What's Next for Free Speech and Classical Liberalism | TaraElla Clips

This is an excerpt from Two Perspectives: The People Don't Want Culture Wars by TaraElla.

Many people out there have been talking about a 'vibe shift' throughout this year. Even President Obama has become bolder on pushing back against extreme wokeness. I mean, cancel culture still exists and is still a problem, and woke voices will always be part of the cultural landscape absent attempts at censorship, but the ideological movement has met great resistance, and support appears to have somewhat collapsed, at least for now. With high profile 'woke' incidents becoming less and less common, the 'anti-woke' energy among classical liberals has diminished. A void has been left behind, and it has been taken up by hardline right-wing forces aligned with movements like National Conservatism, Christian Reconstructionism and Catholic Integralism.

So where do those of us who were opposed to 2010s wokeness go next? There are two options, basically. Given that the original criticisms about 'woke' cultural changes were rooted in classical liberalism, we could simply rebuild the classical liberal consensus, and move on from the 'woke vs anti-woke' disruption of the previous decade. This would prove that our intentions in pushing back against the 'woke' were noble after all, and that social justice minded people really have nothing to fear from our victory over wokeism. Or we could allow the 'anti-woke' movement, now dominated by reactionaries, to continue to drive the conversation, pushing the pendulum way to the other direction, and discrediting the original premise on which we opposed wokeism in the first place. History is actually full of these over-corrections, and allowing them to proceed is certainly not a good idea. Indeed, the 2010s 'woke' wave are sometimes thought to be due to the overreach of the Religious Right in the 1980s to 2000s. If we don't prevent over-correction towards the reactionary side, there will certainly be another, perhaps even bigger, 'woke' wave in the not too distant future.