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Quote of the Day: Momentum
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises“Same-sex marriage…was the trigger for not only woke capitalism, but the radicalism of today’s left. It was the success that they had in achieving gay marriage that gave them momentum, made them think that nothing would ever arise within American society to stop them, and has led to a kind of acceleration of all these cultural issues. It wasn’t a week after Obergefell was decided that the cake baking episode happened, and then transgenderism became an issue, where all these same groups began accelerating their attacks on the traditional ideas that there are men and women. So I think same-sex marriage was a real accelerant in the decline of marriage from all of the perspectives, but also an accelerant in the collapse of America’s regime.”
— Dr. Scott Yenor, The American Mind podcast, July 19, 2021
The general public may be finally noticing the leftward lurch happening in universities and in K-12, public and private, but the culture has been shifting for decades. It started in the 1960s with a variety of changes in social norms, like the elimination of strict dress codes and curfews for women at the large public university my mother attended. Her first year, in 1962, the female students had a 10 p.m. curfew. The next year, those rules were scrapped. By the time I got to college, we no longer had female-only dorms. The closest to that you could come was an all-female floor. I have yet to embark on college tours for my own daughter, but what I have read suggests that it will be difficult to find such a sex-segregated living situation. Even in the 1990s, some colleges had embraced co-ed dorms to the extent that even the bathrooms were co-ed. A friend who attended one of these institutions told me about the discomfort of that living situation and the efforts she would make to find a single stall bathroom in another building when she really needed privacy.
These changes swept in with the tide of feminist thought. Americans have largely welcomed movements for increased equality, whether based on race, sex, or sexual orientation. We have liked seeing ourselves as part of a society that is fair and inclusive, or at least approaching more fairness and inclusivity. It also seems that we don’t want to be called, or to think of ourselves, as prudes or homophobes. Since the 1960s, the taboos against sexual promiscuity and immodesty have fallen away, so completely that now women complain that they are unfairly treated when airlines won’t let them fly with strapless outfits or with their midriff showing. Fine, we shrug, not wanting to seem “judgy.”
A lot of these cultural shifts seemed beneficial, or at least harmless. In the last few years, however, it has become clear that the LGBTQ+ movement, especially since transgenders have taken the primary place in it, and anti-racism advocates are making a moral claim that can’t succeed without the existence of an intolerant, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic population. If that population doesn’t exist, they must infer its existence and presume that those awful people are secretly inculcating their hateful beliefs in their children. I don’t think that’s a particularly nice thing to do, so I am not disposed to be accepting of these insults. Thankfully, many American parents feel the same way.
What we really don’t want to be called is racist. When people were only complaining of microaggressions, we didn’t worry too much. Plenty of my friends have taken the attitude that all you have to do to avoid those is to just not be a jerk or say anything “wrong.” They are nice people, so they think everyone else is basically nice, too. But when the dominant culture skips over the step of making evidence-based accusations of racism and just moves right on to inferring racist beliefs and attitudes in our children, apparently that’s when Americans finally balk.
The demands for submission to the leftist narrative are encroaching more swiftly into the personal lives of Americans. It’s been happening gradually for decades, but I have noticed the acceleration since 2015. I could cite specific news stories, such as Christians being deemed unfit to hold certain government positions, but I noticed the shift in the public debate and in the tone of communications from our public school administrators and teachers. They were emboldened to express political opinions while treating them as simply conventional wisdom. The confidence of those on the left was not damaged when Donald Trump won the presidential election. To them, it simply demonstrated the righteousness of their cause that so many Americans would vote for a man that they deemed vile and racist. I think it was another accelerant in the leftist effort to conquer our culture. The coronavirus pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the election of Joe Biden have all provided more momentum for progressives. They are, by definition, on the move. And they are moving pretty fast now.
Published in Group Writing
Interesting post. I remember Wesley Yang had a tweet up in response to a similar train of thought and he pointed out that one way to think is that progressives went after the schools and the right went after the courts, with him suggesting we will see which gamble pays off in the end.
I think it was Instapundit who said what we need is for a billionaire to buy the equivalent of a Teen Vogue and just make it conservative.
