I woke up Thursday to read French President Macron and former South Carolina Governor Haley blame division on “woke” institutions and “leftist” media. I must say it’s about time someone other than Donald Trump took on the forces of anti-civilization. Macron and Haley reject what conservative scholars call IYI elitism (intellectual yet idiotic bureaucrats, faculty, media, and politicians) that’s at war with mainstream culture.
In October, Mr. Macron damned the influence of “certain social-science theories entirely imported from the United States.” His Education Minister promised “a battle against an intellectual matrix from American universities.” They believe “out of control leftism and cancel culture” are undermining French culture; specifically by pushing woke ideas on race, gender, and post-colonialism to erase French heritage. Cheers to Macron for declaring war on illiberal and divisive philosophies.
Ms. Haley took to the Wall Street Journal to damn “liberal media” for demanding Republicans “pick sides on Donald Trump” when her view is “real life is never that simple.” She credits President Trump for “a coronavirus vaccine in record time, Middle East peace, [and] more accountability from China.” She faults lame-duck Trump for “actions since the election [that] were wrong and will be judged harshly by history.” Hoo-ray for Haley’s defense of nuance.
Of course, politics informs Macron’s and Haley’s enlightened views. Facing an election in 2022, he’s protecting his center-right flank from Marine Le Pen’s far-right nationalism. Hoping to be atop the GOP ticket in 2024, she is defining a “new” Republican party. In one breath, Haley insists “Trump’s legal team failed to prove election fraud in court” and “election security is still needed.” Politicians can do the right thing on the way to getting elected.
Macron and Haley are of a singular mind that binary politics miss the nuance of advanced civilization, where ideals evolve along complex arcs. Macron admits women and blacks in France did not enjoy egalite or liberte in 1789, but he’s not buying into theories of ongoing male privilege or systemic racism. Haley, a brown-skinned woman, saw racial bias up close and personal in South Carolina, but refused to play identity politics or be a Democrat.
National unity is blocked by institutions that “fracture and divide” by inculcating hysteria over systemic oppression and diverting attention away from shared problems. For example, I see blacks and whites in decaying factory towns, suffering together from policy-induced poverty (China’s WTO entry). Race plays no role: every dad scraps for the same low average wage, every kid gets the same bad public education, and every mom sees the same shrinking medical choices.
If woke elites think a mobile home, son in Iraq, and no dental care is white privilege, then they should move from Arlington to rural Virginia, where “woke” doesn’t turn a screwdriver. Because the professor in Princeton sees rising wages, bureaucrat in Fairfax sees good public schools, and software architect in Durham sees a doctor at Duke, they’ve forgotten the America where working wages sank, school districts integrated, and healthcare reformed into the lowest common denominator.
Haley and Macron believe in enlightened republics, where a renewed Republican Party upholds democratic principles and does not riot, and “the renewal of a republican consciousness” protects the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. They are right about civilization and resolute in its defense. Would it be nice if both get elected and lead the civilized world out of this Jacobin madness – or what?