This is what we are talking about when we talk about “wokeness.” It is a specific set of ideas with a specific intellectual history and documented avenues of contemporary influence.

But when someone like Christopher Rufo designates it as a catchall for any idea on the left, he is confirming the left’s claim that the term is malleable and crudely partisan—because for him, it is.

This also threatens to break apart the growing anti-woke coalition. It tells our potential allies on the center-left that if they want to be anti-woke, they need to also become global warming skeptics and sign up for the drug war.

The reaction to the “Latinx” fiasco and the growing fear that the woke kids are costing Democrats their base of support among minority voters has led some on the center-left to begin advocating for the party’s return to a semblance on sanity. It would undoubtedly be good for the country and the culture if they succeeded. But we make it harder if we hand them a matrix of other views they have to agree with in order to be sufficiently non-woke.