BostonGlobe | Is the doctrinaire left
as dangerous to liberal democracy as the unified rule of the right?
Certainly, the Trump-era Republican Party has the potential to do grave
damage to democratic institutions and is already damaging liberal norms.
But the academic left’s hostility to these norms should not be
discounted, and its influence over progressive and Democratic dogma is
only growing.
What’s more, left-wing campus politics also feed and
empower the right. Stories of political correctness run amok, gleefully
picked up by conservative media (and in some cases overblown), boost
the perception of rampant hypersensitivity, speech policing, and
anti-male and/or anti-white bias. New research
by Georgia State University Ph.D. candidate Zack Goldberg confirms
anecdotal reports that many Trump voters were at least partly motivated
by concerns about political correctness.
Perhaps the real danger
is that “social justice warriors” on the left are propping up Trumpism
on the right, and vice versa. With each side spurring the other to
action in a feedback loop, there will soon be little room left for
anyone else.
