Quote:Consider the emergence of the new political left. Once the ideological wing of populism, class struggle and egalitarianism, the "new left" in America and the U.K. is largely centered around matters of personal identity, perceptions of privilege and oppression, and in the cases of many younger progressives, personal insulation from views or speech deemed “triggering” or “problematic.”

Quote:many more in the political middle are coming to identify this new, repressive progressive agenda not only with intellectual scorn, but as an example of the intellectual failings of liberalism as a whole. Tangential associations between the hyper-sensitive crusades of identity obsession, and the more fundamental causes championed by the left, are causing some to lose faith in political liberalism and even, in some cases, to join its opposition.

Quote:As matters of class disparity, labor rights, environmental destruction and corporate corruption of government continue to become pressing crises to greater numbers of people, the left is simultaneously being made more impotent by these distractions of hysterics. It is also becoming a laughing stock of the right and center, as each demand to censor speech or debate by modern fringe progressive activists calls into question the broader legitimacy of serious and established liberal topics. Ironically, the reactionary progressive movements of today in some ways mirror the hardline evangelical conservative right

Quote:As free expression becomes more and more a libertarian, even a mainstream conservative issue, it falls as a duty of the left to defend the speech that many on the left may nonetheless disagree with.