Yes, I have read similar thoughts elsewhere, and probably most Ricochet readers are not reading any of this as particularly new. For me, it adds context to the current fights over CRT and the growing push for diversity, equity and inclusion in every institution. I agree that the right has made a good effort to build a bulwark against progressivism in the courts, but then left gained their victory via the Obergefell decision anyway.
As a defense of tradition, history and our founding ideals, I am starting to think the best course might just be to let them keep running with their unhinged ideas. They’re already starting to cross lines beyond which most Americans won’t follow them.
Great quote from Dr. Yenor.
I’d probably quibble, but I agree that so-called SSM was a major trigger for the most recent Leftward lurch. I think that the other major trigger was the whole BLM sequence — from Trayvon to Michael Brown to Floyd.
I’m more inclined to agree with Peter Hitchens, who views the acceptance of no-fault divorce, generally in the 1960s, as the most important trigger.
I am very disappointed in the actions of conservatives on the issue of sodomy. In the late 1990s or early 2000s, we probably had sufficient public support to have passed a marriage amendment. This was not done. Then we got Obama, and his flip-flop-flip on so-called SSM — which he was for, before he was against, before he was for, though anyone with a lick of sense should have suspected that he was lying when he said that he was against it in 2008.
George W. Bush was weak on this issue, I think. I recall him opposing so-called SSM, but saying to give them “civil unions.” Way to lose in stages, W.
Interesting points. I’ve heard the no-fault divorce thing before but it was a while ago and I don’t remember the argument.
I’m more sympathetic to it being the birth control pill. Aside from generally increased access to, and demand for education, the birth control pill probably changed how we would look at social norms forever and that hits right at the 60s. If I had to choose one major policy explanation I’d choose that.
I won’t say that’s wrong, but it seems a bit oversimplified. The left went after courts too. And the conservatives have been doing homeschool and classical schools at least.
Just to clarify, the point isn’t that SSM was the trigger; rather, it was the accelerant to ongoing cultural changes. BLM is a contributor for sure, but it’s real momentum obviously began in May 2020. The organization was certainly prepared to exploit the moment.
That’s interesting. I think as you write, history will favor people who repeatedly show up, even more so if they are prepared. Also the connection to SSM is interesting because a lot BLMs early leaders were and are gays and lesbians, so I’m certain they would’ve studied the movement in a sincere way.
Great post, and great comments all around!
You can’t pick just one thing. But if I had to pick just one thing it would be the philosophy of LOGICAL POSITIVISM. Or, if it’s gotta be a change in public policy, it would be the TEACHING of this dreadful philosophy in schools.
LP redefines all fact claims as scientific claims, which requires classifying religious and moral views as mere personal preferences. LP is literally a wholesale rejection of the moral code of every civilization ever.
Not that schools ever did much to teach “Here’s a theory in philosophy, and let me tell you about David Hume, and blah, blah, blah.”
That would have given the game away. It would exposed the whole thing as a pseudo-intellectual exercise built on a quirky theory in philosophy of language.
There’s a decent chance you already know two thirds of what I’m talking about! It’s in Abolition of Man by Lewis.
St. A, you know more philosophy than I, I believe. I generally think that the entire so-called Enlightenment project was the problem. Doesn’t the so-called Enlightenment, with its insistence upon basing moral and legal codes on pure reason, create the same problem as logical positivism?
My own impression is that, despite their renown, many of the greatest thinkers of the so-called Enlightenment didn’t realize that they were basing their systems on certain assumptions. Those assumptions, I think, were generally founded in Christian ethics, which they assumed were part of the nature of humanity.
Does this seem accurate, or am I missing something?
St. A, you know more philosophy than I, I believe. I generally think that the entire so-called Enlightenment project was the problem. Doesn’t the so-called Enlightenment, with its insistence upon basing moral and legal codes on pure reason, create the same problem as logical positivism?
My own impression is that, despite their renown, many of the greatest thinkers of the so-called Enlightenment didn’t realize that they were basing their systems on certain assumptions. Those assumptions, I think, were generally founded in Christian ethics, which they assumed were part of the nature of humanity.
