Where Have All The Liberals Gone?

Photo by Clay Banks courtesy of Unsplash.com

“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”
- Aldous Huxley

A year and a half ago I sent an email to a woman I admired who works as an herbalist, inviting her to be a guest on my podcast. I received the following response:

Based on our review of the podcast, past guests, and the way some messages have been platformed/discussed, we are concerned that this collaboration does not align with our core values and so must decline.

It was August 2021, and I had just released several episodes that I knew were controversial, but that I was confident I had presented in a respectful, intentional, and balanced manner. I interviewed Steve QJ, an African American man, about his concern that some aspects of anti-racism rhetoric might be contributing to racism, as opposed to helping to eliminate it. I interviewed Rachel Foster, a woman who had transitioned to become a man, only to realize years later that she was not in fact a man, but simply a different kind of woman than what she was told a woman was allowed to be as a part of her (sexually) abusive, Christian fundamentalist upbringing. I had also interviewed Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian woman who made a brilliant film called Dysphoric (featuring Rachel Foster), exploring the possible connection between global misogyny and the increase of female-to-male gender transitions worldwide, especially in extremely misogynistic places like India. Lastly, I had interviewed

Clementine Morrigan

and her partner Jay, two of the most left-leaning humans I know, who spoke about the authoritarian nature of cancel culture, and the damaging effects it’s had on both of their lives, and the lives of many others.

So, okay. I get it. These sorts of conversations rarely appear in “liberal,” left-leaning spaces these days. But to be clear, this is not because they contain any implicit critique of liberal values. I have always been a staunchly supportive of liberalism which, for the sake of brevity, I will summarize as a belief in equality and opportunity for all, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation and economic background. Instead, the reason these conversations are hard to find in liberal, leftist spaces is because under the spell of “wokeness,” liberals stopped believing that it was important for liberalism to extend not only to their (supposed) values, but also to the strategies used to uphold, promote, and defend those values.

In this article on ethics.org.au titled “Calling Out for Justice,” Oscar Schwarz writes that, “While there may be instances of collateral damage [as a result of cancel culture], even people innocently accused, a more pressing problem to address is how and why institutions we are supposed to trust are deaf to many of the problems facing … minority groups.”

In other words, many liberals have come to believe that the end justifies the means - a phrase coined by Niccolò Machiavelli, the infamous 16th century father of political science whose philosophy for acquiring and maintaining power depended upon removing ethics from politics.

Had the herbalist accepted my invitation, I think she would have realized that we do, in fact, share many core values. I’m a Jewish, queer, ethically non-monogamous, liberal-ass woman, born in New York City, raised by a gay dad, his gender non-conforming partner, and a mom who had a suitcase of homeopathic cures, stocked our fridge with tofu, organic vegetables, and rice milk, and sent me to a hippie elementary school. I cried at twelve when George W. Bush got elected, was suspended for participating in a sit-in against the war a couple years later, and traveled to Senator Hillary Clinton’s office to lobby for gay marriage a year after that. I’ve voted 100% Democratic my entire life and I have never wavered in my support of equal opportunity for all, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation and economic background.

My brother and I marching with the Empire State Pride Agenda in support of gay marriage in 2008.

The major difference between me and the woman who refused to come on my podcast? She’s “woke,” and I’m not.

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Someone once asked me why I don’t give “woke opinions” more airtime on my podcast. My answer is that “woke-ism” isn’t a set of opinions or values. Woke-ism is a dogmatic system used to police people’s speech and behavior, regardless of their opinions or values.

Woke-ism is a form of ideological fundamentalism that polices and punishes anyone who asks a “problematic” question or expresses any doubt in the dominant belief structure. Heresy, in other words. The punishment? Being fired from your job, publicly shamed, de-platformed, receiving death threats, being doxxed, investigated, accused of violence, etc., all without any due process.

heresy

her·​e·​sy | \ ˈher-ə-sē , ˈhe-rə- \

• an opinion or doctrine contrary to church dogma

• dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice.

• an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards

When I think about fundamentalism, dogma and heresy, I’m reminded of how, at age ten, after finding out my dad was gay, I was naively convinced that I could reason with fundamentalist Christians about their anti-gay beliefs. It didn’t take me long to realize that “because God said so” was a non-starter. There was never any dialogue to be had. My opinions weren't worth considering because they were in conflict with “The Word of God.” Period. End of story.

