Cult of the woke’s illiberal dogma
There is a problem in the functioning of our political system. It is one that is beyond mere clashes over public policy preferences. Those, as the biblical expression has it, “have always been with us.”
The problem lies in a new, or at least emergent, understanding of politics itself; of overbearing adherence to ideological certitudes; and the elevation of political differences into litmus tests of character and moral worth. Are you for X? Why then, you are a good and holy person. Are you for Y? Why then, you are a vile fiend.
Politics, for some people today, is what fundamentalist religions were in days past: a field of doctrines and dogmas, along with punishments and secular hellfire for those who do not believe. Politics, especially from the high liberal or “woke” perspective, is a call, something close to an actual order, to agree with a set of opinions on certain subjects that are handed down from above.
On these matters, politics is not a call for debate, and certainly not one for compromise. To oppose or dissent on these topics is seen as a moral failure, and summarily leads to accusations that the dissenter is “racist” or a “denier,” these being the favourite terms of what passes for a rebuttal.
In the right-thinking, politically saturated cosmos, certain things are not supposed to be right. These can span from the clearly ludicrous — say, Dr. Seuss being taken from library shelves — to an issue with vast implications for all the world — like global warming. Politics, as it is practised today, drives every genuine contest of opinion into the realm of specious notions of morality.
There was a time when people could disagree, even on fundamental matters, and still respect one another; when they could recognize that honourable opponents had an equal sense of certainty as they. People had the generosity of mind to welcome the thought that an opponent — however disagreeable or attuned to a different perspective that person might be — he or she might, by some dim chance, be right. People also accepted that there was a slight possibility that they themselves could be wrong.
What a concept: I could be wrong. Do you think any of the people who are piling on Dr. Seuss have the afterglow of a thought along the lines of: “Hey, maybe we are pushing this stuff a little too far?” Not a chance. Their view is fundamentalist.
That time when people could argue and disagree and still retain respect for the integrity of their opponent is, if not gone, in deep eclipse. Taking a wayward position on any current political dogmas very much aligns with the ancient notion of heresy. Today, the stake and the consuming fire have been transmuted into obliteration by Twitter mobs and cancellation frenzies.
Salem burned the witches. Twitter and Facebook bans seek to nullify and disappear anyone with a second opinion on any issue that is determined by the right-thinking class as settled or correct. (Merely as a side thought, a world ruled by the judgment of
Jack Dorsey has less appeal than living in a shoebox.)
These are not times of genuine debate; for open, honest contests of ideas; or for (dear Lord, forgive the adjective) “respectful” intellectual exchange. These are the days of branding the whole of a person by his or her ideas, by his or her allegiance to the dogmas of the moment.
These are the days of progressive judgment on generations past. The generations that constructed the social edifice in which open thoughts and reasonable differences could be ventilated without punitive response. Those that sacrificed for the freedoms we enjoy today.
But to so many today, the generations that came before our own must be shunned; the past builders and leaders of the nation must be judged by the standards of our clearly superior moral and political sensibilities. How arrogant it is to pass judgments on the dead.
The woke of our day are Cromwellian, or if you prefer Leninist, in their furious certitudes; they wish to condemn, and seek to ostracize from historical memory the very people who brought our magnificent liberties to life. Those before us were never perfect. But it would be prudent to be hesitant about proclaiming that they were less than we are; that they were not as good, or as intelligent or, to use the word par excellence of the moment, that they were not as “sensitive.”
How many people in this day and age can honestly say that, if they were living in earlier times, they would not act and think as people acted and thought back then? These current obsessions are, to say the least, undignified.
The current purge of the unenlightened — via progressive censorship, internet blocking, dismissal from corporations or universities, ostracism — are unworthy of the inheritance of freedom and democracy the countries of the West have received through the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before us.
THESE ARE THE DAYS OF PROGRESSIVE JUDGMENT ON GENERATIONS PAST.