Patrick Casey on the "Woke Right"

Conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host John Harris. We have with us today for the first time Patrick Casey he is the host of the restoring order podcast and he also does writing for Organizations like Chronicles magazine and the blaze and he's here to talk with us about the so-called woke, right?

He did a piece recently in Chronicles magazine, which I thought was really good on this subject And of course those who follow me know I did a piece as well and we share I think a lot of agreement about this critique and how Ridiculous it is.

James Lindsay, Wokeness, and the Woke Right

And so I appreciate him coming on to discuss it. Welcome Patrick. Thank you. Happy to be here. Yeah, thank you. Well, let's start here. You wrote an article for Chronicles magazine on James Lindsay and the title is James Lindsay is wrong about wokeness and that's kind of like a bold thing in a way because James Lindsay has made his bread-and-butter and his whole public career about wokeness and With the assumption that he is an expert on this and he does seem to understand a lot about modern Critical race theory and how it works and he's read the sources.

So In what sense do you think that he is? Wrong about wokeness and is it just because of the woke right stuff or do you think in general he's wrong about it?

I'm sure he's wrong about all sorts of things frankly but the main thing to keep in mind with with James Lindsay here is that he has an agenda that Takes precedence over accurate analysis of or honest analysis of wokeness.

He has his new niche is combating the woke right and he'll still go after the what he calls the woke right doesn't really exist. And and of course the woke left. But he just is when you have a political project.

Then a lot of oftentimes people who engage in intellectual history and in political philosophy that those two disciplines end up becoming not warped but Utilized and kind of weaponized and distorted in the process in service of the political agenda.

So that's basically the thing to understand. Even if he's read every book on on wokeness all of the of the primary sources or whatever. But I'm sure he's read something. You know when you're tweeting out stuff like the woke right and he's using that to refer to paleo cons, you know Christian nationalists like someone like Pat Buchanan not extreme figures by any means.

When you're when he's talking about how the woke right are. What was the term he used? Stalinist national socialists. It's just okay. So you're just making a lot of what he does is just makes things up.

He combines mutually exclusive Political ideologies, right, you know any similarities between Stalinism and National Socialism probably exists between any Totalitarian regime right? Oh, they had an all-powerful government.

They had you know, kind of a cult of personality for their for their main leader. You can say that about a lot of stuff. So the thing to keep in mind with James Lindsay is he has an axe to grind. This is a political project that he makes money off of I'm unaware of.

Any any other you know things that he's doing for this seems like it's his job his main his main his main focus. So that's just the main thing to keep in mind is he's not really interested in being accurate.

He's got an axe to grind for reasons of personal vindictiveness sincere ideological aversion to things like Christian nationalism and also. You know, he's making money. I don't know if someone's paying him at the very least I'm sure his website accepts donations or something.

So.

Yeah, no, I'm sure he is. There's no question about that being platform where he's at and he has ways to receive donations and the rest but the thing I wanted to talk about is in your piece this idea that he tries to Attribute things to the quote-unquote woke right which as you said, I think can be even fairly vanilla.

It can be someone like Patrick Buchanan or just Christian conservatives really who want to defend themselves against the forces of decadence and modernity and. He does it in such a way that it would apply to liberalism itself.

It would apply to you know, a myriad of political approaches. In fact, maybe politics itself would fall under the critique that he's bringing because you know. One of the things I think you pointed out is there's this oppressor oppressed dichotomy, which he brings out and in social justice.

That's a rigid kind of binary universal thing. But it's not for every political system. But all every political system must identify threats and try to meet those threats and that's what he seems to be picking on and saying that Equality makes something woke and if that's true.

Then wouldn't liberalism be woke? I mean am I understanding the point that you're making?

Sure, well, yeah, there are different liberalisms. I always defer to Professor Gottfried and his great book after liberalism. He argues that the 19th century Tradition of liberalism in America which he refers to as bourgeois liberalism is.