As a podcast host, I’m in the business of conversation. Fundamentalist dogma doesn’t lend itself to conversation. Instead, it ends conversations before they even begin. I don’t give woke-ism airtime on my podcast because to do so would render conversation useless at best, or “abusive” and “violent” at worst.

My curiosity, dedication to nuance, and fervent desire to question, discuss and debate is in direct opposition to woke-ism. According to both “The Word of God” and “The Word of Wokeness,” I am a heretic. Period. End of story.

While the dictionary definition of “liberal” is “willing to respect or accept behavior and opinions different from one's own,” and “open to new ideas,” the strategies employed by woke liberals better resemble “the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience, and a lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others,” which, (surprise!) is the definition for “authoritarian”.

While woke liberals are busy accusing the conservatives of authoritarian tyranny built on outdated, regressive theology, they’re failing to recognize that woke-ism has become a tyrannical theocracy unto itself.

Insisting that fundamentalism, dogma and theocracy can only be associated with “The Word of God” fails to acknowledge that the rise of secularism has had no effect on humans’ capacity to worship some sort of “divine” authority. Religiously informed or not, both the far-right and the far-left demand strict adherence to dogmatic, fundamentalist, and theocratic ideologies. (Lest we forget, both Stalin and Hitler were atheists.)

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I recently listened to an episode of

Bari Weiss

' podcast, Honestly, where she spoke to political commentator and podcast host,

Kmele

Foster, about his investigation into the Amy Cooper vs. Christian Cooper “Karen” debacle that took place in the spring of 2020 in Central Park. Most people remember this story as being extremely black and white, for lack of a better metaphor. (Although, on second thought, maybe that’s the perfect metaphor).

This story, told by news outlets nationwide, went a little like this: “Irrational, hysterical, entitled, racist, white woman calls the cops on an innocent and unfairly targeted African American bird watcher after he kindly asked her to put her dog on a leash.” The video that Christian Cooper recorded of Amy Cooper on his cell phone, which later went viral, seems to corroborate this narrative. 

Unfortunately, that narrative, which spread through the media like wildfire, was far from the full story.

I won’t go into all of the details here, because Bari Weiss took the time to record an entire podcast about it which you should listen to, but here are a few of the many things I learned about what actually happened…

• Before Christian Cooper turned his video camera on, he yelled at Amy Cooper and threatened her after insisting that she leash her dog. “If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it,” he warned. He then proceeded to pull out dog treats from his bag, hold his bike helmet in a threatening position, and lure Amy’s dog toward him.

• Christian Cooper threatened dog walkers this way frequently, and openly recounted this particular incident in its entirety on his Facebook page (including the above threat), while also adding that he always carries dog treats in the park “for such intransigence.” Several dog owners had had this exact same encounter with him in the past.

• The only reason Amy Cooper appears to become more and more hysterical on the phone with 911 was because her voice was inaudible to the woman on the other end of line, and Amy was asked to keep repeating herself.

• This event took place on the same day that George Floyd was killed, in the first few months of Covid, in the heart of New York City. Saying everyone was on edge is an understatement.

• Following the incident, even though Christian Cooper refused to press charges, Amy Cooper was still charged with the misdemeanor of making a false police report.

• Although that police report was ultimately dismissed, in the meantime, Amy was fired from her job, had her dog taken away from her, and was doxxed. If you’re not familiar with doxxing, it means that her address and phone number were published online, leading to hundreds of death threats, a mob outside her apartment, and harassment that has forced her to leave the country, live in hiding to this day, and in fear for her life every time she leaves her house.

After listening to the podcast episode and researching the incident further, I still don’t feel as if Amy Cooper’s actions were 100% excusable. I understand that in her call to the police she could have referred to Christian Cooper as “an African American man” the same way she would describe any perpetrator by their physical characteristics, but that doesn’t excuse her decision to warn Christian ahead of time, before ever picking up the phone, about how she was going to tell them that “an African American man” was threatening her life.

On the other hand, Amy apologized publicly, shared openly about what she should have done differently, and even asked Christian if he’d be willing to talk to her directly, one on one, so that they could both learn and grow from the experience together. In a statement, she explained,

“I am well aware of the pain that misassumptions and insensitive statements about race cause and would never have imagined that I would be involved in the type of incident that occurred with Chris. I hope that a few mortifying seconds in a lifetime of forty years will not define me in his eyes and that he will accept my sincere apology.”

