BIGOT-BAITING

by
R. R. Reno
August 2016

cant imagine a policy more irrelevant to the problems facing our society than bathroom
privileges for transgender students. The bottom half of American society is collapsing.

Voters are revolting against establishment candidates, casting doubt on the economic and
cultural consensus that has predominated over the last generation. And the Obama
administration presses for transgender rights? This is amazing, but not surprising given the
history of post-sixties liberalism.
When I was a child, my home state, Maryland, was dominated by the postwar Democratic party:
white ethnic working-class voters, educated progressives in Baltimore and its suburbs, and white
segregationists who still saw the party of Woodrow Wilson as their natural home. In 1966,
segregationist and gubernatorial candidate George Mahoney leveraged racial animus to triumph
in a bitter Democratic party primary. But times were changing, and Republican Spiro Agnew
won in the general election, attracting educated progressives and helped by more than 70 percent
of the black vote.
That election was the beginning of major shifts in the electorate. Riots, protests, and the general
atmosphere of collapse in the late sixties unsettled working-class white voters. White flight from
Baltimore and other cities accelerated, and Richard Nixons law and order rhetoric resonated
with the new suburbanites who had once been reliable voters in urban machines. Meanwhile, the
Democratic party renounced its segregationist past and evolved into a coalition of AfricanAmerican voters, white working-class voters who remained loyal to memories of FDR, white

retirees dependent on Social Security, and college-educated liberalsa pattern repeated

elsewhere throughout the country.
That coalition took a while to solidify, but it made sense. It retained the pro-labor emphasis of
the old left, while giving play to some conservative social themes such as tough-on-crime stances
that satisfied white working- and middle-class voters. It provided patronage to African
Americans, whose leaders had superseded bosses of the old white ethnic urban political machine
in cities like Baltimore. And it took up enough of the cultural causes and rhetoric of the new left
to satisfy college-educated liberals.
But the wheels of change kept turning. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan moved the white working
class into the Republican fold. But at the same time, the children of the white men who worked
at places like Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point outside Baltimore were going to college. As a
result, the pool of educated white liberals grew, adding votes to the Democratic coalition. And
not just votes, but money and cultural power.
By the time we get to Obama, the Democratic party had become home to the richest and most
well-educated Americans. Close to 70 percent of professionals voted for him in 2008, as did a
majority of those making $200,000 or more per year. There are more Democrats than
Republicans currently representing the hundred richest congressional districts. The successful
people in todays global economy, a mostly white cohort that makes up 20 to 25 percent of the
population, are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The party of FDR is no longer the
little guys party. It now advances the economic and cultural interests of post-Protestant WASPs,
a consolidated cultural identity that, although populated mostly by white Americans, includes
others who share their elite status.
At the same time that the successful upper end of society was coming to lean Democratic,
another dynamic was at work on the other end. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act
dramatically increased immigration from Latin America and Asia, populating America with new

vulnerable constituencies. Over time, this provided a ready population to slot into the role of the
downtrodden, allowing the Democratic party to sustain a sense of itself as the defender of the
weak.
These recent immigrants and children of immigrants have been replacing the Reagan Democrats,
giving the Democratic party electoral muscle to support its post-Protestant WASP leadership.
But there is a difference. The white working and middle class in the FDR and LBJ coalitions vied
for control of American culture and politics. Immigrant populations, by contrast, enter the
Democratic party coalition on the same terms as African Americans. They are clients in a millet
system, benefiting from liberal patronage. Add gay people, single women, and anyone who feels
himself an outsider, and the basic structure of todays Democratic party comes into view. Its
policy priorities are dominated by a large cohort of well-educated, well-off, mostly white liberals
who justify their ascendancy with promises to promote and protect those who feel excluded or
marginalized.
In this coalition, gay rights become particularly important. Environmentalism energizes upper
middle-class liberals, for example, but can often run counter to the interests of those lower on
the social ladder. Banning fracking wont energize Latino or African-American voters. Gay
rights, by contrast, function as an upper-middle-class liberal issue that nevertheless resonates
throughout the Democratic coalition. Led by well-educated, mostly white liberals, LGBT
organizations, like feminist ones and pro-abortion ones, are strongly tilted toward the problems
facing successful and well-off gays and lesbians. But the civil rights rhetoric of ending
discrimination and promoting inclusion matches concerns among African Americans, Hispanics,
and other voter blocs that feel marginalized as well. This makes gay rights the perfect focal point
for Democrats. The movement has a well-off, well-educated constituency whose goals pose no
threat to the economic and cultural ascendancy of post-Protestant WASPsand at the same
time promotes a solidarity in marginality that keeps the Democratic coalition unified and
motivated.