Very very different than what developed in the 20th century. Right with mass democracy. Liberal democracy. With with the 20th century. 19th century liberalism. That was defined by things like property rights limited franchise.

Christianity. You know traditional values by today's standards. Certainly non woke. Views on views on race. We all know how people saw things that that way in the past. And also things like separation of church and state sure rule of law.

Yeah, okay. Well over the course of the 20th century is as professor Gottfried outlines in his book.

You see.

Those things in many cases get inverted they all of those some of those things get turned into you know instead of instead of you know the government existing for to preserve the natural rights of Man and and limited government all of a sudden you get this idea of civil rights of minority rights you have.

Instead of you have like a subjective right to like X Y Z people talking about how they have it carries over to today. People I think that they have a right the government owes them, you know healthcare or something.

Sorry, they have a right to this they have a right to that and that's not the national natural rights tradition of the founders. You also had instead of property rights in the 19th century liberalism what came in the 20th century you had.

You know, you saw the development of the welfare state. So the you know, the traditional traditionally, you know the White patriarchal norms of the 19th century. Okay well we saw over the course of the 20th century how all of those became viewed as evil and You had anti white politics and feminist politics basically be enshrined into law.

So the point that Gottfried makes it's right there in the title of his book after liberalism. That what developed over the course of the 20th century isn't really liberalism now. We can call people libs libtards liberals, whatever and people understand what we're getting at.

But there there is an understanding as long as we understand that this liberal tradition Changed a lot now someone like James Lindsay would point to some of the developments of the 20th century and say that those are bad.

But it's this idea of classical liberalism that he and others in his in his orbit cling to. Where they believe that there's this like unbroken liberal tradition. That was anti identity politics anti, you know Christian influence on society and that that's that's like what America was about at the beginning and Like the Wolksters did away with it.

But again when we actually look at what liberalism looked like in this country. This this what the classical liberals are trying to they're kind of groping at very clumsily again. It's very different than what he's saying.

You know if you had told people in the 19th century who you know again that was there was a liberal a bourgeois liberal. Time that you know, they still would have had like pornography banned like abortion banned these sorts of things so basically the fundamental error that Lindsay makes is Thinking that there's really ever been a time in America where Someone's values haven't haven't reigned.

Essentially, there is really no such thing as a truly value-neutral institution. I think a lot of what the founders had in mind was good. But that was that was all within the parameters of what they they basically assumed was, you know.

There wasn't going to be trillions of people from sub-saharan Africa Immigrating here there were there wasn't gonna be open borders to You know to Haiti or something of the sort and they also like the the transgender stuff the LGBT agenda.

They really as as classical, you know as liberals, whatever they weren't into that. The last I would say is again this whole classical liberal tradition people like invoking Locke saying Oh, this guy was against identity politics.

No, he believed in slavery based on racial, you know differences the way. Basically, everyone did back then and he also thought atheists should be subject to Some pretty extreme legal. So all of these class this classical liberal tradition that they try to paint.

It doesn't exist. It's basically just Reaganism. But the but they try to act like that's what America is that's Historically what America has been about and anyone who wants to impose Christianity on people or have Christianity influence government.

It's like that's some aberration. No, no, no that that literally is is the norm for most of American history. So he's wrong about all that and he's wrong about plenty of other things, too.

Friend-Enemy Politics and the Myth of Neutral Liberalism

Yeah.

What strikes me about him and not just him but others who have critiqued the so-called woke right is the fact that they seem to? lack some historical context and background. They approach it almost like an engineer would approach something and there's no Room for the ideological and utopian kind of egalitarian Flavor that gets sprinkled on to all of these I would say intrinsic political categories that Occur in social justice.

So for example, like you point out the oppressor press dichotomy, right? There's There's there's bad guys. There's good guys if you want to simplify it into that Framework all political approaches including classical liberalism and modern liberalism and and I don't I can't think of one that doesn't have this Feature to it have to take into account those things and are in the business of trying to defeat threats and enemies and those who would oppose their vision for the good and Social justice makes these very firm categories.

