I agree that it always has been. And that is precisely why we need to be circumspect about it when we set public policy.

Better off? Who knows. That analysis probably depends a lot on how precisely we want to define the powerless.

Continuing to keep a nice safe distance from any type of accountability though? Absolutely.

That's a substantial part if it and it's also what we get for couching so many political debates in the language of victim-hood instead of rationality. When being able to characterize oneself as a victim is a shortcut to power we shouldn't be surprised when the powerful start using it.

I appreciate the insight (no sarcasm intended) and i didn't mean to imply that there shouldn't be any engagement. That said I think it's very telling that you used math in your hypothetical as opposed to the liberal arts. As noted in the rest of the thread, math at the level the vast majority of people will ever learn it isn't subjective and certainly isn't political. It's learning processes and equations and how to apply them to different problems.

The way I read these sorts of demands isn't 'we don't want to read and discuss x dead white poet because we already understand it and want to work harder on what we don't understand.' The demand is 'x dead white poet does not reinforce my political opinions and therefore we should replace the reading with something that does.'

I think you're right that there are always value judgments being made when setting a curriculum. What I don't understand is why the students feel they're entitled to any say in that process. I majored in history for undergrad and I remember there was a particular class on modern Japanese history which I (unfortunately) had to drop for reasons related to my job.

That particular professor required a far heavier and more diverse array of reading assignments than any other upper level history course I took and would test on what, in my mind, were obscure points of the most peripheral material. To me this was a poor way to teach the subject but it never would have dawned on me to challenge her pedagogy or ask her to cater to my opinions about the content.

Though the complaints discussed in the article are painted as far left I think there is an even stronger element of narcissistic consumerism at play. If there is a pedagogical reason to alter the content of the specific courses then by all means the professors ought to have the ability to do it. But are changes related to fleeting political trends among a certain subset of the student body really consistent with successfully educating people? I'm just not so sure about that.

That would be considered a microaggression. Possibly a macroaggression depending on the size of the dictionary.

One that comes up often in my line of work are criminal statutes related to bribery and other kickbacks. In some jurisdictions wiretapping and similar interception of communication type activities can also be crimes regardless of intent. We can of course all debate the merits of those examples from a public policy perspective but it does happen.

I dunno. The type of gun laws and changes in laws related to sex crimes favored by large segments of the left would require putting a lot of people in jail. See also my point below regarding criminal penalties for regulatory violations.

The practical difference between mainstream right and left I think is more about who should be in jail and how hard it should be to put them there.

This is a stong point especially given how many regulations now include criminal penalties. Most don't even have a mens rea.

In most respects I think gun control is a cultural indicator masquerading as a political issue.

I think we need to have a greater appreciation of how blunt a tool criminalization is and do a better job of understanding concepts like diminishing returns when we craft policy. Reforming the police is a noble project but also a very long one.

I think you're dead on. The type of blue blood (maybe at this point 'blue state' would be better) Republicans these proposals would appeal to haven't left the party. The party is in the process of leaving them. It probably has been for at least a decade. Trump has just made it impossible to ignore.

The Republicans are often on the wrong side of this and would never be so subtle to argue this point* but liberal cigarette taxes (if they get to the point where illegal resales are profitable) are the types of policies that enable police violence. There are a lot of nuisance and quality of life type regulations that progressives support which in a vacuum sound reasonable. However when they meet the realities of how law enforcement works in this country they become another reason for the police to detain poor people and/or minorities.

*I understand what I'm saying here is more of a libertarian argument and not what Republicans were saying when this incident was in the press.

Just to further clarify, I think they're wrong but I don't think they're monsters.

I see your point but I'm still not in love with public shaming of anyone who says or does something inconsistent with currently trending progressive values as a model of social change. This is especially true when what incident goes viral seems to be completely random (those people in Indiana with the pizza shop come to mind). I also don't know that this particular school and it's administrators deserve to bear the cross for the fact that Catholic schools aren't (and probably never will be) where mainstream blue state America is on sexuality and gender.

Note Burt's comment below. Not that long ago the idea of an open teenage lesbian would have been very unusual in most high schools in most places and probably not even allowed in a Catholic school. I prefer the trajectory America is on when it comes to gay rights and equality but I'm skeptical of how useful this particular fight is.

I dunno. What strikes me as more unreasonable is a legalistic parsing of a dress code at a Catholic high school prom. It's a conservative parochial institution in not exactly a small town, but it ain't Philly or Pittsburgh either. What does anyone expect?

I have a feeling Wolf will go off to college somewhere that people are a little more with the times and look back on this incident with a chuckle, knowing that she's going on to so many bigger and better things than old lady Gallagher or whoever that wouldnt let her in wearing a tux. Piling on the boobs (pun intended) who weren't up to handling a 21st century situation without looking silly or making a culture war crusade out of it serves no purpose I can see.

That's what I have always figured. They've got bigger problems to deal with than the name of a football team.

I'm a big Redskins fan so I'm used to hearing about this. I have a list of conditons of surrender on the name issue that I could live with as a fan, and I get that it really isn't consistent with modern sensibilities. Still, outside of a small activist group of Native Americans (whose views I do think should be taken seriously), the controversy is much more among predominantly white sports journalists, (some) of their readers, and people who aren't even into football but love getting offended on behalf of others.

