Yascha Mounk: Avoiding The Identity Trap

How to battle identity politics and defend liberal values of universalism, free speech, and open inquiry

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Yascha Mounk: Avoiding The Identity Trap

My guest today is Johns Hopkins professor Yascha Mounk, the founder of the online magazine Persuasion and the author of the important new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. 

The Identity Trap explains how identity politics and social justice discourse have come to dominate contemporary discussions of just about everything, analyzes their negative influence on society, and shows how to confront and defeat them in the name of liberal values of free expression and open inquiry.

Yascha was a prime mover behind the 2020 open letter on "justice and open debate" in Harper's magazine and is one of the most powerful defenders of free speech and the marketplace of ideas at work today.

This interview took place at the Reason Speakeasy, a live, unscripted monthly conversation held in New York City with outspoken defenders of free speech and heterodox thinking. Go here for information about upcoming events.

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Comments

[MasterThief]

Easy, don't be a racist. Marxists have a problem with that because dividing people into identity groups caters to their collectivist goals.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I've been gradually reading a book on WW II US carriers and their aviation techs. It's a dry subject written drier than it needs to be, and two statements jumped out at me.

Discussing Lucy Brewer, a fictional woman who survived three years on a sailing ship as a US Marines sharpshooter, it uses the phrase "disguised her gender identity".

Towards the end of WW II, some admiral or other wrote a letter discussing future civilian prospects for all those trained aviation techs, and there's a footnote lamenting that it didn't mention women, who were something like 5% of the naval aviation techs. It's fucking WW II! People used "he" for both men and women then!

I hate this woke crap.

[Stuck in California]

We all hate it.

That's the point, I think. You can't ignore it because it's shoved into everything. Almost literally. And you get the choice of being the evil racist misogynist transphobic homophobic bigot, or agreeing with something you know is ridiculous.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

From a rhetorical standpoint you make 3 grievous errors.
1) No point -- and many reasons not to -- in using "liberal" and 'Values' -- unless that was a wink, wink anti-religion signal
2) Universalism is incoherent, cf Popper on the Paradox of Tolerance. You can't say 'right" "wrong" "moral" :immoral" if there is no standard at all. But we have a founding and some things are wrong and immoral and that is as universal as you get without arming the agressive perverted and violent who won't tolerate anything.
3) How can you even defend open discussion and free inquiry if we are just to submit to your idea that that is what YOU want!!! Is it TRUE , is it MORAL to promote those things? THEN BE A MAN AND MAKE THE CASE

[Zeb]

I'm curious what your problem with #1 is. "Liberal values" usually means the presumption that people are free to act as they choose unless there is some compelling public interest in controlling certain behavior.

[bacchys]

It's someone steeped in idiot rightwing propaganda. They don't know what "liberal" means.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

If someone is steeped in liberal propaganda they don’t know what ‘right wing’ means ! Cheers

[Religion and Politics, my life]

As if public interest were one thing. Is what is wrong , immoral against the public interest? Your view would have enshrined slavery.

I am curious what your problem is with Lincoln's reply to Douglas defending people free to have slavery : "When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong with the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong."

You are just hiding from right and wrong when you use non-words like "liberal values"

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

How to battle identity politics and defend liberal values of universalism, free speech, and open inquiry

We're years down the road of a culture war that's largely been lost-- and should have been central to a libertarian publication. But I digress...

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Followup question: by doing this interview, does this mean Reason has decided to NOT sit on the sidelines of the culture war?

[gagow1]

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[Ed Grinberg]

No, no, no! "Culture war" is stuff Republicans complain about, but we're OK with. When it's something we care about, it's "first principles," "liberal values," etc. -- in other words, important!

[Religion and Politics, my life]

If someone is steeped in liberal propaganda they don't know what 'right wing' means ! Cheers

[bacchys]

What position do you think a libertarian publication should have on, say, same sex marriage and those who think they were born the wrong sex?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

free speech, and open inquiry

Well, if ask questions, you're literally killing people who have self identified as someone who can attend a women's-only tech conference.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Same sex marriage is an abomination against real marriage and serves to weaken the common good. As to those who think they were born the wrong sex, they are still the sex they actually are.

There is no libertarian perspective that goes against REALITY.

A New Birth of Marriage: Love, Politics, and the Vision of the Founders , 2022
by Brandon Dabling
Makes the case with utter clarity