Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy
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6. Ibram Rogers, “ ‘Merit Plea’ Inherently Racist as Argument Against Affirmative Action,” Diverse Education, November 19, 2012. http://diverseeducation.com/article/49589/
7. Ian Schwartz, “Van Jones: Republicans Who Want a Colorblind Meritocracy Have a Racial ‘Blind Spot,’ ” RealClearPolitics, December 5, 2016. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/05/van_jones_republicans_who_want_a_colorblind_meritocracy_have_a_racial_blind_spot.html
8. Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, CNN Transcripts, August 2, 2017. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1708/02/acd.01.html
9. Lauren Rankin, “Colorblindness Is the New Racism,” PolicyMic, July 22, 2013. https://mic.com/articles/55867/colorblindness-is-the-new-racism#.rqbARSvWO
10. Adia Harvey Wingfield, “Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive,” Atlantic, September 13, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/
11. Zach Stafford, “When You Say You ‘Don’t See Race,’ You’re Ignoring Racism, Not Helping Solve It,” Guardian, January 26, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/26/do-not-see-race-ignoring-racism-not-helping
12. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), p. 50.
13. Ibid., p. 10.
14. Ibid., p. 6.
15. Ibid., throughout; see, for example, p. 66.
16. Ibid., p. 42.
17. Dana Bash and Emily Sherman, “Sotomayor’s ‘Wise Latina’ Comment a Staple of Her Speeches,” CNN, June 8, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/05/sotomayor.speeches/
18. Wendy Doniger, “All Beliefs Welcome, Unless They Are Forced on Others,” On Faith. https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2008/09/09/all-beliefs-welcome-unless-the/578
19. There are many variables at play. Men tend to gravitate toward more dangerous work—construction, mining, logging, etc.—which is why men accounted for 92.3 percent of workplace fatalities in 2014. Men also work longer hours than women, no doubt in part because of the unequal division of labor when it comes to raising children. For more on this, see Mark J. Perry, “Some Thoughts on Equal Pay Day and the 23 Percent Gender Pay Gap Myth,” AEIdeas (American Enterprise Institute), April 11, 2016. http://www.aei.org/publication/some-thoughts-on-equal-pay-day-and-the-23-gender-pay-gap-myth/
20. “Cracking the Gender Code: Get 3x MORE Women in Computing,” Accenture and Girls Who Code, p. 3. https://www.accenture.com/t20161018T094638__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/next-gen-3/girls-who-code/Accenture-Cracking-The-Gender-Code-Report.pdf
21. Scott Alexander, “Contra Grant on Exaggerated Differences,” Slate Star Codex, August 7, 2017. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/
22. Christine Rosen, “You Will Not Think Outside the Box,” Commentary, September 2017. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/you-will-not-think-outside-box/
23. Nancy P. McKee and Linda Stone, Gender and Culture in America, 3rd edition (New York: Sloan Publishing, 2007), p. 7.
24. Jessica Neuwirth, Equal Means Equal: Why the Time for an Equal Rights Amendment Is Now (New York: New Press, 2015), p. 88. For a rousing rebuttal to both arguments, see Christina Villegas, “The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government,” Heritage Foundation, August 8, 2016. http://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-modern-feminist-rejection-constitutional-government#_ftnref22
25. Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 19.
26. Quoted in Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 25.
27. Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2011 [1957]), p. 26.
28. Isabel Knight, “Students Share Mixed Responses to George/West Collection,” Daily Gazette (Swarthmore), February 13, 2014. http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2014/02/13/students-share-mixed-responses-to-georgewest-collection/
29. Sandra Y. L. Korn, “The Doctrine of Academic Freedom,” Harvard Crimson, February 18, 2014. http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-red-line/article/2014/2/18/academic-freedom-justice/?page=single#
30. Hank Berrien, “Yale Students Scream to Block Free Speech,” Daily Wire, November 11, 2015. http://www.dailywire.com/news/1041/yale-students-scream-block-free-speech-hank-berrien
31. There is a rich tradition of this kind of writing, especially on the right, going back decades, starting with William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, running through The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and Tenured Radicals by Roger Kimball, and in full bloom today with such works as Sex and God at Yale by Nathaniel Harden, End of Discussion by Guy Benson and Mary Katherine Ham, Silenced by Kirsten Powers, The Victims’ Revolution by Bruce Bawer, The Intimidation Game by Kimberely Strassel, and many, many more.
