So where does that leave us? Is your point that it's disappointing to you that the left is now as responsible for ideological hostility as the right? Because the left has always been just as hostile as the right.
(I was frustrated with your previous comment, but am not with this one; I'm just responding to it because you took the time to write it.)
But I don’t see why liberals (broadly defined) need to be so ideological or hostile. I can understand why evangelical Christians are the way they are. But liberals, especially highly educated ones, should be able to look at the facts and see what is and what isn’t.
> So where does that leave us? Is your point that it's disappointing to you that the left is now as responsible for ideological hostility as the right? Because the left has always been just as hostile as the right.
I’m disappointed that liberal elites (and I don’t mean that pejoratively—I include myself in that class) aren’t being the grownups and taking care of stability and our institutions. I’m not surprised that zealous young college students are embracing radical ideas. I’m surprised that university administrators and deans are egging them on.
I don’t think it was always like this. There was an interregnum between when conservatives controlled the institutions and the present when things were more… liberal. Even among the liberal elite there were libertarian and populist impulses, which seem to have been driven away, leaving a strident Puritanism.
It makes exactly the same points (young liberals from Yale undermining American society etc.) but its written 50 years ago, when American business was pumping lead into the air and painting houses with it, while other nations had already phased it out. And complains that no one listens to businessmen, and politics only cares about the environment and consumer safety.
This was written by a supreme court judge (who incidentally voted for Roe Vs Wade because his secretary nearly died from a backstreet abortion) so no dummy, yet his points seem ridiculous to us now. What leads you to think you're not making the same mistakes? Especially as you seem to acknowledge that in the past things were too much on the conservative side and it's kids today that are taking it too far.
Are Asian Americans, who are better off financially than whites in America underprivileged?
I talk about left-wing cancel culture because it’s a marked departure from certainly what’s been my experience. Unless we go down the path of calling progressivism a new religion, I think we have to posit that the cause of left-wing hostility to ideological pluralism has a different cause.
The overwrought nature of @otterley’s post suggested one possible explanation. If people genuinely believe that members of “unprivileged groups” suffer so much from an errant joke or political statement (even one made outside their presence) that it affects their ability to “have a good career, live in a nice place, and raise their family” then that might explain their hostility to any expression that may even remotely affect such “unprivileged groups.” If issues of race, gender, immigration status, etc., are literally life and death, then that justifies zealotry.
That mindset and reaction, in turn, seems to me to be a direct outgrowth of liberal paternalism. You have people preoccupied with harms to other people—harms that they are unable to experience directly and thus cannot put into perspective. Nonetheless, they’re convinced that they understand how society should be reshaped to help the people they’re concerned about. It’s a political agency problem.