he problem, of course, is that a solidarity-in-marginality coalition capable of

commanding electoral majorities has an increasingly hard time maintaining its

plausibility. How long can a coalition that wins elections and exercises power pose as the party of
the marginalized? At some point, political success undermines the urgency of a rainbow
coalition. The tensions between the One Percent focus of feminism and the LGBT movements
and the interests of immigrants and African Americans becomes more visible, to say nothing of
the disconnect between the base of the Democratic party from the economic and cultural
interests of those who fund and run it.
To motivate their voter base, liberals have invested a great deal in identifying ever-new patterns
of discrimination. Notions such as microaggression and intersectionality reflect second-wave
(or is it third-wave?) liberation politics. They gain currency because of the law of political supply
and demand. The twenty-first-century Democratic solidarity-in-marginality coalition is held
together by anxieties about exclusion and domination by the other, which is to say by
Republican voters. This creates a strong political demand for narratives of oppression, which
liberal intellectuals are happy to supply.
This dynamic operates most visibly at our universities, where well-off, mostly white liberalsthe
post-Protestant WASPsrule. The legitimacy of this elite depends upon its commitment to
include the excluded. It goes without saying that an Ivy League administrator must manage
the optics very carefully to sustain marginality among the talented students who have gained
admission. Microaggression and other key terms in the ever-evolving scholasticism of
discrimination thus play very useful roles. They renew the threats of discrimination and
exclusion, and this reinforces the power of liberal elites. Their institutional ascendancy is
necessary to protect and provide patronage to the excluded. Im quite certain that if political
correctness succeeds in suppressing microaggressions, well soon hear about nano-aggressions. The logic of solidarity in marginality requires oppression, and solidarity in
marginality is necessary in order to sustain liberal power.

Outside our universities, life is less theoretical and the rhetoric more demotic. The standard
approach has been to renew solidarity in marginality by demonizing conservatives as racists,
xenophobes, and haters. To maintain loyalty, the Democratic party incites anxiety about
discrimination and exclusion. A form of reverse race-baiting, perhaps best thought of as bigotbaiting, has become crucial for sustaining the Democratic coalition, which is why we hear so
much about hate these days. At the recent gay pride parade in New York, a few weeks after the
mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, marchers held aloft an avenue-wide banner that
read, Republican Hate Kills!
Its important to remember a first law of politics for solidarity in marginality: Political success
makes it harder and harder to sustain solidarity in marginality, and this leads to bigot-baiting.
Weve seen an increase of harsh denunciations, not in spite of progressive victories on issues like
gay marriage, but because of them. When Obama became president, a superficial observer might
have concluded that the election of a black man to the nations highest office would diminish the
political currency of anti-racist rhetoric. But this ignores the symbolic needs of the Democratic
party. Black Lives Matter and redoubled attacks on discrimination are demanded by racial progress. Solidarity in marginality needs to be renewed, especially when the marginal gain access to
power.
This pattern of rhetorical escalation because of progress in the fight against discrimination is also
evident in characterizations of Trump voters as racists and bigots. Leon Wieseltier says of them,
They kindle, in the myopia of their pain, to racism and nativism and xenophobia and misogyny
and homophobia and anti-Semitism. No mainstream figure talked this way when I was
youngand when these descriptions were much more plausible. Incendiary, denunciatory
rhetoric was characteristic of a marginal figure like George Wallace, who spoke of sissy-britches
welfare people and called civil-rights protesters anarchists.
Its commonplace now for liberals to talk this way. This is not because America has become more
racially, ethnically, religiously, or sexually divided. All the indicators suggest otherwise. Its

