Against Bari Weiss-ism

The Federalist ^ | 5/6/25 | John Davidson

[EnderWiggin1970]

There is a concerted effort underway lately by so-called dissident or “anti-woke” liberals to police speech on the right, declaring certain opinions or ideas taboo, unworthy of a platform, beyond the pale of acceptable discourse.

Although couched in the language of morality and principles, this effort isn’t really about fending off rising right-wing racism and antisemitism, much less saving western civilization. It’s about power.

Over the past decade, the media landscape has been destroyed. Through its own corruption and duplicity, the corporate press has lost credibility and influence — to the tremendous benefit of conservative voices and outlets. But this has left a vacuum, and anti-woke liberals like Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray, whose politics and policy preferences mirror the mainstream Democratic Party from 30 years ago, are trying to position themselves as arbiters of acceptable discourse on the right.

Like the center-left of the 1990s, Weiss and Murray are admittedly far more reasonable than today’s radical left on issues like free speech, which Weiss’s publication, The Free Press, has made a cornerstone of its brand, so far to great success. But Weiss and Murray, just like mainstream Democrats of the ‘90s, have two big things in common with the radical left of today.

First, they’re liberals, and modern liberalism, then and now, has no moral or religious core, and hence no limiting principle for what we should or shouldn’t tolerate. If a consensus worldview were to emerge around what Weiss and The Free Press are advocating for, maybe it would reset the clock by a decade. But without some rooted vision of the good, anchored in traditional morality, we’ll just end up right where we are now, with an establishment left pushing for things like transgender ideology in the classroom and abortion-on-demand.

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: conservative; liberal; media; weiss

[EnderWiggin1970]

I appreciate reading a lot of the liberal journalists who have broken with the woke/illiberal left orthodoxy, like Weiss and Taibbi and Greenwald and Sasha Stone. But I still remember they are leftists. They should not be gatekeepers of anything on the right or accepted as if they were conservatives when they are not.

[RoosterRedux]

“anti-woke” liberals

That would be "classical liberals"...and they don't exist any more.

I am an extinct classical liberal (i.e., someone who advocates for the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, rule of law, and the protection of private property).

[fella]

The old time street hippies not the “In Crowd”, “Jet Set”, “Astro Turfed” Hippies who are our today’s leftist leadership but the grounded street hippies who learned their lessons after being burnt and then turned right had a saying;

“Freedom of speech, you either have it or you don’t.”

[Luke21]

They all act like the nineties was some amazing age. Political correctness was everywhere. Bill and Hillary were in their prime and Janet Reno was a monster.

[JewishRighter]

What is to be said about people who are preaching the destruction of the United States in the United States? Is that speech unlimited? Is vigorous support for genocide fully protected speech? I am not going into the “hate speech” category at all. I am talking about speech that very specifically supports destruction and mass murder, including Americans, Christians, Jews and Hindus.

I know there is a “clear and present danger” standard to speech that incites violence. With people being regularly attacked for being one of the “wrong” target categories, aren’t we already at clear and present danger?

[FreedomPoster]

And further, alternative media sources on the Internet like Free Republic were just getting going. All we really had in the early and mid 90s was Rush and a few other talk radio hosts.

[griswold3]

Yes. We are both a dying breed.
Author Tom Wolfe said we lost this country when they removed the Ten Commandments from the town square