And there is a certain amount of Jacobin terror out there. If you’re a young professor looking for tenure, you place your career in peril if you disagree with any of this. If you publish books or edit a newspaper, magazine or website and you publish something that runs counter to the dogma, you can find yourself booted by your own staff. If you run a business, but don’t fall in line, you can be run into the ground by a boycott and a besmirching of your brand.
That’s why I think it’s so important for liberals, like me, with nothing to lose, to speak up strongly and just say it in clear terms: you do not have to accept critical race theory. It’s okay. You can still call yourself a liberal. You are still a good person. And you are not a racist.
If enough people say this out loud, then maybe we can make the world safe again for ideas and for classical liberal values. We can end the terror.
Because my own theory is that the American system contains the means of its own correction. I like Bill Clinton’s formulation: “There’s nothing that’s wrong with American that can’t be fixed with what’s right with America.”