I mean, I know they're not the only Political philosophy to do this, but they turn them into ideological rigid binary categories that are universal and It's why you're a white male. So you're racist and these kinds of things, but Lindsey wants to conflate these things.

It seems like to me he wants to point out that someone who just points out that there's friends and enemies or oppressors oppressed or People who are bad guys and good guys are somehow Aping the social justice movement when in reality, it seems like if you go back even to classical liberalism I don't care really what political philosophy you want to point to.

Isn't that intrinsic to all politics like this idea that there's gonna be bad guys and good guys. You need to stop the bad guys. I mean am I over simplifying it or is it really that no that is the essence of.

Politics as Schmidt would would argue and I know that the exciting woke authors again. But yeah Carl Schmidt in the concept of the political the idea of the friend-enemy distinction. That the essence of politics is about Identifying friend and enemy and that's not on a personal level.

That's at a group level. And one of Schmidt's main main gripes with with liberalism was that he felt that liberalism was insufficiently Poised to or capable of doing that because a government a state needs to be able to say this is a threat.

You know. Obviously you can point to many examples throughout history of a government doing that and it being it resulting in in genocide tragedy. Whatever else. So obviously there there are abuses of that.

But at the same time you can also look to The government it's your instances where the government is identified like a terrorist network or something.

And yeah.

The government's got to be able to say these people are an enemy of of the public order of the good and In act accordingly, so Schmidt felt that liberalism. By trying to remove that friend-enemy distinction function from the state was was Preventing it from from you know, he was writing some of this time during during the Weimar years, you know, he's worried about communism.

And so forth. So now the thing to keep in mind there is I would argue that the Whatever we live under again, this is we're after liberalism or we're in a different form of liberalism at the very least.

This isn't classical liberalism. What we live in now is like the state absolutely is making these friend-enemy distinctions but it's done under the pretext that it doesn't do this and that myth is of impartiality is Integral to to the perceived legitimacy of this regime the regime it says no no, no.

No, no when we when we try to put Trump in prison. When we twist one, you know one minor campaign, you know finance misdemeanor. Into like 36 felonies or however many it was. No, this is this is the rule of law.

We would never go after our political rivals, but then when Trump fires James Comey. That's the politicization of the gun of the weaponization of the government. He's making the government political. So really the main thing to I think the critique of the system that we're up against is that yeah it actually it absolutely is making a Friend-enemy distinction and that would point to the fact that even a regime that is founded on the idea of not making these Friend-enemy distinctions is still doing it goes to show that it's that's probably not going anywhere.

What would identifying a Woke right group and wanting them punished fit into this. Because I think it would. It's self-refuting. You're looking at a group of people that you're afraid are gonna create some kind of a theocratic system or it's all tell a Terry and System that's more I guess conservative, but you're saying these guys must be stops if there was an imminent like trad calf takeover.

Would he would he use the power of the state against? The woke right in that instance because I think Lindsay would say well, I'm just arguing. We're just debating. I'm pointing out ideas that I think are bad, but the real question that comes down to it is okay.

Well, like if it's between you and your your James Lindsay is president of the classical liberals, you know States of America or something. Would you James Lindsay use state power to prevent a trad calf takeover of the government now?

I'm not talking about a violent trad calf takeover. I'm talking about or Christian nationalists in general. Christian nationalists through the use of the system lawfully politically are gonna Take over and just totally reorient society.

Would you use the power of the government to stop that and that's where things we an interesting. He would put to remain consistent. He would have to say no. But you know, I don't know remains to be seen.

Yeah, I mean it doesn't we're never gonna get to that.

Hey.

Maybe I don't know.

