy trinity of systemic racism, gender or climate change
Drive across CO with a spliff - no problem; drive across TX with it, you go to jail. Does that make sense to you?
State government is no less corrupt, power-hungry, and incompetent than fed government.
The Constitution should have been crafted to bind down not only the fed gov, but ALL government, state and local - individual rights should take precedence.
It is. TX can violate individual liberties guaranteed under the US Constitution no more than the federal government can.
Without the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clauses being held applicable to state laws, this great country would still be suffering from racial segregation at all levels and racial violence such as lynchings and worse that would make the summer of 2020 look bucolic by comparison.
It was only LBJ, who as majority leader, who realized that in order to be seen as acceptable to liberals that the passage of some watered down civil rights law, required him to work around Southern Democrats and to get Northern Democrats to work together with Republicans who were making inroads in the African American urban communities, to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act.( Read Master of the Senate for howLBJ did what Schumer can't do and why McConnell was the best majority leader since LBJ in holding his caucus together in supporting Trump's judicial nominees and other aspects of Trump's agenda.)
What will be Trump's legacy-I think that his real legacy will be his unifying the various strains of the conservative movement, a sustained ,never give in challenge to the woke left and the confirmation of three Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh ( who replaced Anthony Kennedy ) on most issues is a wonderful change from Kennedy.. Gorsuch and Barrett are certainly more conservative than their predecessors and don't write with ideological blinders like Breyer,Kagan and Sotomayor and understand that certain issues are more complex than others and certain issues should not be addressed by SCOTUSbut rather decided by Congress.
Yes, I would have loved to see SCOTUS hear a case about 2020-the Democrats ran an unconstitutional end around the Electors Clause and there was a lot of evidence of fraud, but Trump's lawyers failed to present the case in a manner where a judge would have to make a ruling on the merits.
I was raised as a supporter of the Democratic agenda, but I have moved to the conservative perspective over the years. Yes, I would vote again for Trump, but I would even more enthusiastically vote for DeSantis who is a superb governor, a conservative and absolutely willing to fight the woke world, as opposed to just seeking revenge for what happened in 2020.
Like it or not, these are the political choices that I think that conservatives must make if they wish to win elections -make coalitions with recent allies ,even if it means that you are not ideologically in tune and agreement on all issues. When RFK was running the campaign for JFK, I think that he told the far left Reform Democrats that you don't win elections by ideologically pure.The conservative movement must learn this lesson if it wishes to win elections
State legislatures can and do pass laws that afford individuals more protection than the Federal government in a wide range of areas. Yet, the judicial enforcement of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses make sure that states do not go below a base line of constitutional acceptability.
Please spend a bit of time on how jurisprudence around the interstate commerce clause has been used to expand the scope of federal interventions under the supremacy clause. Justice Thomas has been rightfully chipping away at that line of cases. If you can put the federal government back into its enumerated powers constraints, you can have real federalism again. But it starts with the interstate commerce clause.
I'm sorry. Comparing vaccine mandates to Nuremberg is not whitewashing. The mandates are LITERALLY against the NUREMBERG CODE. It appears Ms. Shrier wants to portray herself as above the fray when she just has not paid attention to the actual arguments.
Wow, I loved the first piece that you wrote, but I held off on financially supporting your Substack, because I wanted to see if you were a one hit wonder. Now I know that to be the case and I am so glad that I did not send money.
If you actually understood what was going on, you would be thanking God every day for the work that the "cynics" are doing to block the imposition of vaccine passports. Clearly, you are in denial of what is going on.
passports... a polite term for cattle tags.
You are 100% correct. I was very disappointed in this piece by Abigail. It’s a very forced equivalency between left & right. The FACT is that the mainstream Left has been captured by the radical Left & is on a mission to destroy our constitutional republic. Just ask them.
The Cynics are destroyers, The Believers are builders. Sane people go with the Believers. The corporate state driven dehuminzation of the unvaccinated is far more dangerous than conservatives saying mean things and Orange Man's mean tweets.
