Illiberal liberalism and knowledge vs. thinking

Comment published in New York Times blog in response to op-ed essay by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, “Stop the knee-jerk liberalism that hurts its own cause,” June 29, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/opinion/sunday/liberalism-united-states.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer:

In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of illiberal liberalism. Oppressed-obsessed, they stick to identity politics because in the middle-class, university-educated and corporate world, including at universities, these Affirmative-Action-like claims of injustice have great traction. Yet, much of the left, from Occupy Wall Street to Ferguson to today’s more left-wing Democratic candidates, is actually centered on other motifs. 


The in some ways destructive pull on the liberal-left of identity politics and all that goes with it is intrinsically advantaged by the dominance more than ever, thanks to social media, of information over thought, and a politics of exemplification (the presented) over critique (how it is thought).

The lesson for the left in particular, and perhaps the future of democracy, is that so much pulls us downwards towards what we already know and find obvious, and away from the careful thought that we need in political life. And that the left needs more than the right and the center, not only because it is traditionally a great source of its strength, but also as otherwise we allow the pull of evident knowledge and moralizing judgment that seem to not require discussion to prevail over our better motives.

Marx famously said that the philosophers have interpreted the world, and it remains to act. The opposite is the case today. Speech and action are free enough and not disappearing; hard thought is as rare as the democracy to come.