I would like to talk briefly about depolarization
on the Left and the Right, because I think
there's a technical problem that needs to
be addressed.
So here's what I've been thinking about.
It's been obvious to me for some time that,
for some reason, the fundamental claim of
post-modernism is something like an infinite
number of interpretations and no canonical
overarching narrative.
Okay, but the problem with that is: okay,
now what?
No narrative, no value structure that is canonically
overarching, so what the hell are you going
to do with yourself?
How are you going to orient yourself in the
world?
Well, the post-modernists have no answer to
that.
So what happens is they default—without
any real attempt to grapple with the cognitive
dissonance—they default to this kind of
loose, egalitarian Marxism.
And if they were concerned with coherence
that would be a problem, but since they're
not concerned with coherence it doesn't seem
to be a problem.
But the force that's driving the activism
is mostly the Marxism rather than the post-modernism.
It's more like an intellectual gloss to hide
the fact that a discredited economic theory
is being used to fuel an educational movement
and to produce activists.
But there's no coherence to it.
It's not like I'm making this up, you know.
Derrida himself regarded—and Foucault as
well—they were barely repentant Marxists.
They were part of the student revolutions
in France in the 1960s, and what happened
to them, essentially—and what happened to
Jean-Paul Sartre for that matter—was that
by the end of the 1960s you couldn't be conscious
and thinking and pro-Marxist.
There's so much evidence that had come pouring
in from the former Soviet Union, from the
Soviet Union at that point, and from Maoist
China, of the absolutely devastating consequences
of the doctrine that it was impossible to
be apologetic for it by that point in time.
So the French intellectuals in particular
just pulled off a sleight of hand and transformed
Marxism into post-modern identity politics.
And we've seen the consequence of that.
It's not good.
It's a devolution into a kind of tribalism
that will tear us apart on the Left and on
the Right.
In my house, I have a very large collection
of socialist, realist paintings from the former
Soviet Union—propaganda pieces, but also
kind of harsh impressionist pieces of working-class
people and so forth—and I collected them
for a variety of reasons.
Now you could debate about the propriety of
that given the murderousness of those regimes.
And fair enough, I have my reasons.
But I don't have paintings from the Nazi era
in my house, and I wouldn't.
And that's been a puzzlement to me because
I regard the communists, the totalitarian
communist regimes, as just as murderous as
the Nazi regimes.
But there's an evil associated with the Nazi
regime that seems more palpable in some sense.
So I've been thinking about that for a long
time.
And then I've been thinking about a corollary
to that, which is part of the problem with
our current political debate.
On the Right, I think we've identified markers
for people who have gone too far in their
ideological presuppositions.
And it looks to me like the marker we've identified
is racial superiority.
I think we've known that probably since the
end of World War II, but we saw a pretty good
example of it in the 1960s with William Buckley,
because Buckley, when he put out his conservative
magazine, the David Duke types kind of attached
themselves to it, and he said, "No, here's
the boundary.
You guys are on the wrong side of the boundary.
I'm not with you."
And Ben Shapiro recently did this, for example,
as well in the aftermath of the Charlottesville
incident.
So what's interesting is that on the conservative
side of the spectrum we've figured out how
to box-in the radicals and say, "No, you're
outside the domain of acceptable opinion."
Now here's the issue: We know that things
can go too far on the Right and we know that
things can go too far on the Left.
But we don't know what the markers are for
going too far on the Left.
And I would say that it's ethically incumbent
on those who are liberal or Left-leaning to
identify the markers of pathological extremism
on the Left and to distinguish themselves
from the people who hold those pathological
viewpoints.
And I don't see that that's being done.
And I think that's a colossal ethical failure,
and it may doom the liberal-Left project.
The Lefties have their point.
They're driven fundamentally by a horror of
inequality and the catastrophes that inequality
produces—and fair enough, because inequality
is a massive social force and it does produce,
it can produce, catastrophic consequences.
So to be concerned about that politically
is reasonable.
But we do know that that concern can go too
far.
So I've suggested that there's a triumvirate
of concepts that have the same potentially
catastrophic outcomes when implemented as
the racial superiority doctrines.
Diversity, inclusivity, and equity as a triumvirate—even
though you could have an intelligent conversation
about two of those anyways.
But I would say that of the three, equity
is the most unacceptable.
The doctrine of equality of outcome.
And it seems to me that that's where people
who are thoughtful on the Left should draw
the line, and say, "No.
Equality of opportunity?
Not only fair enough, but laudable.
But equality of outcome…?" it's like, "No,
you've crossed the line.
We're not going there with you."
Now maybe that's wrong.
Maybe it's not equity.
That's my candidate for it.
But it is definitely the case that you can
go too far on the Left and it's definitely
the case that we don't know where to draw
the line.
And that's a big problem.
An example of equality of outcome are attempts
being made now to implement the legislative
necessity to eliminate the gender pay gap.
That's a good example.
I mean you think, "Well no, that's not—like
there's nothing pathological about that."
It's like, "Oh yes there is!"
You have to set up a bureaucratic inquisition
to ensure that that's the case.
It's like—it's not good.
And that's actually a relatively—like, of
all the things that you could push for with
regards to equality of outcome, that's rather
simple and definable.
It's not even murky.
Once it starts to get murky it's just complex
beyond any rectification.
You cannot win if you play identity politics.
There's a bunch of reasons like—here's one:
"Let's push for equality of outcome."
All right, who measures it?
That's a big problem.
It's not a little problem.
It's not like, "We'll figure that out later."
Oh no, no, no.
The measurement problem is paramount.
So you don't solve that, you don't solve the
problem at all.
Who measures it?
"A bureaucracy."
Okay, which bureaucracy?
"Well, a large one that has its fingers everywhere."
Okay, that's problem number one.
And it's staffed by exactly the sort of people
that you don't want to staff it, by the way.
Next problem.
Which identities?
That's the intersectional problem.
The radical Leftists have already hit the
problem of intersectionality.
It's like, "Well, we've got race and gender,
let's say."
Well, okay, what about the intersection between
race and gender?
That's a multiplicative intersection, right?
So you might start with three racial categories
and two gender categories.
But you end up with six intersectional categories.
And then you're just getting started.
How many genders?
Hypothetically there's an infinite number.
What about racial groupings?
Are you going to include ethnicity?
Do you want to add class to that?
Do you want to add socioeconomic class?
How about attractiveness?
And every time you add another category to
the singular entities, you increase the multiplicative
entities in a multiplicative fashion.
What are you going to do?
Are you going to equate across all those categories?
Really?
And across what dimensions?
What are the dimensions of equality that you
want to establish?
It's just socioeconomic?
Is it just salary?
What about all the other ways that people
are unequal?
Are you just going to stop with economic inequality?
Are you?
It's a complete bloody catastrophe.
It's an absolute mess.
And intersectionality, the discovery of intersectionality
on the Left, is actually the radical Left's
discovery of the fundamental flaw in their
identity politics ideology.
Groups can be multiplied without limit.
That's not a problem; that's a fatal flaw.
And they've already discovered it, they just
haven't figured it out.
The reason that the West privileges the individual
is because we figured out 2,000 years ago,
3,000 years ago, that you can fractionate
group identity appropriately right down to
the level of the individual.