Does this seem accurate, or am I missing something?
Very interesting. Let me agree and disagree: most of the problems we have with all of these people is that ultimately they are post-modernists. At bottom if everything is a power structure to be interrogated there really is no truth, except I guess for what you personally feel. And that’s the key problem. That in its own way makes moral codes either suspect or just useless. That’s a problem! (And I’ve never met a student who was a logical positivist though I guess we must allow for self-selection bias.)
But I don’t think you get to the situation we are all discussing without logical positivists, modernists and ardent empiricists driving a generation of future teachers and students insane. A desire to only grant credence to what can be measured and observed does destroy moral values. Now maybe… what happened is that when those moral values got destroyed they were never resurrected? Still, it strikes me that the outsized influence of post modernity was a weird but conscious overcorrection towards structuralism and other forms of ideas that can crudely lumped in as post modernism because they were going against the LPs. My $0.02
What is a postmodernist, or a logical positivist? If we can define a position or a tradition in philosophy and then find out whether a student or a public school teacher actually has that position, we might find that most of them are neither.
But if all it takes is adhering to a central idea from the position or the tradition, you will have a hard time meeting a student in North America who is not a logical positivist. I found plenty of them even in Pakistan.
They are also, in the same sense, postmodernists, of course.
Hard to say. On the one hand, I would have a difficult time finding even five sentences I disagree with in the ethics of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and J. S. Mill combined.
On the other hand, the Enlightenment project of doing ethics without the old Aristotelian concept of human proper function (exposed in After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre) was doomed to result in, at best, a lack of clarity and an incomplete account of morality.
And reason without authority is a terrible idea, as Augustine would say. It’s not even reasonable, actually.
But maybe I should try answering some questions directly.
Yes, they were basing their systems on certain assumptions, and some of them (not all) didn’t realize that.
But yes, you’re missing something.
No, it’s not quite accurate: The Enlightenment does not lead to exactly the same problem as LP. The problem of LP is its insistence that all meaningful fact claims are verifiable. Only Hume, the grandfather of LP, leads that way. Spinoza, Locke, Reid, Kant, Mill and the rest are better.
But if you’re talking about a list of problems of LP, then yes–the Enlightenment creates some of the same problems, like the problem of a culture that rejects authoritative teaching of moral standards.
Very interesting! I will say that most students are probably neither and wouldn’t want to commit to being firmly in a camp. Totally fair point of clarification and a good point.
At the same time I will say you can definitely see people who hew closer to a side for reasons they are committed to. The are a lot of people who legitimately get angry at King Keohane and Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry (methods philosophy book) because it is much closer to adopting logical positivism. Essentially they don’t want you to do qualitative work as a philosophical commitment to something that smells a little like LP. The sociology department will be much more attentive to qual work and issues of power and whether you personally, by accepting a particular theory without pointing out power imbalances are supporting them. I mean I’ve seen it happen in seminars. Someone inevitably jumps up and says “these terms have no meaning because the measures couldn’t mean anything mathematically.” And we are off to the races! Because those flavors do exist. I’d guess most students are probably ultimately post modern. If you tell them there is some moral truth they’ll ask why you get to decide and tell you that other people have different truths.
Just a side note Notre Dame still does not have coed dorms.
University of Portland a sister school, run by the same religious order as Notre Dame, has some coed dorms-separated by wing, or floor in the same building.
I have questions about this part.
How does a culture establish authoritative moral standards? Once established, how are they to be taught? Once established, how are they enforced? What does one do with people who disagree with such established moral standards?
Yes.
That too.
And if you ask them whether moral statements and fact statements overlap at all, they’ll tell you they don’t. If you ask them what facts are, they’ll answer that facts are things that can be proven scientifically.
Those are principles of LP. Not that they would endorse a whole philosophy any more than the teachers and televisions and Facebook feeds that taught them this folly would endorse a whole philosophy, or even understand it.
Find any Baptist university that has a statement of faith recognizing the inerrant authority of Scripture, and you’re probably safe on this point at least.
I would imagine University of Dallas is safe here. And better than Notre Dame in nearly every way!
I don’t know.
