The Conservatism of Democracy

by Greg Conti (teaches political theory and the history of political thought at Princeton University)

“Using words like ‘problematic,’ ‘cisgender,’ ‘Latinx’ and ‘intersectional’ is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells.” In their ruthless enforcement of new mores that originate in NGOs and higher education, Brooks worries, progressives will continue to play into the hands of a gleefully politically incorrect figure like Donald Trump, who promises liberation from this onerous moral oversight.

There is doubtless some truth to all this. But the popularist critique of wokeness is hampered by its limited aims, which amount to keeping Trump out of office and electing Democrats. In other words, popularists offer only a self-interested reason for liberals to temper their aggressive cultural posture—namely, that if they don’t, they will wind up elevating their enemies. But the phenomenon they identify is also politically regrettable for principled reasons. This is because there is an important connection between a vibrant and genuinely inclusive democracy and a small-c conservatism that opposes incessant elite-led cultural revolution. In other words, the core problem with wokeness isn’t that it is bad for the Democrats, but that it is bad for democracy.

https://compactmag.com/article/the-conservatism-of-democracy