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Person: "We can't stop Critical Social Justice because there's no alternative!"
Me: Yes there is. Universal liberalism. It worked before and still works. Somehow, everybody forgot that. The same universal liberalism of the Civil Rights Movements that rose above the radicalism.
Me: Yes there is. Universal liberalism. It worked before and still works. Somehow, everybody forgot that. The same universal liberalism of the Civil Rights Movements that rose above the radicalism.
The "somehow everybody forgot that" part isn't really mysterious either. Critical education programs have been systematically teaching critical theory instead of universal liberalism to our children for forty years, especially over the last twenty. That's how we forgot.
What does universal liberalism look like? It looks like seeing every person as an individual, capable of good AND evil and of making honest mistakes. Judging them by the content of their character and earned merit, not other factors, against a standard of universal humanity.
These principles can only be maintained when they are upheld by deferral to external standards that strive to be as objective as possible and correct to improve upon that ideal. Rule of law. Science. Reasonable person standards. Reason. Minimizing bias and self-interest.
As we see, these principles are fragile because they do not conform with many aspects of human nature, but they work. It is hard work to maintain them, and they have been under threat for a long time, not just by self-interested Neo-Marxists on the left but also on the right.
Every human being can easily fall prey to the temptations to forward self-interest and one's own interpretation of their lived experience over the coldness of objectivity. No one likes to be wrong or to lose against a law, especially one that encodes injustices. It's hard.
Universal liberalism is worth it, though. It is a means of resolving conflicts that, while always imperfect, removes much of the bias and self-interest that poisons all other approaches. And it has the capacity to self-reform and improve, and we have mechanisms for that.
Protest is a means in universally liberal systems, but rioting, looting, arson, are violence are not. Struggle sessions and public humiliation are not. Judging people by their race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or other factors is not a legitimate means in ANY direction.
Critical theories have been eroding our confidence and poisoning the well of the principles it stands on for a century, especially over the last fifty, forty, and twenty years. They whisper venomous lies in a saccharine voice that say our baser nature is better, more fair.
They pervert liberal principles by twisting them into perverted new versions of themselves. "Everyone has bias," it says, "so let's see who's winning. Their biases must be given special treatment." And so they foment grievances, envy, and hate in the name of "justice."
And humans aren't perfect, and we have a long history of having got things wrong, usually more wrong than we do now (the moral arc of the universe does seem to bend toward justice). So there are copious examples for these distortions to make themselves look wise and insightful.
I'm not religious, so it makes no sense for me to call critical theories Satanic, but if I accept the mythology of Satan as the Deceiver, that's exactly what they are. They foment the worst of human nature and inflame grievances, self-pity, and self-interest as necessary goods.
Universal liberalism is fragile, and it can be infected by this, but it is also strong, and it is right. It has survived these attacks before, and it can again. These critical theories do not have the moral high ground. They pervert it and turn it to evil. Reject them.
Universal liberalism was the answer, and it is the answer. It defeated the critical theory "liberation" and "power" movements of the late 1960s and made REAL progress, and it can keep doing that. Treat people as individuals who all have a common humanity. It works.
