I'd also add to avoid going down ideological Manichean rabbit holes where you can only be "for X or against X". Kendi in his definition of racism and anti-racism defines racism as ANYTHING that produces a disparate impact between racial groups and if you're not fighting for policies (that Kendi fails to highlight himself) that shrink the gap between outcomes, than you're racist, even if you don't have a racist thought in your head.
It's a tidy formulation, but hobbled by its reductionism, and doesn't leave you with answers to basic questions like "Is funding NASA in Kendi's worldview racist or not?". (From my reading, going to Mars is racist - by his standard - given that it's not reducing impacts back on Earth.) To what extent conservatives can actually lead on this topic is highlighting and endorsing measurable aspects of our society that that highlight disparities (the part that Kendi got right) and propose policies and solutions that shrink those gaps. I think that there's a lot that free market entrepreneurship can do for disadvantaged groups, and instead of allowing progressive Postmodernists to monopolize the debate, conservatives can propose new institutions and fixes that actually address the problem in ways that simple redistributionism is doomed to fail. (The Achilles heel of the critical theory folks is that they spend so much time tearing things down, their ability to *build* viable replacements is pretty stunted.)
One example of this is in the area of education, as this morning's Dispatch discusses:
Rather than retreat to the hills in a Dreheresque fashion, conservatives need to advance alternative educational programs to compete with stuff like the 1619 curriculum. We need to be brave and open-eyed enough to recognize that it's precisely the deficiencies in our educational approach that has opened the door for the Critical Race Theory folks, and advance conservative content that both acknowledges the failures of the United States in achieving its stated ideals through the present, while also highlighting the great things that this country does, so that we can tip the next generation toward a "can-do, we can make this better" mindset, instead of the tribalist victim mindset being advanced from the other side.
Thank you for having the open eyes that we'll need to get through all of this.
Can you explain how any part of the most common voting laws serve only to stifle voting? You are dead wrong. If everyone except those with a good excuse were required to show up at the polls in a time frame reasonably close to election day, you might have an argument. Convicted felons knowingly give up the right. Others simply choose not to.
I'd also add to avoid going down ideological Manichean rabbit holes where you can only be "for X or against X". Kendi in his definition of racism and anti-racism defines racism as ANYTHING that produces a disparate impact between racial groups and if you're not fighting for policies (that Kendi fails to highlight himself) that shrink the gap between outcomes, than you're racist, even if you don't have a racist thought in your head.
It's a tidy formulation, but hobbled by its reductionism, and doesn't leave you with answers to basic questions like "Is funding NASA in Kendi's worldview racist or not?". (From my reading, going to Mars is racist - by his standard - given that it's not reducing impacts back on Earth.) To what extent conservatives can actually lead on this topic is highlighting and endorsing measurable aspects of our society that that highlight disparities (the part that Kendi got right) and propose policies and solutions that shrink those gaps. I think that there's a lot that free market entrepreneurship can do for disadvantaged groups, and instead of allowing progressive Postmodernists to monopolize the debate, conservatives can propose new institutions and fixes that actually address the problem in ways that simple redistributionism is doomed to fail. (The Achilles heel of the critical theory folks is that they spend so much time tearing things down, their ability to *build* viable replacements is pretty stunted.)
One example of this is in the area of education, as this morning's Dispatch discusses:
https://thedispatch.substack.com/p/white-house-tiptoes-into-anti-racism
Rather than retreat to the hills in a Dreheresque fashion, conservatives need to advance alternative educational programs to compete with stuff like the 1619 curriculum. We need to be brave and open-eyed enough to recognize that it's precisely the deficiencies in our educational approach that has opened the door for the Critical Race Theory folks, and advance conservative content that both acknowledges the failures of the United States in achieving its stated ideals through the present, while also highlighting the great things that this country does, so that we can tip the next generation toward a "can-do, we can make this better" mindset, instead of the tribalist victim mindset being advanced from the other side.
Thank you for having the open eyes that we'll need to get through all of this.
Can you explain how any part of the most common voting laws serve only to stifle voting? You are dead wrong. If everyone except those with a good excuse were required to show up at the polls in a time frame reasonably close to election day, you might have an argument. Convicted felons knowingly give up the right. Others simply choose not to.