Columbia Professor Urges Democrats to End ‘Disastrous’ Identity Politics, by Thomas Williams.
“American liberalism in the twenty-first century is in crisis,” writes Columbia University Professor Mark Lilla, due in no small part to its embrace of a “disastrous” identity politics that divides instead of uniting.
In his newly released book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, Lilla, a self-described “frustrated American liberal,” decries the implosion of the Democratic Party and liberalism itself, brought on by a growing disconnect from middle America and the inability to paint a compelling vision for the future.
Lilla’s new work expands upon “The End of Identity Liberalism,” an essay he wrote shortly after last November’s Presidential election. In it, he urged fellow liberals to face up to their party’s share in responsibility for Trump’s victory, which Lilla attributed to the rise “identity liberalism.”
Liberalism, Lilla contends in his book, is rightly considered by many “as a creed professed mainly by educated urban elites cut off from the rest of the country who see the issues of the day principally through the lens of identities.”
The core of their error, Lilla suggests, is that Democrats have thrown themselves headlong into identity politics, focusing on what divides rather than what unites. As a result, many feel alienated from a party that once knew how to bring people together. …
The liberal vision … which earlier centered on shared values that bind the nation together, eventually gave way to “a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow and exclusionary self-definition that is now cultivated in our colleges and universities,” he writes. …
Democrats therefore no longer appeal to Americans, he argues, but rather to “women, Hispanics, ‘ethnic Americans,’ the LGBT community, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”
Identity politics is racist and sexist, and makes society tribal. The classic liberalism of focusing on the individual is fairer, more natural, and leads to a harmonious society.
The western left, led by the US, switched from classic liberalism to identity politics starting from the 1960s. They champion the rights of all identity groups — except white straight cis-gender males — in an effort to convince all of the members of those identity groups to vote for them. In conjunction with wholesale immigration from the third world, they figured they were onto a sure-fire long term electoral winner. Once Obama was elected, they were convinced it was Democrats forever in the US because of demographics.
What an ugly corrupt mess brought on the by the left. Civil war is the ultimate in disharmony, but it is where identity politics is taking us as tribalism takes over.
Notice how the left is ripping down statues of white straight cis-gender males? Perfect identity politics.
hat-tip Charles