I guess I could give a few tips–stop teaching that facts and values never overlap, stop teaching that faith and reason never overlap, have authority figures act with consistency and good character, and blah, blah, blah.
But the real point is: I don’t know.
I’m enjoying this. Thanks. I’ll focus on the underlined part. Many of them would probably answer that way because they were taught some flavor of them. I think more of them, including many of them who would answer that way are committed to some weird structuralist/intersectional beliefs. They would rather jettison an empirically true statement in favor of interrogating and breaking down power in that statement or the presenter that they see as illegitimate. To many of them, it can be wrong to accept a truth and not “interrogate” it. They don’t care if the regression and it’s underlying measures are sound– that practice is fundamentally suspect if it can lead to accepting dominant narratives of oppression. It’s either morally lazy on the part of the researcher or a dirty trick to stay in power.
EX: “It’s clear that on average cops save lives.” “Well it’s wrong to say that because of [reasons that are related to greater philosophical and moral commitments regarding egalitarianism and so on…]. I’m not talking about undergrads btw. I’ve seen the mask slip and derail half a seminar. So yes, they can mentally assent to the fact that the table exists and they personally can’t criticize it, but in their minds they don’t need to. Their own intellectual and moral project is different and on a good day they will admit it. I would put them close to the PM “camp” though many would just say they like intersectionality I guess.
It seems to me that our country did this pretty effectively for almost 190 years — roughly 1776-1964. Does this seem reasonably accurate?
Although I don’t think that we can entirely blame the 1960s. I think that the collapse became apparent around 1964, but the internal rot was taking hold during the historic arc from Wilson to FDR. (Not to blame Silent Cal, who was a welcome respite during a bad era.)
I remember reading Robert Bork’s great book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, which opened with his shock at the outrageous student behavior at Yale during the 1960s. My impression was that it wasn’t the kids that were the real problem, it was the spineless professors and administrators. College kids can be expected to be young and stupid. The adults used to keep them in line, until they didn’t.
So I think that we should ask what our country was doing differently before, and what changed during the 1950s and early 1960s. I have an idea myself, but I’d like to hear from others.
Well, no objections there!
Well, as far as I know, but that’s not very far.
Theological education went liberal?
Logical Positivism sowed the wind and reaped a whirlwind?
Critical Theory showed up in American universities?
I wanted to read Slouching. I think the Pill is a candidate because it isn’t just about sexual behavior but also means more women can work and child-rearing arrangements can now be timed and changed and that affects your economy in big ways. But there have been lots of other good ideas in the thread.
Starting at Michigan State in 1962, I was shocked to find out the women had a curfew and the men didn’t. I’m no feminist, but I would not want to go back to that double standard.
Putting on the list of possible options!
The philosophy stuff way over this lawyer’s head. But Lilly’s dorm story rings a bell. By happenstance, the daughter was assigned to the “jock” dorm at Duke her freshman year even though she was not a scholarship athlete. Can’t remember if females had only half or a full floor (will check with her) but the gals had their own bathroom. So she ate a lot with the male basketball stars. And we got tickets to the sold out Duke basketball scrimmage at Parents Day instead of the football game most parents had drawn. Wonder how the trans make out in the new college atmosphere.
That is a huge question, especially since many of the new HS policies mean that trans students would share overnight lodging with students who share their “gender identity.” I brought this up to the principal who seemed, or at least acted, completely surprised that that would be an issue.
(the philosophers have hijacked the thread, but they make good points as far I as I understand what they’re talking about) Also, I attended Duke but had to spend all weekend camping out to even be considered for lottery tickets. Talk about a free for all with no curfews…somehow I managed to enjoy that weekend and keep the scandalous behavior to a minimum.
I hear you, but I wonder if you can think of any good reasons for a curfew, generally or for young women? Even by 1992, the dating culture was extremely corrupted. I managed pretty well, considering, but I might have liked some support from friends or society when I wanted to leave a bar or fraternity party after an admirer invited me up to his room. There are some benefits when the default answer is no, and many more hazards to navigate when the default seems to be yes. Then the polite, “no thanks, I’d like to go home now,” becomes rude and insulting instead of just prudent.