May the better ideology win!
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This is the fourth and final essay in a series  in which I give neoliberal answers to progressive counterarguments against neoliberalism. The progressive criticisms were provided by a friend and occasional rhetorical adversary, whom I will call Chease.

My first essay in the post A Progressive Provides Counterarguments! concerned whether free-markets would automatically create income inequalities. The second, entitled Answers to Progressive Counterarguments Continue, was about whether progressivism was really the answer to racism. The third essay, Will Automation Require Progressive Unemployment Solutions? was concerned about whether job-killing automation of the economy would require progressive welfare programs to stave off a French-style revolution. In this final essay I will discuss how the clash of ideas between the Left and Right, between progressivism and neoliberalism, is becoming increasingly violent.

The Issue

Chease frames the issue  with the following statement:

The story of Murray and the hair-pulling which you cite belies a lack of ideological diversity in that particular University, which likely exists in universities at large. Is that the worst violence that you can attribute to left-wing political actors? Perhaps the Trump supporters getting beat up in Berkeley last week? Again, this shows a problematic ideological purity in certain locales,  but if the worst you can show me is a couple people getting punched or getting their hair pulled, I would point you towards the numbers of people who commit murder in the name of racial hate or politics. There are many more racist right wingers than murderous leftists, unless by some stretch of the imagination you count Islamist terrorists among progressive Americans. To me the statistics indicate that the balance of violence is still in favor of racists, and the left wing university students are mere amateurs compared to the many violent white racists when it comes to hurting people in the name of hate and intolerance.

Charles Murray, who is mentioned in the first sentence in the quote above, was invited to give a talk on his research at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. Like many neoliberals attempting to speak at colleges in the past few years, Murray was denied his first amendment rights by being shouted off the lectern. I describe the incident in Progressives Become McCarthyites. The hair-pulling Chease references was a bit more serious than it sounds. The professor, Dr. Allison Stanger (who by the way is a progressive herself), whose hair was being pulled in one direction, simultaneously had her body pushed in a different direction. This apparently resulted in whiplash to her neck, requiring a later visit to the hospital emergency room. In addition, she expressed that while she was in the midst of the mob, she feared for her life.

Chease attempts to make a comparison between the numbers of “racist right-wingers” and of “murderous leftists,” a comparison I find problematical. The problem comes from the description of racists as “right-wingers”, apparently conflating racists with the majority of American right-wingers. There can be no doubt of the existence of murderous racists, the last one that was prominent in the news being Dylann Roof, who killed nine black church members last year during a bible study. Little came out about his personal beliefs other than he was an admirer of the Confederacy. However, conflating such monsters with the vast majority of right-wing neoliberals is not only not accurate, it is more than a little offensive. Most of the neoliberals I have met and conversed with are no more racist than the average progressive! Racists have their own ideological creed, which may or may not contain elements of similarity to neoliberalism, but they are not emblematic of neoliberals.

However, there can be no doubt that progressives, whether inside colleges and universities or outside of them, are becoming increasingly obnoxious, nonobservant of other’s rights, and occasionally violent. This fact is becoming so obvious, that even left-leaning newspapers like the Washington Post are commenting on it. There are even a very few progressives who are taking note of this sad fact. In The Analysis of Reality, I quoted a progressive Ph.D. student in political science at Stanford University, Artemis Seaford, on progressives’ reactions to Trump’s election. In her post Liberal Academia in Donald Trump’s World on the American Interest website, she does not admit to any great error on the part of progressives’ ideology. She does however admit to an uneasiness about many of progressives’ reactions. She writes:

A popular knee-jerk reaction has been to attribute the outcome exclusively to bigotry, misogyny, the Electoral College, uneducated white males, and voter identification laws. This is usually followed by a vow to “fight sexism and racism in all its forms.”

There is nothing prima facie objectionable with such a reaction. However, just below its surface lies the proposition that nearly half [of the] American voters have finally shown us their true bigoted, misogynist colors, and the implication that it is up to us, liberal savants, to show them why they are wrong. Going down this route means going about liberal “business as usual.” It means digging in our heels in the face of an external threat and doubling down on our positions, taking them even more for granted than before.

She goes on to suggest the manner in which progressives (she calls them liberals, and their ideology liberalism, which of course is a misnomer) explained their beliefs has had the effect of alienating the working and middle class. Seaford believes progressives should recognize “that tens of millions of Americans voted for Trump despite his bigotry, not because of it.” She goes on to note that progressive academics have been intolerant of other views, that “We have dismissed our conservative peers in the classroom and taunted them on social media all while refusing to seriously engage their views.”

