The ultra-progressive mindset maintains its grip on institutional power, but in terms of what people actually believe, it’s on the downswing. About a decade ago, something began building steam in America’s elite cultural and intellectual institutions—universities, national newspapers and magazines, museum boards, award committees. Callout culture, cancel culture, identity politics, social justice, critical race theory, postmodern neo-Marxism, wokeness: whatever you want to call it, it was happening. Wokeness developed new and previously extreme ideas around race and gender, and especially around how people ought to conduct themselves in their everyday interactions when race and gender were considered (and race and...