This opinion piece from Ross Douthat is part of the widespread debate within journalism about the NYT’s decision to publish and then step back from an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton. I’m posting it not because of its relevance to that particular debate, but because he makes an interesting argument that “the force transforming Western liberalism” — ie the social justice movement ie woke culture — is, for better or for worse, no longer a flavor of liberalism but a separate ideology. His particular take on that comes from an unsurprisingly conservative perspective, but I think the core idea is a fascinating one that I’ll be mulling over for a long time.

The surge of feminist and #MeToo activism in the last decade, for instance, has advanced a longstanding and admirable liberal goal — the right of the individual to be free from rape, assault and unwanted sexual aggression. But at the same time it has generated new disciplinary structures, primarily on college campuses, that point us toward a post-liberal system of sexual regulation — a bureaucratic supervision of intimate life, often built on the presumption of male guilt rather than due process.

The same duality exists with the advance of gay and transgender rights. In their liberal form, these causes seek an individual right to live one’s life without facing unjust discrimination. But when other constitutional rights long considered essential to liberalism — freedom of speech, freedom of religion — come into conflict with the movement, it’s assumed that the old rights must inevitably give way. And the movement’s vanguard increasingly rejects debate entirely, expanding its definition of a “transphobe” to encompass anyone with doubts about the widespread use of puberty blockers or the movement’s ideologically freighted view of sex and gender.

Likewise with anti-racism and Black Lives Matter. Many of the people participating in this month’s George Floyd protests have goals that are meliorist, reformist, liberal — demilitarize police departments, weaken police unions, change police tactics, hire and promote more minority officers. (Many of these are goals that libertarians and conservatives support as well.)

But part of the anti-racism movement is seeking much more than just changes to policing. It’s interested in spiritual renewal and consciousness raising — something evident from the revivalism of so many protests in the last week — and its capacious definitions of racism imply, in the end, not reform but re-education, not interracial dialogue but strict white deference, not a liberal society groping toward equality but a corrupt society being re-engineered.

Opinion | Ross Douthat: The Tom Cotton Op-Ed and the Cultural Revolution – The New York Times