In Defense of Punching Left

I'm a liberal. I've always been a liberal...

[...]

"Don't punch left" is the core tenet of Solidarity, a new book by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix. In a laudatory interview with the Washington Post, Hunt-Hendrix said the book was aimed not only at progressives in general but also specifically at liberals who criticize the left, naming me and newsletter author Matthew Yglesias as "falling into the right's divide-and-conquer strategy."

I read a couple more paragraphs and I had to stop. I forgot what a terrible writer he is. The article is like reading a textbook that lectures you.

r/neoliberal thread

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    6 months ago

    When every cause is framed as a matter of absolute moral urgency, which is the lingua franca of protest politics, then no compromise can be brooked.

    That was also quoted in the r/Enough_Sanders_Spam thread. What a odd sub that is. It's like I put on "They Live" glasses and all the comity and civility and the rest of the superficial façade of liberals is stripped away and I can see who they really are.

    • Wertheimer [any]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Compromise fetishists, with their Henry Clay shrines or whatever, never seem to grasp that if you're not at the table you're on the menu. They like to bring up environmentalism vs. construction, as if the compromise is merely between supporters of the Nature Team and the Development Team, rather than, say, communities who don't want be poisoned and the corporations that want to poison them.