Those who have read the Treatise section of The Libertennial will be familiar with the following excerpt, in which I note that that the modern Left has transmuted the essence of Marxism into a new kind of collectivism - one that revolves around race and gender as proxies for the more traditional (and discredited) concept of class struggle:
"The Left remains diametrically opposed to real liberty...It greets constructive criticism with outlandish yet predictable charges of racism, sexism, or — when specific allegations fail — “systemic” bigotry...Minorities and women are not viewed by the Left as equal human beings with equal abilities and equal rights; they are objectified for their alleged weaknesses and held up as the new proletariat, for whose sake the capitalist system is finally to be torn down and replaced with an actually oppressive system of top-down social engineering."
In a an engaging piece for NYMag.com, liberal writer Jonathan Chait makes some strikingly similar observations:
"The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.
The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones."
...This is precisely why Millennials need to be more skeptical of the monolithic ideology espoused by the "social justice" crowd. What Chait only hints at in his article is that the modern Left's doctrinaire conformism poses the greatest threat to women and minorities who refuse to toe the line, and who would rather be distinguished by their moral attributes and diverse range of individual talents than defined by their race or gender. Many on the Left expect that a person like myself - a "middle aged white man," according to a recent Twitter detractor who apparently mistook my opposition to reverse racism as evidence of aged wisdom - might happen to have non-Leftist views, and so they casually write me off with reference to my skin color and gender. But if I happened to be female or black, I would be viewed as something much worse - an ungrateful enemy of the cause, a despicable human being too selfish or stupid to subscribe to an ideology designed to blend me into the greater horde of people who look like me. The worst punishments in history have often been reserved for those perceived as traitors.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that most ordinary Americans disavow racism, sexism, and any screed that would belittle or punish people on the basis of anything other than individual character. It's now time to add p.c. Leftism to that list.
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Originally Posted by Chris