because the Democratic party depends on a constant bombardment of denunciation to gin up

fear. That someone as intelligent as Wieseltier participates in bigot-baiting in such blatant ways
indicates how indispensable it has become for maintaining liberal power.
Its in this context that transgender bathroom access becomes an issue of national import for the
Obama administration. Progressives need haters, and flushing them out so they can be
politically useful targets of denunciation requires advancing the front lines of the culture wars.
The ideology of transgenderism provides a near perfect combination. It so completely
contradicts common sense and any worldview tethered to reality that resistance is guaranteed.
Moreover, the cause of transgender rights focuses on confused and troubled children and
adults, individuals whose condition makes them by definition marginal. The disordered nature
of their emotional lives makes them vulnerable as well. Theyre ready-made victims of an
oppressive conservatism, an ideal focus for another round of bigot-baiting. Denouncing the
haters who resist transgender ideology plays to fears of exclusion and discrimination that keep
the rainbow coalition together.
The Republican party establishment recognizes this dynamic, which is why many conservative
leaders have been urging retreat from the culture war. In their view, religious conservatives
should reposition themselves as victims of a progressive dogmatism that threatens religious
liberty. This strategy makes some sense, drawing as it does on liberalisms own rhetoric of
oppression and victimhood. But it misjudges the political realities of our time. Todays richoriented liberalism can only maintain power through the support of voters united in fear of
discrimination and marginalityblack Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, single women,
gays and lesbians, and others who worry they dont fit into what they imagine to be the
mainstream (which hardly exists anymore). As a consequence, every retreat on the cultural
front will be followed by renewed progressive attacks designed to generate politically useful
hate. Religious liberty is redescribed as the right to discriminate. Here again the LGBT
movement plays an especially important role. Its agenda collides with traditional religious

convictions about God, creation, nature, and morality, guaranteeing the ongoing culture war
that has become so essential for post-Protestant WASPs to maintain power.
Transgender activists zealously advance their cause, and they do so with the support of
establishment liberals. Their activist zealotry is a political asset, not a liability. They provoke the
resistance that can be described as hate. Even if the Republican party succeeds in organizing
retreats from controversial cultural and moral issues, theres always a Westboro Baptist Church
or some other marginal group to become poster children for the enduring, supposedly powerful
forces of discrimination and oppression. As weve seen in the aftermath of the Orlando atrocity,
even a terrorist attack motivated by Islamist ideology can be transformed into an assault made
possible by traditional Christianity, or even the mere existence of political conservatives.
Republican Hate Kills. And the anti-establishment electorate thats getting behind Donald
Trump gets transformed into racists, xenophobes, homophobes, and anti-Semites.
Bigot-baiting. Its not going to end soon, no matter what we say or do. The ever-shriller
denunciations directed our way stem from the rhetorical needs of the Democratic party. Its
leadership knows that its power, like the power of George Wallace and others in an earlier era,
depends on an atmosphere of fear, in this case a fear of discrimination, exclusion, and
oppression, a fear that Bull Connor has been resurrected. This need explains why the ideologies
of multiculturalism postulate that Western culture itself is based on oppression. The threat must
be infinite and everlasting.
The present crusade for transgender bathroom privileges in high schools, like so much of the
progressive agenda in recent years, is not about civil rights. Its about renewing the symbolism of
oppression and finding the haters that rich, mostly white liberals need to sustain their political
power.
Neuhaus, the Liberal

he most recent issue of National Affairs (summer 2016) features an essay about our
founder, The Liberalism of Richard John Neuhaus. The author, Matthew Rose,

