I spoke to Melody Rachel about the fundamental flaws at the root of the Critical Social Justice movement. At this point in the Culture Wars, we have layers upon layers of discourses, narratives and partisan speaking points about “The Left,” “The Right,” “The Woke,” and “The Anti-Woke.” The goal of our conversation was to take things back to first principles and consider the good, principled aims of the left/progressives to address the needs of the most vulnerable and oppose unjust prejudice and discrimination. Are the methods of the Critical Social Justice movement effective for doing that? Are they ethical? I think not. By abandoning liberal principles of individual liberty, viewpoint diversity and respect for our common humanity and left-wing focus on material reality and socio-economic class, these scholars and activists shot the left in the foot and rendered its progressivism unfit for purpose. We need to fix that.
We need more wonderful Liberal thinkers and explainers, like Helen Pluckrose in this world.
We can agree, in principle, on the problems (ie, be concerned with the needs of others) and engage in conversation, disagreement, and persuasion to get to potential solutions (trade-offs). We can also all look to real data on the successes and failures of policy actions and make reasonable changes. How do we know??? That's how we already got the Liberal things that work (and don't).
Thank you for this conversation!!! 🙏🤙
Helen Pluckrose has an ability to explain these contradictions and fairly complicated postmodern theories in an understandable and reasonable way. Her discussion partner is not quite as astute but she asks the right questions that allow Helen beautifully lay out what it means to be a liberal and clarify some of confused ideas that swirl around on social media.