https://www.dailywire.com/news/transgender-cyclist-booted-from-womens-championship-after-female-competitors-threaten-boycott

Based on the quality of the arguments that have been presented for gay marriage, and the speed with which Christian churches have embraced it, (3) strikes me as the least likely answer.

It may even have been counterproductive (though we’ll never know)…

…In the spirit of which there’s a profound convergence between Harper Lee’s poignant (and I would add, surprising) second novel, “Go Set a Watchman”, and this extremely thoughtful and fascinating post on Faulkner (to which I linked several days ago):
“William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision;
“In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice.”—
https://www.city-journal.org/william-faulkners-tragic-vision
H/T Powerline blog.

…at least as long as the nation is still a nation of laws—enabling a lawful backlash to take place—as opposed to a nation of coercion and authoritarian impulses, which would work to subdue the “wrong” form of backlash.

I do appreciate well-cited comments. Thanks. However…

These days I have no particular respect for sociologists nor for former civil rights activists.

The unreflective bigotry of American academics towards Southern whites is no mystery to me. Likewise, though somewhat more understandable, that of civil rights activists towards Southern whites. Neither are impartial judges, but stakeholders as opponents.

My youth and young adult years from 1960-1978, except for one crazy year in California, were spent in Florida, Dallas and New Orleans. I don’t claim to be a Southerner or an authority on them, but I came to like and respect Southerners.

To be sure, hard-core organized white supremacy was broken by legal force and lawsuits. I knew two people in the Klan and followed that story. But I call it a lie that that’s what fixed racism in the South.

I say Southerners are basically normal and decent human beings. They came to realize they were wrong. They were ashamed and became better people.

It can happen.

See also “Advancing Racial Justice: Past Lessons for Future Use,” Ch. 9, pp. 165-178, Knopke, Norrell and Rogers (eds), Opening Doors: Perspectives on Race Relations in Contemporary America. U of Alabama Press, 1991. One of these lessons is “Behavioral change typically leads to attitude change more than the other way around.” The government can force behavioral change.

Neo, you may be right that Breitbart’s quotation can be defended by saying that the relevant culture is that of some minority, i.e. within academic institutions that the majority doesn’t control. But doesn’t this interpretation make Breitbart’s quotation pretty much irrelevant?

david foster:

True. I see the Breitbart quote as an appeal for whole systems thinking, which involves the complex interactions including feedback between different levels/parts of society.

It’s not that culture is primary and politics secondary. It’s all interconnected. Which can sound like woo and often is. But it is a bedrock truth. Reality is complex and interconnected.

The left has been thinking this way for a long time, and the right, IMO, not so much.

Charles Reich’s bestseller, “The Greening of America” (1970), is an excellent case in point. Here’s the big pull quote emblazoned on the paperback cover:
______________________________

There is a revolution under way–not like revolutions of the past. This is the revolution of the new generation. It has originated with the individual & with culture, & if it succeeds it will change the political structure only as its final act.
______________________________

Reich was ridiculed for this kind of talk. It’s true the 60s generation did not reach Reich’s goal of utopian societal transformation, but much did change growing out of 60s cultural work, not GOTV drives, including much we find destructive today.

BTW, Reich was a serious fellow: JD from Yale, clerked under Hugo Black, worked for top law firms and was a Yale professor for 14 years.

It’s all cant and modish charades. Where’s our Jonathan Swift to charge up the mockery of these lost mopes?

Last night I listed to this interview with 63 year old lefty Julie Birchall in the UK, an outspoken no-holds barred rhetorical brawler. Who doesn’t apologise for wishing everything nationalised. (So, a never say “Thatcher” type, I suppose?)

New Culture Forum interview – “Why I Loathe The Woke: Puritanical Joyless Snobs Who Despise the Working Class — Julie Burchill“

Her new book is entitled “Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics”.

Something Douglas Murray and she can agree on. The PC injunction “stay in your own [identity] lane!” is in fact “the death of creativity.”