Maybe create Christian nationalists regime change. You got a lot. You got Christian nationalists like Russ Vaughn who are gonna be in high-level positions of the coming Trump administration. So that that is somewhat of a reality, but James Lindsay being president having to make all right.

No, no, I kid me that is that doesn't appear to be something we have to worry about.

The Future of the Right: Trump, Social Conservatism, and Coalition Politics

Well, this is this is an interesting dynamic and I'd be curious of your thoughts of what do you think lies ahead. Because you rightly pointed out differences between modern liberalism and classic liberalism and what I've noticed is a lot of neo-conservatives and James Lindsay I Wouldn't even categorize as a conservative.

I don't even know if he would categorize himself as a conservative. I know he years ago. He did not but He would frame himself as a liberal, but he was. He is pro-lgbt. He is pro abortion on social issues.

He is. I don't even know how you fit within classical liberalism because they would have all disagreed with him on those things.

Yeah, like we're an era stuff and we don't even have to go back to John Locke or what the founders thought you can just Go back to what? Yeah, that's that's just the thing is where where is this classical liberalism?

When did it exist? When was it? Ostensibly the norm. Because because it's very funny Lindsay accuses the woke right of hating the West. I've seen maybe Michael if our people people in that orbit saying these things.

But I've also seen James Lindsay say that if the West was still trad calf meaning like predominantly Christian He would probably apply that to you know 17th century England, which wasn't particularly the Catholic but Yeah, 17 18th century like well after the Reformation the The thing the thing though is is he said if the West wasn't Trad calf or the West was still trad calf.

He would not be Supportive of the West so he is someone I'm able to say I love the West Throughout, you know, depending on however, you want to start it. I think starting it with Charlemagne is Is kind of a safe, you know around 800 AD is a pretty safe time to do it.

There's debate over whether or not antiquity counts as as the West it's certainly a foundation upon which the West is built many many You know political I mean many brilliant minds Oswald Spengler in particular would classify antiquity as something else, but regardless antiquity The the Middle Ages going on to you know, the Enlightenment there's there's things I agree and disagree with but this is this is our history, this is our civilization and I don't feel the need to say well, I dislike this part of it.

So, you know screw so that's what he accuses us of doing but he only thinks that the Western Western civilization has as value because it's it's dispensed with. Because because of the Enlightenment, but again, it is a romanticized and a retconned Version of the Enlightenment whatever critiques there are to be made of the Enlightenment.

He's he imagines that His Western civilization. He imagines it believe it began with like John Locke or something in reality. It began with civil rights. The 60s, right? So this is the 20th century stuff that that that huge Transvaluation of values every you know, it was many many people would argue what we had of the 20th century was the creation of a new regime a new country and many of the Original rights conferred by the granted by the Constitution were done away with such as freedom of association.

These sorts of things you had the growth of the fourth branch of government administration. So we really we really live in in in a new time and it's not like it was, you know Wokeness came about ten years ago.

No.

It was really over the course of the 20th century with the Great Society LBJ's Great Society being one of the main one of the main early turning points of this so most of what most people believe Came about as a result of civil rights and people suffer from amnesia.

So they think that this is this is like how it's kind of always been the founders wanted there to be open borders and drag queen story hours or something of the sort and. The thing to keep in mind though.

Some people believe is sincerely. I don't know what James Lindsay sincerely believes. I do think that he hates Christianity. He hates paleo conservatism. It's anything to I think he hates conservatism in general but but at the same time when someone's Has an axe to grind and they they have a career and a brand to further to promote.

You have to really and that all of that is based on a certain read of history. You really have to ask yourself What do they even care if their read is true? You know their their historical read is true because it's polemical at the end of the day and and it serves a.

Different purpose than just telling the truth. I I think you're justified in being cynical as to the motivations of people like Lindsay, I'd like to Spread it out though beyond just Lindsay and maybe just talk about this notion of political neutrality and you know individual rights you don't have to think in terms of groups this sort of liberal ethos that Not just James Lindsay, but other neoconservatives and liberals today want to claim the mantle of.

