I consider myself deeply liberal. I try to "police my language." I agree with the underlying premise of the article, that language encodes implicit power structures and it is a worthy endeavor to not implicitly "dominate" or denigrate those around you.
When I was younger I used the word retard disparagingly, and someone who was the father of someone who was suffered from a disability was visibly hurt. The world doesn't need that.
I agree with the reasoning behind capitalizing the b in Black but not the w in White when referring to people.
But holy cow, this article is nuts. There is some serious group think going on in these academic groups, and despite a desire to do the right thing, this article is going to have the opposite effect. The fact this was published shows a serious lack of critical review, a lack of academic rigor, and an extreme rejection of pragmatism in the face of idealism which is exactly how liberalism fails.
He did say he was a liberal. I don't think it's possible to be a left wing westerner without embracing the prevailing cultural attitude of activist pettiness, at least a little bit.
A bit, maybe. But I do know people who are actual left-leaning liberals and folks who are orthodox, economic Marxists and both pretty much loathe the activist class.
A lot of the reason to be afraid of the modern times, though, is that many more or less left-lib people have lost sight of why anything the activist class wants might be bad. People increasingly just have no understanding for why these kinds of word redefinitions or any activist program like trying to erase the contributions of assholes from projects and products might be damaging. It's not necessarily that they're actively onboard. It's not that they're actively pushing for more silliness, but there's just a new blindness as to what they're doing.
It's similar to how in during the pandemic a lot of people were really into the idea of forcibly relocating unvaccinated people, and it just didn't occur to them that their policy might be monstrous.
When I was younger I used the word retard disparagingly, and someone who was the father of someone who was suffered from a disability was visibly hurt. The world doesn't need that.
I agree with the reasoning behind capitalizing the b in Black but not the w in White when referring to people.
But holy cow, this article is nuts. There is some serious group think going on in these academic groups, and despite a desire to do the right thing, this article is going to have the opposite effect. The fact this was published shows a serious lack of critical review, a lack of academic rigor, and an extreme rejection of pragmatism in the face of idealism which is exactly how liberalism fails.