currently director and senior fellow at the Berkeley Institute, was a junior fellow at FIRST
THINGS and worked with Neuhaus. Reading the essay, I was struck by the continuity of
Neuhauss thought. I hope the same continuity characterizes FIRST THINGS.
Rose cites a 1990 contribution Neuhaus made to a Christian Century series, How My Mind Has
Changed. That was the year FIRST THINGS got going. Already well known as a Christian
neoconservative, Neuhaus had shifted from left to right in the 1970s and was active in bringing
the newly powerful Christian right into conversation with a range of conservative intellectuals.
But in that article, he denied any fundamental changes in his outlook. He recalled that while in
seminary, he formed lasting convictions. He would be in descending order of importance,
religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal, and economically pragmatic. To
this personal quadrilateral he remained loyal, even as the world around him changed, forcing
him to change in order to stay true to his principles.
Does FIRST THINGS remain loyal as well? Its best to begin with the least important: economic
pragmatism. Neuhaus didnt treat free-market capitalism as the fundamental imperative. Like
many of his generation, he came to see that socialism, while theoretically the morally superior
option, at least in some accounts, in fact concentrates power in the hands of a few, suppresses
freedom, and leads to economic stagnation. Without a free economy, its hard to sustain a free
society, much less a prosperous one. But he didnt suppose that market deregulation and the free
flow of capital and labor would cure all social ills and automatically promote the well-being of
most citizens.
By the time FIRST THINGS was founded, Neuhaus belonged to the two cheers for capitalism
camp. (Irving Kristol coined the phrase to describe Pope John Paul IIs endorsement of free
markets in his encyclical most friendly to capitalism, Centesimus Annus.) In our first year of
publication, Neuhaus ran an article by Paul Johnson on the moral inadequacy of capitalism as

societys sole organizing principle, another by Amy Sherman on why Christians concerned about
the economic development of poor nations should acknowledge the success of market-oriented
models, and still another by Christopher Lasch arguing that in contemporary American politics,
cultural conservatives are mismatched with free-market proponents whose ideals of economic
freedom undermine stable communities.
FIRST THINGS remains economically pragmatic. When the magazine was launched, half the
world was coming out from underneath the suffocating blanket of actually existing socialism.
We were rightfully optimistic. Eastern Europe is today both prosperous and free. China and
India have seen remarkable growth, lifting millions out of abject poverty. But its now 2016 and
we face the problems of capitalisms excesses, even its successes, not socialisms deadening
effects. Man is fallen, and our bondage to sin leads to a profoundly distorted ambition for wealth,
not just for the luxury it brings, but the power as well. There are no self-regulating, selfcorrecting economic systems. Free enterprise may provide more safeguards against tyranny than
any other system, but it too needs to be checked by our collective judgments about what best
serves the common good. There was no party line on economics when FIRST THINGS was
founded, and that remains the case.
Which brings us to politics and Neuhauss liberalism. As Rose explains, Neuhaus was a great
proponent of what he liked to call the American experiment. In his view, our free, democratic
society is an open-ended project. We continue in an unbroken conversationsometimes a bitter
debateabout how to structure our common life, both formally with laws and informally
through civic norms and a shared moral consensus. We dont know the end point of this
experiment in freedom. We cant foretell what political arrangements or policies will best
promote human dignity. This means we need to remain open to new ideas, new voices, and new
possibilities.
I want to remain true to that kind of liberalism, one based in humility about our political
judgments. When it comes to taxation, distribution of resources, campaign finance,

constitutional interpretation, and many other matters of political importance, were

conservative, by and large, as was Neuhaus during his years as editor-in-chief. But we know we
hold our positions about matters of politics and public policy in a conversation rather than as
non-negotiable principles. That makes FIRST THINGS liberal in the very precise sense of enjoying
a precious liberty. We enjoy the freedom to entertain different arguments about how to order
public life, which is why we can be generally conservative (by todays standards) while
publishing Hadley Arkes against constitutional originalism, Patrick Deneen against corporate
power, and David Bentley Hart against capitalism (among other things). Like the Church and
synagogue, FIRST THINGS can be ideologically diverse precisely because we dont treat politics as
the first thing.
Not everything, however, can be a matter of open-ended conversation. Rose reports that
Neuhaus was influenced by Walter Lippmanns 1955 book, The Public Philosophy. The great liberal
commentator argued that core liberal commitments to majority rule, free speech, and private
property require an underlying moral consensus. Without such a consensus, the free and open
conversation about public life turns into a contest for power rather than a means to realize a
higher vision. This marks the death of liberalism. Absent objective moral truths, rights become
political and thus can be redefinedor defined away.
Here Neuhaus could be quite fierce, as I hope FIRST THINGS remains. It is the very opposite of
liberal to imagine that a court, however supreme, can suspend an innocent human beings right
to life. Neuhaus died before that same court got around to redefining marriage, but his response
would be the same. When a court can take hold of a primordial institution and remake it at will,
nothing is safe from the tyranny of those in power. They can just as well redefine what it means
to be a father, mother, or child. Or what it means to be a man or woman.