This is the interesting thing to me as we've already discussed. They will eschew the older religious views that they categorize them I think mostly as religious on sexuality and Religious observance and public blasphemy laws that kind of thing.

They don't like that. And they see threats from Integralists and Christian nationalists and just traditional conservatives of all stripes. They put them into one pot and say Those guys are against your individual rights.

They want to suppress them. They want to use the power of the state to do it. They want to put restrictions on you that really it's not their business. There should be some kind of a principled Universal line that says government can't step into these areas.

But those areas keep changing I think as you've rightly pointed out with liberalism. The older liberals that they like to claim the mantle of didn't agree with them on this. I listened to part of an episode.

Again, I guess I want to get away from just James Lindsay, but it was James Lindsay. So and I don't listen to him much. It was in the writing my article I wanted to know how he categorized himself. Is he a classical liberal?

Is he a libertarian? How does he see himself and so he did some episodes on classic liberalism and One of the things I noticed he was saying was, you know, he really likes I guess Thomas Jefferson. I like Thomas Jefferson, but He he had to kind of frame Thomas Jefferson as this guy with these great ideas.

Who we are now taking to their logical conclusions and we're more Jeffersonian than Jefferson, right? He had these flaws and we've taken the the kernels of truth that he held and We can honor him for those things not obviously for his views on race or labor relations or anything else or sex.

You know relationships and that kind of thing so moving forward in The conservative movement, which I think largely I don't know if you agree with me is capitulated to this understanding of Society and the role of government that.

You know, they don't want you to take into account groups. They don't want the government to privilege one group or another they have this neutralist kind of outlook. That's what they I think think liberalism is.

And then seeing the rise and it's not even it's not a new thing. That's the thing like seeing the return of these older ways of Constructing society. What do you think is going to happen in the next few decades because you do have one road.

It's like the meme right like one path is which way Western man. Are you gonna go the James Lindsay path and it's got LGBTQ rights and it's got pro-abortion but look there's this Supposed guardrail that the government can't overstep or are you gonna go a more traditional path?

You know, maybe maybe you write for Chronicles of Paul Godfrey, you know type of Outlook, so I'm asking you to predict to predict which way. Well.

Trump is a very moderate in in this sense. And I think that's kind of the future of the right like it or not. Now I'm a big supporter of states rights if at the state level people want to enact more restrictive policies on Abortion and these sorts of things then that's that's totally fine.

I don't Yeah, I mean we look with Trump Trump has set the tone I think and it is, you know most likely successor JD Vance will probably kind of follow in these footsteps where I Don't know if they're gonna be doing away with gay marriage I mean, that's it's it's crazy to think that Barack Obama when he was running for It was either election or reelection.

I can't remember which he Explicitly said marriages between a man and a woman think both times. Yeah, that was anyways I think it must have been towards the end of his second term where he where he changed that but The point is it's like that's it's crazy to think about probably for Gen Z I mean, they they that's they've grown up.

They've been never been politically conscious in a world where the Democrats you know for to the right of Republicans today on on gay marriage, but the thing is is like I 50 it's somewhere 40 50 percent of Republicans support gay marriage at this point.

So the cat's like for it's it's not a good thing I'm arguing but the cat is kind of out of the back here. So I think the with regard to social conservatism The future of the right and this isn't me saying what I want.

This is just me saying what I think it's gonna be. It's gonna be about fighting the battles of like the trans agenda, particularly with kids. It's gonna be there's gonna be abortion fights. Some of these abortion referenda in in red states haven't really gone so well.

So it's My friend R McIntyre says it's kind of up to The pro-life movement and conservatives to sell this find a new way to sell this to people because it's kind of not working. The overturn of Roe v. Wade was was good.

It turned it back to the states. But again, if some relatively red states can't can't pass this stuff then You got it. You got to take a new strategy. So but but Lindsay ism definitely isn't the future I don't think the future of the right is like a super hardline social conservatism, but I also don't think it's it's Lindsay ism.