Regarding Clinton I think its hard to know. Why does anyone vote any particular way (policy preferences are certainly part of it but there are all kinds of other personal and psychological issues in play)?

My suspicion is that if you've been born with an economic disadvantage your highest priority is keeping those institutions in place that protect you. You don't gamble on someone you don't know very well who talks about a major reshuffling of the system. What you fear most is uncertainty. In those circumstances Clinton seems like a good bet. There's also almost certainly a regional element to it as well.

Regarding the Dems generally... that'd probably be a much longer post.

Oh I think there would be plenty of ways to do it but they'd have to stop treating discussions about the social safety net as a racially charged dog whistle and supporting efforts to make voting harder for low income people. I am not a black person or voter but in my experince there are substantial segments of the black population that are very socially conservative and support 'by the bootstraps' type of narratives that the right kind of Republican could appeal to.

I think you're right that these issues matter and that's why I've tried to be careful on this thread to hedge my comments in terms of my own perspective. I think that privilege discussion is useful insofar as it gets people to try, to the extent they can, to put themselves in someone else's shoes before they cast judgment or get behind some policy or another. I think it's also useful as a tool of self-criticism and reflection on whether our own views are as logical to everyone else as they seem to us.

However, despite those insights, it can also be a very limiting tool if it isn't tempered because it causes people to focus only on the who, and the identity of the person arguing rather than the logic, rationality, or morality of the argument itself. This creates intellectual weakness, incoherent political stances, and, again, speaking from my perspective, results in energy spent on circular and overly serious arguments between (relatively) privileged people about cultural minutae. To me whether or not a black person gets an Oscar this year is so infinitely much less important than what we might do to stop black people from being disproportionately imprisoned or shot by the police that it's hard for me to comprehend the Academy awards debates as more than a weird expression of narcissism.

The goal of thinking about privilege, in my opinion, should be to humanize people who are different from ourselves, so that we can support better policies for everyone, not ridicule political opponents or show how holy we are.

I do think his post would have been stronger if he grappled with that issue, though I think Sanders success among younger black people outside of the South complicates your narrative a bit. I think the black vote would be a lot less monolithic than it often appears if the GOP hadn't essentially conceded it over the last several decades.

I read him the same way.

I agree with you in the sense that changes in economic policy are harder to implement and evaluate, and take a much longer time (and when Freddie gets into public ownership of the means of production in his post I suspect he is setting goals that aren't possible or even desirable given what it would take to make that happen). I also think you're right that the path of least effort in all endeavors is unfortunately the one most of us take.

What I would question is whether or not the changes in language and culture really mean anything substantive at this point or if we've gotten as far as we can until older generations die off. Don't get me wrong. I think it is better to banish overt racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. from polite conversation to the extent possible but I don't think it's value right now is anywhere close to, for example, reducing the number of people in prison. To use Freddie's own terms (and this is only from my anecdotal observation) there seems to be more of a focus on being good than doing good. My view is that there is a qualitative difference between the two.

I obviously can't speak for him and I think you may have something when you talk about him living in somewhat of a bubble, though I'd venture that we all to varying degrees do.

I guess I don't read Freddie as saying 'compromise is bad' so much as saying being a self righteous scold about vocabulary and cultural signals makes it harder to build a coalition capable of implementing the types of policies you listed above (or at least something better than what we have). Obviously I can't speak for everyone everywhere but from my post collegiate, urban bubble it does look like the mainstream center left is at the very least prioritizing the optics of inclusivity above economic issues in its rhetoric. I suspect, to at least some degree, that comes from living in a wealthy east coast state among a demographic of people (myself included) that has mostly never really experienced economic hardship and has the money to dodge the nastier elements of public policy. I think Freddie's point is that this can gets lost in heated online discussions about whether or not there is some sort of racism or sexism involved in who won a Grammy.

As a side note it isn't clear to me that the DNC was committed to something better than the ACA in its current form. I'm agnostic on the subject but there are plenty of people out there who think the votes could have been there for a public option (again probably not worth litigating that particular issue it's just an example). The more compelling one would be the substantial centrist Democrat support for the Iraq invasion and Obama's drone warfare.

This isn't my favorite post Freddie has written but I don't think his point here is so absurd. I think it is pretty consistent with his usual argument that improving material well being for all people is more important than the optics of racial/gender/sexuality/whatever else inclusivity in elite institutions and pop culture. Generally I agree with him on this issue.

I think where he loses a lot of people is in the assumption that everyone's social/demographic circle looks like his. I'm pretty sure, at the very least, my Facebook feed is pretty similar to what he sees on social networks in that it includes a lot of college educated upper or soon to be upper middle class people telling (often hypothetical) others to check their privilege and chastising failures to adhere to the vocabulary of intersectionality. They will also scoff at anything other than supporting mainline Democrats who, while a bit gentler than Republicans, in large part still support policies that perpetuate inequality, imperialistic warfare, mass incarceration, etc. Its an argument against putting cultural preferences over policy to a center left that trends to see itself as non-ideological/technocratic.

At least that's the context in which I see much of his political writing.