Interviewing Author of Woke Capitalism in the 21st Century on Callin and the Web at 1 pm EST/ 10 AM PDT + Open Thread

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Wesley Yang @wesyang

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callin.comWoke Capital in The 21st Century | Conversations in Year ZeroInterviewing Williams College Political Scientist Darrel Paul about his article for my Substack on woke capitalism. Article here: https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/woke-capital-in-the-twenty-first?s=w

Today’s conversation is with Williams College Professor of Political Science Darel E.Paul.

He is the author of From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage, a fascinating study of how elite consensus was generated around gay marriage and effected a sea change in consciousness around the issue that took it from one that a super-majority of Democratic legislators voted to outlaw in 1994 to the full acceptance two decades hence.

He is also a regular contributor to the publication First Things.

We will be discussing the first outside contribution to Year Zero, Paul’s essay Woke Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

Woke Capital in the Twenty-First Century

And also making reference to some of his other excellent work in First Things, including this essay on the centrality of queerness as the exemplary case of the therapeutic virtues:

“Queerness owes its privileged status to its relationship to the therapeutic. It epitomizes three central therapeutic values: individuality, authenticity, and liberation. Individual rights, of course, have long been the beating heart of the American creed. Yet the therapeutic turns traditional American individualism into individuality, wedding the former to a romantic sensibility of the self as a unique and creative spirit whose reason for existence is its own expression. None have summarized such individuality better than America’s philosopher-king, former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in 1992 famously defended “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Although Kennedy wrote these words in defense of the right to abortion, he quoted them when ending the last of America’s sodomy laws in 2003 and echoed them as he constitutionalized same-sex marriage in 2015 as an expression of the right “to define and express [one’s] identity.”

The therapeutic presents queerness as the exemplar of individuality. Barack Obama declared eight LGBT Pride months during his eight years in the White House and through each of them urged everyone “to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.” New York Pride advertised its 2018 festival under the slogan “Defiantly Different,” speaking to the “tenacious individuality” of LGBT persons and celebrating “the next wave of creative thinkers prepared to score their own trails, and each distinctive individual in between.” The Madison Avenue trade magazine Adweek observed that “embracing the rainbow . . . is about embracing [one’s] unique individuality,” a cultural fact demonstrated by the hundreds of brands doing exactly that through Pride Month. Thus T-Mobile makes a “commitment to supporting individuality and equality” when celebrating “#UnlimitedPride,” and General Mills promotes “a culture of belonging that embraces and celebrates employees’ differences” under the Pride flag. Budweiser is “creating a world where everyone can live the life they love” with rainbow Pride bottles. As an official sponsor of WorldPride 2019, L’Oréal informs consumers, “We celebrate individuality and champion self-expression.” DKNY gets right to the point selling its “pride tee” blazoned with the message “100% Me.”

From a therapeutic perspective, the more fantastic a sexual identity, the more it expresses individuality and thus the more exemplary it is. Superlatives such as “extraordinary,” “amazing,” and “fabulous” are ubiquitous in discussing queerness. Chips Ahoy! hires a drag queen for a Mother’s Day Twitter commercial. HSBC features spectral nonbinary activist Jamie Windust to emphasize that “being too much, will actually be just enough.” Oreo issues “special edition Pronoun Packs” of its cookies “encouraging everybody to share their pronouns with #Pride.” The New York City Human Rights Commission and Mastercard (the “official card sponsor” of WorldPride 2019) hang a panoply of temporary street signs near the Stonewall Inn, thereby transforming Gay Street into “Gay St. / Lesbian St. / Bisexual St. / Trans St. / Queer St. / Intersex St. / Asexual St. / Nonbinary St. / Pansexual St. / Two Spirit St. / + St.”: The “+” stands in for any sexual identities not already listed above. In a summation of the therapeutic doctrine of individuality, former Episcopal Bishop V. Gene ­Robinson proclaims, “There are as many sexualities as there are human beings.””

and this review of Christopher Caldwell’s AGE OF ENTITLEMENT:

The challenges of reconciling deep diversity with political freedom have been met in other times and places, and there is no reason Americans cannot meet them in the twenty-first century. But it may take transformations more dramatic than we are yet willing to contemplate. During a period of deep diversity in Dutch politics, free institutions coexisted with multiculturalism through the system of “pillarization” in which Catholics, Calvinists, socialists, and liberals lived in distinct state-recognized and state-supported communities (though liberals ­objected that, as individualists, they didn’t form a community at all) while being allotted proportional representation in “national” institutions. Switzerland still combines its own form of consociationalism with referenda-based direct democracy and a far-reaching federalism. ­Canada deals with deep diversity through a system of asymmetric federalism in which it grants Quebec special recognition and powers. The United States has its own rich history of federalism to rediscover and reinvigorate. Our limited forays into legal pluralism, such as tribal sovereignty or covenant marriage law, could become models rather than oddities. 

Our ultimate political goals should be civil order, the protection of human life, the promotion of the family, human dignity (including but not limited to freedom), the long-run survival of communities (including but not limited to environmental sustainability), and ultimately the common good. The means of achieving these are matters of prudence and political strategy. Even political scale and institutional design should be on the agenda. A liberal system of clashing rights, however, is unlikely to hold any promise for the deeply diverse country America has become.

Read the Paul articles, listen to the Callin conversation — discuss in comments…

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