Progressivism and the authoritarian impulse
Performed rather perfectly by Stanley Fish, who — because he has spent an academic career immersed in the insular logic of the linguistic turn — is able to comfortably slide into a description of benevolent “liberal†tyranny that he counsels his fellow travelers (satirically?) to embrace.
To which I answer, well, at least he’s honest about what it is progressives are doing. Fish:
If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?
There is no answer to that question once you step outside of the liberal calculus in which all persons, no matter what their moral status as you see it, are weighed in an equal balance. Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair†is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=38457