32. See Charlotte Allen,“King of Fearmongers,” Weekly Standard, April 15, 2013. http://www.weeklystandard.com/king-of-fearmongers/article/714573
33. See “ADL Report: Anti-Semitic Targeting of Journalists During the 2016 Presidential Campaign; A Report from ADL’s Task Force on Harassment and Journalism,” Anti-Defamation League, October 19, 2016, p. 6. https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/press-center/CR_4862_Journalism-Task-Force_v2.pdf
34. Tariq Nasheed, Twitter, September 14, 2017. https://twitter.com/tariqnasheed/status/908463507246522368?lang=en. Tweets also available here, in case Mr. Nasheed ever removes them: https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2017/09/14/wait-what-tariq-nasheeds-take-on-how-ben-shapiro-masks-racist-rhetoric-sends-heads-to-desks/
35. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Why Is the Southern Poverty Law Center Targeting Liberals?,” New York Times, August 24, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/southern-poverty-law-center-liberals-islam.html?mcubz=1
36. As one college student wrote: “In other words, punching someone in the face and making racist comments about them are similarly perceived by the brain, activating many of the same pain receptors. And it’s clear from recent events that many UCLA students have been getting punched in the face.” Keshav Tadimeti, “Hurtful, Discriminatory Comments Should Not Be Defended as Free Speech,” Daily Bruin, May 16, 2016. http://dailybruin.com/2016/05/16/keshav-tadimeti-hurtful-discriminatory-comments-should-not-be-defended-as-free-speech/
37. Jencey Paz, “Hurt at Home,” Yale Herald, November 6, 2015, removed since original publication but still available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20151107010454/http://yaleherald.com/op-eds/hurt-at-home/
38. Jonathan Holloway, “An Announcement from Campus,” Yale College, April 28, 2016. http://yalecollege.yale.edu/deans-office/messages/announcement-campus
39. Some available organizations include: Learning and Interactive Vietnamese Experience; Asian American Students Alliance; Asian American Studies Task Force; Association of Native Americans at Yale, Undergraduate Organization; India at Yale; IvyQ (as in “Queer”); Japanese Undergraduate Students at Yale; Latina Women at Yale; Liberal Party; Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale; Sex and Sexuality Week Planning Board; Undergraduate First Generation Low Income Partnership; Women in Physics; Women’s Leadership Initiative at Yale; Yale Queer+Asian; Yale Urban Collective; Black Solidarity Conference at Yale; Yale Women’s Center; Yale Southeast Asian Movement; Q (again, as in “Queer”) Magazine; Alliance for Southeast Asian Students; Arab Students Association; Association of Salvadoreñas at Yale Undergraduate; Black Student Alliance at Yale; Brazil Club; Canadian Students’ Association at Yale [Talk about safe spaces!]; Chines
e American Students’ Association; Chinese Undergraduate Students at Yale; Club Colombia; Club of Argentine Students at Yale; Club of Romanian Students at Yale; Cuban-American Undergraduate Students’ Association; Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican Student Organization at Yale; DisOrient; Eritrean and Ethiopian Student Association at Yale; In the Q[as in “Queer”]loset; Japanese American Students Union; Kasama: The Filipino Club at Yale; Korean American Students at Yale; La Revolucion; La Société Française; Lo Stivale; Malaysian and Singaporean Association; Organization for Racial and Ethnic Openness; Russian Cultural Club; Sisters of All Nations; South Asian Society; Southeastern European Society; Student Association of Thais at Yale; Students of Nigeria; Swiss Students and Affiliates at Yale; Taiwanese American Society; German Society of Undergraduates at Yale University; Polish Students’ Society of Yale College; Vietnamese Student Association; Yale African Students Association; Yale Black Women’s Coalition; Yale British Undergraduates; Yale Caribbean Students’ Organization; Yale College Black Men’s Students Union; Yale College Student Czech and Slovak Society; Yale Dominican Student Association; Yale European Undergraduates; Yale Friends of Turkey; Yale Hawaii Institute; Yale Kala; Yale LGBTQ Cooperative; Yale Mexican Student Organization; Yale Scandinavian Society; Yale Undergraduate Portuguese Association; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Activism Collective; Margin: Student Perspectives from the Left; Middle Eastern Resolution through Education, Action & Dialogue; Party of the Left; Students for Justice in Palestine; and Yale NAACP.
40. See Rosalie Pedalino Porter, “The Case Against Bilingual Education,” Atlantic, May 1998, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/05/the-case-against-bilingual-education/305426/; Peter J. Duignan, “Bilingual Education: A Critique,” Hoover Institution. http://www.hoover.org/research/bilingual-education-critique
41. Lani Guinier, Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 5-6.
42. Lani Guinier, “The Triumph of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the Theory of Black Electoral Success,” Michigan Law Review 89, no. 5 (March 1991), p. 1108.
43. Ibid., p. 1103.
44. Ibid., p. 1107.
45. Paul Gigot, “Hillary’s Choice on Civil Rights: Back to the Future,” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 1993.