Chease attempts to belittle the extent to which higher education has become so one-sidedly progressive and intolerant to other ideas when he writes, “The story of Murray and the hair-pulling which you cite belies a lack of ideological diversity in that particular University, … “, to which he then generously adds, “… which likely exists in universities at large.” However, he then takes back some of this generous admission a bit when he writes concerning a fight between UC Berkeley students and Trump supporters, “Again, this shows a problematic ideological purity in certain locales, … “. However, the problem has become far more than “ideological purity in certain locales”, but is in fact an almost omnipresent bias in almost all institutions of higher learning. The American Interest website recently published an essay, entitled Mind the Professors by Samuel J. Abrams, that is concerned with precisely this subject. In that post the graph below was presented as 45 years of data of the ratio of leftist individuals to rightist (progressives to neoliberals in my parlance) for three separate populations.

From this data we can see from the red curve the American people themselves have remained consistently and fairly evenly divided between the left and the right with a slight bias toward the right. However, starting in 1984 we see a fairly consistent growth in leftist faculty compared to those on the right. Currently, there are on average around 4.5 leftist professors to every professor on the right. Moreover, The American Interest article shows that these leftist professors are concentrated in the social science and liberal arts departments where they can have the greatest influence. This is demonstrated by the bar chart below.

A short perusal of the chart will show you approximately 75% of the social science faculty was progressive in 2014, and almost 70% of the history and political science faculty. The percentage of progressive faculty appears to fall monotonically the harder the science is. The percentage of progressive faculty does not fall to below 50% until you get to the really technical subjects. Outside of the hard sciences, American institutions of higher learning have indeed become primarily schools to indoctrinate young people into the mysteries of the political Left.

Where Does This Lead Us?

The real importance of the previous section  is not so much about which side of the ideological wars is more to blame for today’s incipiently violent political environment. (Although it should be clear from what I have written that I mostly blame the progressives. Mostly.) What is really important is that the environment is indeed becoming more violent.

I am sure I am not revealing anything unusual to anyone when I note that the election of Donald Trump has driven the American Left almost to insanity. I devoted a number of posts to this observation right around the date of the election, starting from three days just before the election with Reality Is Wagging Its Finger At Us!, followed by The Analysis of Reality, Progressives’ Hypocrisy Is Showing, Progressives Doubling Down, and How Flexible Are Progressive Minds?. The answer to the question that forms the title in the last-listed post is, unfortunately, not very. In that post I wrote,

Nevertheless, conservatives (I should have written neoliberals!) should be wary of being triumphalist, since the division of opinion, both among our citizens and those of the European Union, is still fairly even. Democrats are seizing on this fact (remember their 1.3 million presidential popular vote majority! [actually rising to close to 3 million at last reckoning]) to insist they were robbed and to double down on their policies. Many of them are insisting their losses merely demonstrate how racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic so many in the American electorate are. Given the hostility of so many to the country’s elites, it is hard to see how progressives’ labeling about half the American electorate as inhuman monsters will avail the Democratic Party much. Yet, the call for the government to solve all problems is a potent temptation, offering an easy answer to problems.

The point alluded to in this quote is that progressives should be very wary about expressing their outrage and hatred. Not only does it serve to alienate completely about half the population, driving their votes away, but expressed hatred often has the effect of generating hatred right back at them from the other side. This is especially true when that hatred takes the form of destructive riots where people are injured and property destroyed. As an illustration of this effect, I heartily recommend reading the post Progressives’ Hypocrisy Is Showing, which features a cri de cœur in the form of an email from a friend and onetime co-worker of mine. Remarking on the progressive riots following Trump’s election for a number of days, my friend John wrote,

Riots again??? … Is it time to make a stand? Did the Republicans, or did the Tea Party ever have these riots when they lost? Who has the moral high ground?  Hmm… Are these riots legal?  Is burning cars legal?  Or do these juveniles (some would say spoiled and entitled brats) just get away with it?  What are the consequences of their actions? …

So is this hate speech? Am I a racist? -Really? I am Chinese, born American, and damn proud of it!  I grew up in prejudice, in the early 1970’s, during Vietnam. I was beat up by Whites and Blacks alike for being the wrong color.  My Dad could not get a job, tried selling vacuum cleaners, and had doors slammed on him for being the wrong color.  Did I mention my Dad had a college degree?  Maybe they forgot to ask. I still remember sitting in the car when six years old, watching a gas station owner tell my Dad, “‘Charlie,’ get off my property.”  Racist?  Privileged?  Me?

If this kind of action-reaction continues for much longer, we might well find ourselves in the midst of a second civil war. Having experienced war, I strongly recommend reasoned discussion instead.

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