From liberal to woke

In a podcast today I heard the question, “why did liberalism turn into wokeness?”

Here’s my explanation. What do you think?

Liberalism didn’t want people to be persecuted.

Wokeness took the idea of “being persecuted” and extended it to hurting someone’s feelings.

Wokeness is (primarily, I think) about making sure people never feel threatened, and never have their feelings hurt.

3 thoughts on “From liberal to woke”

  1. Wokeness strikes me as simply Political Correctness on steroids. Political Correctness has a grain of truth to it, namely that one should be polite and avoid unnecessarily offending people. But it tends to take that principal way too far, descending into silliness or worse, such as obscuring the truth. Wokeness seems like it takes things even further than Political Correctness. Most people dislike Political Correctness. Wokeness seems on the rise at the moment. However, I’m sure that it will eventually receive some push back, including from people who aren’t conservative per se.

    1. “Woke”, as I understand it, is merely an expression used to encourage continual awareness of social and racial justice. The problem isn’t in the concept, it’s when it’s used to justify outlandish beliefs and behaviors. I liken it to partisan politics. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Yet, partisan politics sometimes progresses to extreme forms of tribalism. From that you sometimes get outlandish beliefs such as birtherism or the Sandy Hook massacre was a false flag operation to promote gun control.

      So, if “wokeness” is merely a rally to continually examine what’s going on within the culture and advocate for what’s just and right, I have no issue with it. After all, truth, justice, and liberty for all seem to be concepts enshrined in the Constitution and founding principles of the US. Yet, when extreme wokeness expresses itself in the form of banning the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and labeling it as encouraging “date rape”, that’s a bridge too far. In the same way, it’s a bridge too far when extreme tribalism expresses itself by promulgating the media as the “enemy of the American people” or if a presidential candidate loses, it’s time to “grab a musket”.

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