Thanks for this impassioned response, but I feel like you’ve managed to consummately misinterpret the thrust of this article, and in so doing have succeeded in exemplifying precisely the kind of alienating knee-jerk liberalism this article attempts to skewer.

You’ve inferred so much that I didn’t say, and didn’t even intend to imply. I get it— I’m fed up with the deluge of Bari Weiss-style anti-liberal apologias, too, and there’s a temptation, upon reading anything that smacks of sympathy for conservative intransigence, to shout it down, because so much of it is about controlling other people and maintaining a disgusting status quo.

But, you might have noticed: things are not going very well.

I’m not trying to excuse any of it; I want it to stop, same as you. I have no interest in making room for Jordan Peterson at the table — far as I can tell he’s just a charlatan atavist with a lobster fetish. But at the moment he is at the head of the fucking table. Do you ever stop and ask yourself how he got there?

Look at what your response does: conflating a call for introspection and temperance with Charles Murray reaction and a desire to perpetuate white patriarchy. Look at how you articulate your own progressivism — not out of concern for others, but as an act of spite against those you see as being responsible for your own sense of victimhood.

Then look at how you end, with an attempt to excommunicate someone because they dared to put their head above the parapet to question whether we’re going about things the right way. We all get the implication, which is that you have appointed yourself arbiter of what connotes liberalism, and who gets to join the club. And just like that, a load more potential allies are left rolling their eyes.

I’m afraid your response says so much about the crisis of liberalism, and why it seems destined to keep hemorrhaging support. Because, hard as it may be for you to fathom, if you want this nightmare to end, you are going to need some of us dreaded white men on your side.