Despite 'credentials' that ought to endear him to the Left, Mr. Sullivan has learned the hard way that he still has too much good sense to count as one of them:
As for objective reality, I was at an event earlier this week — not on a campus — when I made what I thought was the commonplace observation that Jim Crow laws no longer exist. Uncomprehending stares came back at me. What planet was I on? Not only does Jim Crow still exist, but slavery itself never went away! When I questioned this assertion by an African-American woman, I was told it was “not my place” to question her reality. After all, I’m white.
The reason I can't take Sully all that seriously is that, while he sees through the insane lies of the Left, he refuses to do the one thing necessary to combat them effectively in the present constellation of circumstances, namely, support Donald Trump and his administration. Sullivan's deranged hatred of the man blinds him to Trump's political usefulness in beating back the destructive Left.
Look: I don’t doubt the good intentions of the new identity politics — to expand the opportunities for people previously excluded. I favor a politics that never discriminates against someone for immutable characteristics — and tries to make sure that as many people as possible feel they have access to our liberal democracy. But what we have now is far more than the liberal project of integrating minorities. It comes close to an attack on the liberal project itself. Marxism with a patina of liberalism on top is still Marxism — and it’s as hostile to the idea of a free society as white nationalism is. So if you wonder why our discourse is now so freighted with fear, why so many choose silence as the path of least resistance, or why the core concepts of a liberal society — the individual’s uniqueness, the primacy of reason, the protection of due process, an objective truth — are so besieged, this is one of the reasons.
Although Sullivan goes too far when he implies that it is never justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of immutable characteristics, see below, I basically agree with his little speech. I agree with his four core concepts.
In particular, I oppose the tribalism of those who see others as mere tokens of racial/ethnic/sexual types and who identify themselves in the same way. Tribalism could be defined as precisely this reduction of a person to a mere token or instance of a racial/ethnic/sexual type, whether the person is oneself or another. It is a refusal to countenance the potential if not actual uniqueness of the individual. The Left is tribal in this sense but so is the Alt-Right. What they have in common is the reduction of individual identity, personal identity, to group identity. My brand of conservatism resists this reduction and attempts to navigate a via media between the identity-political extremes.
I have found it difficult to get these ideas across to my open-minded and good-natured alt-right interlocutors.
They will tell me that, as a matter of fact, people identify tribally. I agree. My point, however, is that such identification is not conducive to social harmony and that we ought to at least try to transcend our tribalism.
The claim that such-and-such ought to be done cannot be refuted by the fact that it is not done. The propositions that people ought not sexually molest children, ought not drive drunk, ought not embezzle, etc. cannot be refuted by invoking the fact that they do. The same goes for institutions. The existence of an institution does not morally justify its existence.
The claim that people ought to do A could, however, be refuted if it could be shown that people, or some group of people, cannot do A. Ought implies can. I cannot reasonably demand of blacks, say, that they think and act less tribally if they are simply incapable of so thinking and acting.
So my interlocutors' point might be that urging people to be less tribal is empty preaching that unreasonably demands that people do what they cannot do. To which my response will be that many blacks and Hispanics and women — who can be thought of as a 'tribe' in an extended sense of the term — do transcend their tribal identities. For example, while Hispanics would naturally like there to be more Hispanics in the USA, many of them are able to appreciate that illegal immigration ought not be tolerated.
You might say that for Hispanics like these, their self-identification as a rational animal, zoon logikon, in Aristotle's sense, trumps their self-identification as Hispanic.
There are higher and lower, noble and base, modes of self-identification. Philosopher versus cocksman, say. You can guess my view: self-identification in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex is toward the base end of the scale.
Do I deny that I am a white male? Not at all. What's more, those attributes are essential to me. To speak with the philosophers: I am a white male in every possible world in which I exist. I cannot be an animal at all unless I have some immutable characteristics. (And to think of them as socially constructed is the height of leftist lunacy.) Then why is it base to identify in terms of these characteristics? Because there are higher modes of self-identification.
What makes them higher or better? They are less divisive and more conducive to social harmony. We are social animals and we benefit from cooperation. While competition is good in that it breeds excellence, conflict and enmity are bad. If we can learn to see one another as unique individuals, as persons, as rational beings rather than as interchangeable tokes of racial/ethnic/sexual types, then we are more likely to achieve more mutually beneficial social interactions.
The higher self-identifications are also more reflective of our status as free moral agents. I didn't choose my race or sex, but I did choose and continue to choose to develop myself as an individual, to actualize my potential for self-individuation. My progress along that line of self-development is something I can be proud of. By contrast there is something faintly absurd and morally dubious about black pride, white pride, gay pride, and the like. You're proud to be white? Why? You had no say in the matter. Nancy Pelosi is apparently ashamed to be white. That is equally mistaken.
Am I saying that race doesn't matter? No. Race does matter, but it matters less than leftists and alt-rightists think and more than some old-time (sane) liberals and conservatives like Dennis Prager think. (See Dennis Prager on Liberalism, Leftism, and Race.) Certain racial and ethnic groups are better equipped to appreciate, i.e., both understand and value, the points I have been making. Part of it has to do with intelligence. Asians and Jews, as groups, are more intelligent than blacks and Hispanics as groups. That is just a fact, and there are no racist facts. (A fact about race is not a racist fact.) What's true cannot be racist or sexist.
I spoke above of the uniqueness of the individual. I know that sounds like vacuous sermonizing and utter bullshit to many ears. But to adequately discuss it we would have to enter metaphysics. Some other time. But please note that ameliorative politics must be grounded in political theory which rests on normative ethics which presuppose philosophical anthropology which leads us back to metaphysics.
I should stop now. I have given my alt-right sparring partners enough to punch back at. Have at it, boys. Comments crisp and concise are best. People don't read long comments. Many short, good; one long, bad.
Addendum: Is it ever morally justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of an immutable characteristic?
Of course it is. I flunked my Army pre-induction physical. The Army discriminated against me because I hear out of only one ear. Southern Pacific Railroad did the same when, following in the footsteps of my quondam hero, Jack Kerouac, I tried to get a job as a switchman. Examples are easily multiplied. Want to join the Army? There are age restrictions. You can't be over 40. Should every combat role in the mlitary be open to females? Obviously not.
You would have to be as willfully stupid as Nancy Pelosi to think that all discrimination is unjust.