hat, exactly, are those indispensable moral truths that provide the stable basis for the
ongoing conversation about public life that characterizes a genuinely liberal society?

Lippmann argued for natural law, as do many who continue to play an important role in FIRST

THINGS. Neuhaus opted for a more rhetorical and less metaphysical approach. He liked to point
to Martin Luther Kings winsome combination of a biblically inspired vision of justice and
appeals to Americas founding ideals of equality. The moral consensus that grounds our liberal
culture is covenantal, he argued. What this means, exactly, he never defined, but instead
illustrated in the many efforts he made to connect his own Christian convictions to his political
judgments, often in the pages he filled at the end of every issue. He was both sure that moral
truth has objective reality and willing to entertain a variety of explanations of that reality.
We remain metaphysical realists without plunking down for any one approach. We know that
our choices are not self-validating. A culture of freedom serves human dignity when freedom
serves moral truth. But were aware that our philosophical and theological tradition is itself a
debate about what moral truth is and how we know it. First Things reflects the ongoing effort by
many authors to speak religiously, morally, and publically, not according to a specific formula or
in accord with agreed-upon metaphysical and theological principles.
With his usual genius for quotable formulations, Neuhaus liked to reiterate a version of the
following: Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the
heart of morality is religion. He was convinced that an ideological secularism (as opposed to a
political secularism) undermines liberalism and over the long haul cannot sustain a free society.
True liberalism requires acknowledging the transcendent authority of God.
Whose God? Thats a theological debate Neuhaus thought worth having. What does God
command? Another debate. How does one reason from divine imperatives to public
philosophies? Again, Neuhaus ran a magazine in which we could offer different answers. With so
many open questions, was Neuhaus a closet relativist? No, he was a modern man aware of the
open-ended character of our most important arguments about transcendence, authority, and
how to organize our common life in a pluralistic societywhich is to say he was a genuine liberal.
And he recognized that those open questions are fruitful rather than futile only insofar as we are
united in our efforts to tether our answers to something greater, something higher.

The religious impulse acknowledges and serves the divine. Neuhauss intuition was that this
impulse anchors liberalisms greatest achievements. Im from a younger generation. Irving Kristol
said of his generation that a neoconservative was a liberal mugged by reality. Im conservative
because I was mugged by liberals rather than reality. Many of us have felt the illiberalism of
secular liberalism. This can tempt us to adopt anti-liberal and anti-modern stances. I certainly am
tempted. But when Im honest with myself, I recognize that I too am a modern man. I recognize
the fact that in our pluralistic society, many questions are open, and I cherish aspects of the
culture of freedom our age has encouraged. All the more reason to emphasize the upward thrust
of transcendence and its commanding power. True liberality in the conversation that is public
life requires a spirit of humility before God, which is quite different from a humility that stems
from relativism or the conviction that there are not moral truths to be loyal to. It also requires a
willingness to be surprised, even to the point of being converted. There are surely some special
people who come by these qualities naturally. But for most of us, they are nurtured by the life of
faith.
We often hear of open-mindedness. Its not a bad quality. But the more important quality is
serious-mindedness. Neuhaus was right in his most important intuition as a cultural critic and
political commentator. Depth of conviction sustains a free society, not diversity, pluralism,
tolerance, and respect for rights. They are fruits of liberalism, not its source.