A couple of weeks ago, in a lengthy piece at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan lamented about the “radicalization of the American elite against liberalism.” While this appears so to Sullivan’s eyes, this radicalization doesn’t much involve conversions. It’s not as if card-carrying liberals suddenly became card-carrying leftists of varying stripes. Fellow travelers and quislings there are, but that’s always the case with movements.
Sullivan does point out that conservatives haven’t radicalized; they’ve pretty much been anchored to the same center-right beliefs and values for a generation or more.
An astonished Sullivan penned this:
Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting -- reacting against something that is right in front of our noses?
What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.
Why does Sullivan’s angst matter, regardless of how he misconstrues the cause?
Because
progressivism is a failed doctrine -- or as Lenin may have said,
progressivism was useful until it wasn’t, just as socialism is
transitional to communism. Today, we’re not up against progressives
gone bad, but against a new generation of elites who’ve been inculcated
with hard-left worldviews. These elites were nurtured to be this way,
in many cases, coming from milieus -- families, communities, schools --
that increasingly embrace Marxist doctrine, whatever mask it wears. ............To Read More...
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