46. Yanan Wang, “A Course Originally Called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ Returns to Arizona State,” Washington Post, November 12, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/12/a-course-originally-called-the-problem-of-whiteness-returns-to-asu-as-racial-tensions-boil-over-on-campuses/?utm_term=.6127c9c2182f
47. Preston Mitchum, Twitter, July 23, 2017. https://twitter.com/PrestonMitchum/status/889165691529637888
48. Alia Wong, “Asian Americans and the Future of Affirmative Action,” Atlantic, June 28, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/asian-americans-and-the-future-of-affirmative-action/489023/
49. “The Model Minority Is Losing Patience,” Economist, October 3, 2015. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
50. Lee Bollinger, “Pro: Diversity Is Essential,” Newsweek, January 26, 2003. http://www.newsweek.com/pro-diversity-essential-135143
51. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Commencement Address at Howard University: ‘To Fulfill These Rights’—June 4, 1965,” American Presidency Project, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, eds. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=27021&st=Howard+University&st1=
52. Amy Wax and Larry Alexander, “Paying the Price for Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 2017. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html
53. Penn Alumni & Students, “Guest Column by 54 Penn Students & Alumni: Statement on Amy Wax and Charlottesville,” Daily Pennsylvanian, August 21, 2017. http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/guest-column-amy-wax-charlottesville
54. Jonathan V. Last, “Weekly Standard: Obamacare vs. the Catholics,” NPR, February 7, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/07/146511839/weekly-standard-obamacare-vs-the-catholics
55. Chris Murphy, Twitter, July 28, 2017. https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/890924515999526912
56. “The Constitution of Japan,” Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet. http://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html
57. Emma Green, “Bernie Sanders’s Religious Tests for Christians in Public Office,” Atlantic, June 8, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/bernie-sanders-chris-van-hollen-russell-vought/529614/
58. Muslims believe that Jews and Christians who never heard the message of Muhammad—and who lead righteous lives—will go to heaven. Christians who have heard the Muslim message may still go to heaven so long as they believe that there is only one God. But if they reject the message of Muhammad, they are damned. See Camila Domonoske, “Is It Hateful to Believe in Hell? Bernie Sanders’ Questions Prompt Backlash,” NPR, June 9, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/09/532116365/is-it-hateful-to-believe-in-hell-bernie-sanders-questions-prompt-backlash
59. Sohrab Ahmari, “The Dogma of Dianne Feinstein,” New York Times, September 11, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/the-dogma-of-dianne-feinstein.html?mcubz=1
60. “New PRRI/The Atlantic Survey Analysis Finds Cultural Displacement—Not Economic Hardship—More Predictive of White Working-Class Support for Trump,” Public Religion Research Institute, May 9, 2017. https://www.prri.org/press-release/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/
61. See, for example, Brenda Major et al., “The Threat of Increasing Diversity: Why Many White Americans Support Trump in the 2016 Election,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, October 20, 2016. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1368430216677304
62. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa.—June 27, 1936,” American Presidency Project, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, eds. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15314
63. Max Roser, “Life Expectancy,” Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
64. Max Roser, “Child Labor,” Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor/
65. Max Roser, “Life Expectancy.”
66. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 2013 [1974]), p. 163.
11: POP CULTURE POLITICS
1. William Blake, “Chapter IX,” The [First] Book of Urizen, 1794, Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/235/259.html
2. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 1918. See p. 15 of http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Science-as-a-Vocation.pdf. From H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (trans. and eds.), Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 129-56.
3. Tim Blanning, in his excellent book The Romantic Revolution: A History, Modern Library Chronicles (New York: Random House, 2011, Kindle edition), gives a brief history of just how elusive definitions of romanticism have been.
4. Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999 [1965]), p. 1.
5. Blanning, The Romantic Revolution, Kindle location 281-90.
6. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, Kindle edition), p. 67.
7. “Whatever we may think about the merits or demerits of the movement usually dub
bed Romanticism,” he continues, “it certainly conveyed a deeper understanding of pre-capitalist society and of historical evolution in general and thus revealed some of the fundamental errors of utilitarianism and of the political theory for which utilitarianism served as base.” Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd edition (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008 [1942]), p. 249.
8. William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence
9. See Richard Kieckhefer, “The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,” Historical Review 99, no. 3 (June 1994), pp. 813-36; Gregory W. Dawes, “The Rationality of Renaissance Magic,” Parergon, July 1, 2013; Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
10. On this point I heartily recommend Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). He surveys a lifetime of research showing the innumerable ways our animal brain can mislead the human mind.
11. Maureen Cleave, “The John Lennon I Knew,” Telegraph, October 5, 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/Rockandjazzmusic/3646983/The-John-Lennon-I-knew.html
12. Joe Bosso,“The Edge Interview: Memory Man,” Guitar World, November 10, 2008. http://www.guitarworld.com/edge-u2-interview-memory-man
13. Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, Part I, Book II, Chapter IV. https://archive.org/stream/williamshakespea00hugouoft/williamshakespea00hugouoft_djvu.txt
14. Nietzsche did say in Thus Sprach Zarathustra: “I would believe only in a God who could dance. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star,” which does have a decidedly pantheist vibration to it. Friedrich Nietzsche, “VII. Reading and Writing,” Thus Sprach Zarathustra. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1998/pg1998.txt