Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The totalitarian logic of liberalism

Step One: Identify a shared common-sense understanding that guides social relations (E.g., "Human beings are born male or female as determined by their genetics and anatomy.")
 
Step Two: Identify a minority group that falls outside that understanding. (E.g., "There's a handful of people that don’t identify as the same sex as their anatomy would indicate.")
 
Step Three: Destroy the shared common understand by characterizing it as mere bigotry--causing grievous harm to the affected minority and having no positive social value in itself. (E.g., "Assuming that everyone belongs to one sex or another as determined by their genetics and anatomy is just cis-normativity. It hurts the transgendered and distorts social reality.")
 
Step Four: Propose an expansion of managerial liberalism as the only way of keeping social peace in the absence of the shared common-sense understanding. (E.g., "Sexual identification is now determined by each individual for him or herself--children included. Programs, policies and protections must be put in place in all institutions and inculcated into everyone to ensure that self-identification is always respected. No one who accepts the common-sense understanding as meaningful can be entrusted with any kind of authority.")
 
Repeat.