I agree. Although I did notice that as she tried to include both sides in her argument it falls flat because as you said the dehumanizing of the vaccine-free and deplatforming right wing thoughts is MUCH more dangerous to the West than mean tweets. I believe she has good points criticizing the left but her attempt to try and make the right just as dangerous in this context just doesn't work.
I haven't lost hope though and suspect her future writings will be more accurate.
I agree. Trying to be even handed when almost all of the fault lies with the hard left doesn’t fly. Establishment republicans are barely even fighting back….and I don’t see many “liberals” standing up for peoples rights either.
Bah-loney. Delusional people go with the believers.
I'm a Believer, I couldn't leave her if I tried......
A Neil Diamond fan?
Well I was thinking of The Monkees. Not necessarily - it just fit.
I suspected. But Neil wrote it and performed it as it should be performed.
I care more about the children who are suffering in this country, presenting themselves at ERs as suicidal and not getting educated than I do about those suffering in other countries. I certainly sympathize with the other countries’ people but I can’t do a anything about it. Here I can vote, volunteer and demonstrate for those suffering in the US including the homeless, the young men who are being left behind, the girls who have lost their identities as you write about. Let’s help our own country folks first.
You're clueless. Let social Darwinism prevail; let natural selection work its magic. That is the path to success, not fallacious humanist ideology.
Enjoyed the article very much.
I think Abigail’s points are absolutely correct….
The political divide is being massively redefined as a division between those who believe in America’s aspirational promise, its institutions and its form of decision-making (she calls those folks the believers) versus those who believe America is irredeemably flawed to the point that everything - literally everything - needs to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt (she calls these folks the Cynics).
She then points out the policy positions people are advocating for are based on whether they’re believers or cynics. She points out that the political fault line is now shaping up to be less and less about what was previously thought of as “right” vs “left” and more and more about whether America still works and is worth saving or not.
In this regard, she is exactly correct….
I am a believer and I hope many more people will understand the very dark path that the cynics wish to take society…
For a post made on MLK Day (who was a believer!), she points out how much the political fault lines have changed.
i reserve the right to be BOTH a believer and a cynic.
Me, too.
Where do we go to get our hope back?
From being willing to actively oppose evil.
Aye, but there's more to it, isn't there. This will be a slog, for us dissidents, since there seems to be no authority to whom we can appeal.
Don't get me wrong; I know how to drive on. I'm a 22 year Army vet. What I don't see is the prize. Freedom yes, but we're not looking to restore something we believe in. It's all gone bad--what are we struggling to do?
Hope is for the helpless.
Hope is for those willing to act. The helpless lack courage as well as initiative.
The believers and the cynics Abigail discusses. Both are beyond us. Neither remains true to our ideals.
Nonsense.
Abigail I respect you but I find this analysis to be very muddled. I can’t figure out to which of these distinct & opposing “camps” I belong according to your descriptions of them. For example, I cherish our founding principles as codified in our founding documents, love this country like family & know it is the greatest nation ever created on this earth. However, I’m angry & disgusted by what is being done to it by cynical, destructive & intentional forces & firmly believe we are on the precipice of losing the republic. So which am I, a believer or a cynic?
You've honed in beautifully on the main problem with Abigail's piece. It slices and dices, but offers no unified picture of what is happening right now. It's more like a letter from a kidnapper using letters cut from a number of newspapers and magazines.
it’s inappropriate, but can’t stop laughing about this, the kidnapper analogy
Well & cleverly put. Thanks.
What were Trump’s attacks on the “institutions” that warrants his inclusion on the list of cynics? Doesn’t the attacks on Trump by the institutions of the DOJ, FBI, CIA, the Brookings Institute warrant a mention? Surely Hilary Clinton’s creation of the Russifate scandal from whole cloth counts as cynical, yet no mention of her unique poison here