An end to identity liberalism?

Fury’s version of things is the opposite of Lilla’s tolerant liberalism: To be the right sort of people, we must be feminists, and to be feminists, we must have opinions on . . . everything, and assign to the entirety of the universe moral gradations based upon the feminist position that all of the right sort of people must assume. Fury ultimately comes down as a corset libertarian: “A woman wearing a corset today is a symbol of empowerment, of sexual freedom, of control. She’s the one holding the laces, the one constructing her own femininity.” But the problem is less the answer than the question, and the question-begging — the identification of feminism with virtue and the hunt for heresy.

Lilla’s plea is probably doomed to fall upon deaf ears — or ears that are at the very least not listening. There is almost nothing that people enjoy so much as talking about themselves and all of the splendid ways in which they and their experiences are utterly unique, and it is very difficult to listen to others while talking about one’s self. Sir Richard Francis Burton wasn’t entirely wrong to conclude that “man never worshipped anything but himself.”

But if progressives will not heed principle, then maybe they will heed arithmetic. Make identity politics the main operational model in a country that is two-thirds white and 50 percent or so male, and what do you expect?

President-elect Trump might have some thoughts on that.