I thank Russell Greene for his rich, critical review of my recent book The Third Awokening (“Equal Rights, not Equity,” August 6).
Russell and I agree that woke cultural socialism, with its exclusive focus on achieving equal outcomes and psychological harm protection for minorities, reduces human flourishing in society. But a response pointing to where we agree is hardly going to interest readers as much as focusing on the fringes of the Venn Diagram where we see things differently!
Greene’s article advances a number of important criticisms. The first concerns my use of John Stuart Mill’s ideas to defend free expression. Greene correctly notes that Mill smuggled several positive liberal conceits into his political theory, notably the idea of natural equality between men and women. I would add that he believed that breaking the cake of custom and challenging tradition was a more noble way to live than conservative communitarianism; he even held that peripheral nationalities like the Bretons in France should bury their narrow provincialism and assimilate to dominant imperial groups like the French and English. So I share Russell’s misgivings about the positive liberalism that animated Mill and dragged him away from a purely procedural conception of liberty.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Law & Liberty
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Eric Kaufmann is professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.
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