Christian never responded to her request to talk, nor did he respond to Bari and Kmele when they asked if he’d be willing to share his side of the story on their podcast episode.

Meanwhile, while Amy lives in fear, Christian has become something of a heroic celebrity. He’s used his newfound fame to sign a deal with DC Comics as the author of Represent!, a graphic novel series that features, “Stories of personal experiences, unheard voices, and social revolution… compelling stories which examine how our culture builds understanding, tracing society’s arc toward justice as we evolve in pursuit of a more just and compassionate world.”

Building understanding. Unheard voices. Just and compassionate world. Keep those phrases in mind while you read one of the hundreds of emails Amy received on the day Christian’s video went viral.

“Amy Cooper from New York, if that is indeed you in the video, slit your wrists. You are a piece of shit. Both the way you treated that man, as well as the dog, makes it clear that the world would be a better place if you were no longer in it. You are pathetic and vile. Someone should put that leash around your neck and drop you from one of those trees. I hope to God that they prosecute you to animal cruelty, as well as lying to law enforcement. Maybe in jail you’ll get treated as you deserve. If anyone deserves prison rape, it’s you. Every breath you take is a breath better suited for someone else. You bring dishonor on all of humanity. The noble thing to do is to remove yourself from society as a whole, so please kill yourself.”

Is this what “liberalism” has become? 

If your answer is “no” or you’re shaking your head assuming this is only an isolated incident, let me assure you that it isn’t.

When Willie Parker, a Christian, African American ob-gyn who had dedicated his life to promoting a moral and religious basis for the pro-choice movement was accused of sexual assault, he was immediately disinvited from four upcoming academic talks, lost his seat on the boards of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and the Abortion Access Front, and had his name dropped from The National Network of Abortion Funds. While the validity of the sexual assault accusation turned out to be tenuous at best, Parker lost his ability to continue his activism work, and had his reputation destroyed under the hashtag and rallying cry of #believeallwomen. When all was said and done, he was quoted saying, “I would prefer to have been accused of murder, because there would have been some effort at due process.”

Emmanuel Cafferty, a Mexican-American utility worker, was fired for making what someone thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture a few blocks away from a Black Lives Matter rally. In reality, he was trying to fend off an aggressive driver by giving him an “okay” gesture. "I sought counseling, I did all that. I did months and months of counseling and none of it is helping. I’m in a worse situation today, sixteen months later than I was that day, financially I’m on fumes," Cafferty said.

When Stuart Reges, an openly gay professor at the University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, refused to participate in the university’s “suggestion” to include indigenous land acknowledgements on his class materials, the university censored his syllabus, created a competing class to steer students away from his class, and launched an investigation of Reges, threatening him with punishment or dismissal for as long as he refused to conform.

Colin Wright

, an evolutionary biologist, was forced to resign from his tenure track at Penn State after speaking out against the increasing institutionalized academic and scientific support of anti-science that claims there is no such thing as a biological sex binary.

I belong to a private Discord server dedicated to supporting ordinary people who have been canceled, doxxed, fired, disinvited, threatened, attacked and run out of town. Many have attempted suicide, and even more have been forced to leave their homes.

There seems to be no limit to the punishment afforded to those who step out of the (often extremely arbitrary) line of wokeness.

In this CBS News special highlighting cancel culture, a “liberal” woman defends cancel culture by saying, “The public shaming of the individual is really incidental to what it means within a larger system of power.”

And yet, despite the incidental nature of human error, the “liberal” woke mob’s conscious and intentional strategy for bringing about lasting change is to ruin innocent people’s lives in the name of “justice” and blatantly rail against free speech and open discourse in the name of “equality.” Whether or not you agree with me about the value or effectiveness of woke-ism and cancel culture is unrelated to the objective fact that liberalism and the values it supposedly represents seem to be inching further and further apart from one another.

Amy Cooper — a liberal, a dog lover, a human who makes mistakes.

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As Carl Jung once said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that (at least some) of the left’s passionate hatred of the right’s use of authoritarian tactics to promote regressive close-mindedness could easily be seen as a projection of the left’s own increasingly regressive close-mindedness.

Don’t get me wrong, there is flagrant hypocrisy and projection happening on both sides of the aisle, but what does it say about where we are as a culture when two people who supposedly belong to the same political party and share core values can’t even talk to each other about herbalism on a podcast?

What does it say about where we are as a country when we seem willing to sacrifice liberty in pursuit of liberalism?