One of the few things for which I honor the left was their defense of the working class back in the 19th century. Viewed charitably, the left's advocacy for the working class was to defend its right not to become bourgeois and middle class overnight, to remain within a tribal culture of the working man and his trade, a reality in which the working man experienced himself dignified by his work, defended by his labor union and exploited by his employer.
There is a good argument that, in the triumph of the bourgeoisie after the Napoleonic Wars, there was a tendency for the new middle class to legislate for and on behalf of the bourgeois view of the world, or as we would say, from inside the bourgeois bubble: markets, comparative advantage, anti-mercantilist, and anti all combinations in restraint of trade such as merchant guilds and labor unions. It's the science!
To put the left's critique of capitalism in the best light, we can argue that, whatever the economics of the case, most people shrink from offering themselves as naked individuals to the gods of the market. They want protection from the cold winds of economic fortune.
So the left made the point, in its critique of the bourgeois, that the bourgeoisie should not denigrate and demonize the natural instinct of working people to protect themselves from the hurricane winds of the market by forming into various collective organizations, and that it was perfectly natural and reasonable for them to prefer their working-class culture to the middle-class culture of the bourgeoisie.
Let us generalize this point, that people have a right to live according to their lights, and that it is cruel and unjust for fully enlightened people to demand that less-enlightened people abandon their modest inherited culture and accept the fully enlightened culture of the fully enlightened, on pain of marginalization as superstitious bigots and haters.
So. Today we have the fully enlightened class becoming impatient with, not to say contemptuous of, ordinary middle-class people that want to live in a middle-class culture of marriage, children, career, nation, and Christianity. These deplorables are racists, bigots, homophobes, haters, and xenophobes, and they should be thrown off social media and lose their jobs for expressing their hateful beliefs.
Hey kids! Remember when it was wrong, wrong, to penalize the working class for their somewhat less than enlightened and evolved beliefs? Back in the good old days? And wrong, wrong, to fire Communist school-teachers and to Hollywood-blacklist Communist movie directors?
That's the point about tolerance. It's about the right to be wrong, to live and believe in a benighted way universally condemned by all the best and brightest.
What upsets me is the way that the educated class is now voting for Democrats, i.e., the social-justice radical left. Do my educated and credentialed friends not understand that, after the left has finished dispatching the deplorables to Outer Slobbovia, it will then start to demonize anyone in the educated class that doesn't conform in all respects to the latest talking points from lefty central?
There's a piece today from Commentary laying out all the foolish identity politics pronouncements on the Kavanaugh nomination from all the usual MSM suspects. You wonder: do they really believe all that rubbish or are they tactically trimming their sails to the political wind?
The answer is that they are fools and cowards. Only when they themselves are the targets of the SJW mob will they begin to get a glimmer of understanding about the whole corpus of western wisdom such as due process, and presumption of innocence, and individual rights. And the right to be wrong.
The natural thing for social animals is to fly as a flock, just like birds do. Why does a flock of birds suddenly change direction? Who knows? It's instinctive. The conceit of humans is that we can act, not just on the basis of instinct or the unconscious, but also on the basis of reason and logic, not just on the accumulation of unconscious cultural practice, but conscious deliberation and judgment.
That is the whole point of law. When something goes wrong in the public square then we call up judges first to tease out the facts of the case from conflicting testimony, and then determine, after the fact, what should have happened, and who has been damaged and has the right to redress. It's all terribly boring and toxically masculine. It's much more fun, and emotionally satisfying, to get up a mob and have a witch hunt. Back in the day, everyone agreed that lynching, stringing people up without benefit of a trial, was monstrous and barbarous. But when it came to Clarence Thomas, his "high-tech lynching" by lefty activists was A-OK.
Anyone that goes along with the new witchcraft is a fool. Because sooner or later -- whether you are a man, woman or non-binary -- the witches are going to come for you.
But these days you won't have to suffer a ḧigh-tech lynching. That's for the birds. These days we prefer "social-media" lynching.
There is a good argument that, in the triumph of the bourgeoisie after the Napoleonic Wars, there was a tendency for the new middle class to legislate for and on behalf of the bourgeois view of the world, or as we would say, from inside the bourgeois bubble: markets, comparative advantage, anti-mercantilist, and anti all combinations in restraint of trade such as merchant guilds and labor unions. It's the science!
To put the left's critique of capitalism in the best light, we can argue that, whatever the economics of the case, most people shrink from offering themselves as naked individuals to the gods of the market. They want protection from the cold winds of economic fortune.
So the left made the point, in its critique of the bourgeois, that the bourgeoisie should not denigrate and demonize the natural instinct of working people to protect themselves from the hurricane winds of the market by forming into various collective organizations, and that it was perfectly natural and reasonable for them to prefer their working-class culture to the middle-class culture of the bourgeoisie.
Let us generalize this point, that people have a right to live according to their lights, and that it is cruel and unjust for fully enlightened people to demand that less-enlightened people abandon their modest inherited culture and accept the fully enlightened culture of the fully enlightened, on pain of marginalization as superstitious bigots and haters.
So. Today we have the fully enlightened class becoming impatient with, not to say contemptuous of, ordinary middle-class people that want to live in a middle-class culture of marriage, children, career, nation, and Christianity. These deplorables are racists, bigots, homophobes, haters, and xenophobes, and they should be thrown off social media and lose their jobs for expressing their hateful beliefs.
Hey kids! Remember when it was wrong, wrong, to penalize the working class for their somewhat less than enlightened and evolved beliefs? Back in the good old days? And wrong, wrong, to fire Communist school-teachers and to Hollywood-blacklist Communist movie directors?
That's the point about tolerance. It's about the right to be wrong, to live and believe in a benighted way universally condemned by all the best and brightest.
What upsets me is the way that the educated class is now voting for Democrats, i.e., the social-justice radical left. Do my educated and credentialed friends not understand that, after the left has finished dispatching the deplorables to Outer Slobbovia, it will then start to demonize anyone in the educated class that doesn't conform in all respects to the latest talking points from lefty central?
There's a piece today from Commentary laying out all the foolish identity politics pronouncements on the Kavanaugh nomination from all the usual MSM suspects. You wonder: do they really believe all that rubbish or are they tactically trimming their sails to the political wind?
The answer is that they are fools and cowards. Only when they themselves are the targets of the SJW mob will they begin to get a glimmer of understanding about the whole corpus of western wisdom such as due process, and presumption of innocence, and individual rights. And the right to be wrong.
The natural thing for social animals is to fly as a flock, just like birds do. Why does a flock of birds suddenly change direction? Who knows? It's instinctive. The conceit of humans is that we can act, not just on the basis of instinct or the unconscious, but also on the basis of reason and logic, not just on the accumulation of unconscious cultural practice, but conscious deliberation and judgment.
That is the whole point of law. When something goes wrong in the public square then we call up judges first to tease out the facts of the case from conflicting testimony, and then determine, after the fact, what should have happened, and who has been damaged and has the right to redress. It's all terribly boring and toxically masculine. It's much more fun, and emotionally satisfying, to get up a mob and have a witch hunt. Back in the day, everyone agreed that lynching, stringing people up without benefit of a trial, was monstrous and barbarous. But when it came to Clarence Thomas, his "high-tech lynching" by lefty activists was A-OK.
Anyone that goes along with the new witchcraft is a fool. Because sooner or later -- whether you are a man, woman or non-binary -- the witches are going to come for you.
But these days you won't have to suffer a ḧigh-tech lynching. That's for the birds. These days we prefer "social-media" lynching.