I think it looks like Trump, right? He gave the pro-life movement its biggest victory, but is that a is that a federal abortion ban? No, I would love to see you know, I think an abortion is a horrible thing.

I'm not supporting it, but Just in terms of pragmatism. I don't know if there's the popular support for like a really hardline social conservatism. So that's just but generally my my view it mom I think I think like it or not moderation on social issues is kind of gonna be The at the center of the Republican Party coalition yeah, there's gonna be tons of people who are more socially conservative and want to push things in that direction and Naturally, you're gonna have people that are more socially liberal.

But I think the average Republican voters is moderate by today's standards, which as far as the left is concerned is like, you know Handmaid's Tale or whatever. Yeah, if you're if you support it, you want to leave it up to the states if you Don't think that you know kids should be forcibly injected with hormones because they said one thing once Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's like Christo fascism or something as far as the left is concerned, but but from a Sober, you know more mature Perspective it's it's a pretty moderate.

Position. Well, I've seen some interesting polling. I'm sure you've seen of young men Gen Z men and How they are polling to the right. Women are not but Gen Z men are women are going the other direction they're more religious than Millennials or interested in religion and There's a rising I think audience especially in the podcast sphere, which is obviously where you and I are operating right now where there's this niche carved out for these kind of men who have been left behind who have been told that all the problems in society rest on them and They're pushing back against it and this I wonder whether this creates a broader coalition in the Republican Party itself that now to make room for these guys and some more somewhat innovative ideas also older ideas there's more political diversity that.

Maybe this is a reaction to that. This is a practical way. I'm looking at it, but I would think that the old guard Or those who are you keep saying Reagan s but maybe from that era the even in Christianity We had the religious right at one time like these guys were kind of like the old guard like whether or not they don't like.

The new blood coming in and the new blood has some different ideas and maybe it's as simple as that a gatekeeping maneuver I know this would go way past Lindsay's accusation of woke for hates to try to smear Conservative Christians, but do you think more broadly speaking?

There's a gatekeeping attempt on the right to keep these young guys out.

Gatekeeping, Online Influence, and the Right's New Leaders

So so it all depends I mean. Which coming come from from where. Specifically because there's some parts of the right they love having young people, you know.

Maybe it's conservative media. They want to find the next like well, everyone likes young people in their movement.

There's no question about that, right? So. Is it specific ideas you think are being kicked? Yeah, so.

So yeah, like I I think that like so Tea Party USA, right? They are sometimes I've called them spring break conservatism sometimes because their events are sometimes very geared for young people. They're exciting and young people show up.

They're throwing like t-shirts in the audience, right? It's like a youth group I understand that exists and that's in the mainstream, right? But there's also Did various dissident groups that are sometimes very different from each other you have like the Nick Fuentes type of Groper wing you know out there, they're not accepted obviously at all and I'm no Nick Fuentes fan at all, but I I see that as one of the one of the places that young men who have been disenchanted or disaffected have Gone to obviously you have the Christian nationalist movement Which James Lindsay is dead set against Stephen Wolf being probably the main figure in that who you ironically used to write for sovereign nations.

Who long story I was telling you a little bit about it, but that the guy who runs that Manages James Lindsay, but but that movement is trying to recover a lot of magisterial reforms political philosophy.

You have the you mentioned trad cats before but traditional Catholic I know I know Nick Fuentes tries to take that mantle I don't know if you want him as a representative of that, but but I know they're out there.

I'm not as familiar with that but Yeah, I mean, I you know, I don't know like you mentioned our Macintyre. I mean even someone like him. He's at the blaze, which is pretty amazing, but he is definitely not your average Political commentator at the blaze or the Daily Wire or any of these places that that is a.

Dissident right that people I think it's a useful Descriptive term to apply it to everything to the right of MAGA basically everything to the right of establishment can establish conservatism. That's kind of the scene that I've been in for like eight years at this point and in different iterations and I Think there's been considerable overlap.

In recent years really it started with the insanity of 2020 and just kind of everyone feeling like they're a lot of that that pushed a lot of people rightward and just four years of Biden tyranny that made everyone kind of feel like we're in this together now not everyone but there's increased the overlap between people like these like bigger like a non accounts that post like some really right-wing stuff and.

And people in conservatism is is like you could say the online right Is is there's a considerable overlap and people it's it's very clear that people with influence and and so forth are. Like people that work for the Trump campaign and these sorts of things are keeping up with some pretty right-wing stuff on Twitter.

They might not agree with everything but they're aware this there's kind of organic counterculture on Twitter. And there are different factions within that as you kind of mentioned. So are there some gatekeeping efforts?

Yeah, I think that's a big part of what James Lindsay and the Babylon B people in general. Dylan. Yeah, it's it's very it seems very concerted that they're like, okay. There's rising opposition to wokeness this Neil Shanvey, right?

But we're good work but but but it's going too far now some of the stuff that they take issue with I also take issue. But I think that they take issue with it. It's very clear. They have different motivations like for example there are people that when they talk about Jews, for example, they do sound a lot like like, you know, not talking about yeah that but They more specifically they sound a lot.

They sound like both people talking about white people, right that there is that you know white people have. You know have all of the power white supremacy is this all-powerful force and you know, blah blah blah.

So there are critiques to be made of Jewish, you know organizations like the ADL promoting, you know bad things. There are critiques to be made of of US Israel policy. Okay, sure and you can have those conversations ideally in like a pretty, you know a Reasonable manner regardless of whether or not everyone can agree and everyone can agree on certain issues like this.

But yeah, like the people that are tweeting out, you know, the Jews are evil like 24 hours a day that's like, okay, that's that's. Stuff like that. I can agree with these guys is is not good news. But it's very clear that like with with Lindsay's attack.

It doesn't even seem like he's that focused on on like the extreme stuff like that. It seems like he's a little more focused on the Christian Nationalist like this whole thing with the American Reformer where he published.

You know Karl Marx has made a festo meaning he allegedly 90 of the words or something. Yeah, you know, he turned a. Yeah, he turned the basically took an article in defense of communism and made it in defense of Christian nationalism.

So when yeah form and content are very different things believe it or not.

Yes.

So but but what I'm getting at here with that is that it's not that's just not like the kooky out like outlandish stuff on The right that's not what Lindsay's taking issue with and in fact, it seems like he spends more time Attacking people who are very reasonable like the American Reformer crowd whatever disagreements I might have with them or he might have with them.

These are these aren't crazy people and he even even says as much. But he says that they're still woke right because they think they're oppressed by liberalism. So this whole like oppressed oppressor dichotomy that James Lindsay on multiple occasions has point.

He's not the only one is pointed to as like one of the defining features of what wokeness is. It's not just like people who say oh I am a minority and I am oppressed by white people and That I okay. That's that's like a that's a big part of openness.

Sure, or it's not even just people that are like Oh, I'm a non Jew and I'm oppressed by the Jews who have all of the power or something of the sort. That's that's not also not it's apparently Lindsay thinks that it's also woke to say that you take issue with Liberalism right you are critiquing a in an idea in intellectual a whole school of thought.

Political ideology basically he thinks that's that's that's somehow an oppressed oppressor dichotomy. I don't see a lot of people saying they're oppressed by liberalism. I see, you know in the stuff of the American Reformer.

They're talking about the post liberal consensus post-war liberal consensus and how it's been bad for Christians. It's undeniably been bad for Christians. Bad for the country overall. We're facing a number of existential crises that would have been unthinkable to people prior to World War two now the point with all of that is This whole oppressor oppressed like I is ridiculous because what is James Lindsay do all day?