Heal the West Mission Statement
The West is under threat. This movement is dedicated to healing and preserving it.
Edited 12/16/2023 to expand the section on right-wing illiberalism to make it more in line with the section on left-wing illiberalism and make it clear that both are substantial threats to our liberal social contract.
Edited 12/16/2023 to clarify what I mean by ‘The West’.
Welcome to the Heal the West substack and community! My name is Julian Adorney. I've written for sites like Quillette, Areo, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Queer Majority, and a few other sites. I've also spoken on radio shows and podcasts such as Derate the Hate podcast, Counterpoint, The John Oakley Show, and others.
I started this substack in order to build a movement dedicated to healing the West.
Why do we need to heal the West? Right now, the West is under existential threat from at least three directions. It is groaning under the weight of these threats; the foundations are cracking, and large swathes of society are unrecognizable from what they were even a few years ago. If we do not stand up to these threats, we will lose the greatest society that the world has ever known–and we will not like what replaces it.
What Are These Existential Threats?
1) Left-Wing Illiberalism
A new strain of thought has emerged on the left in recent years. It's sometimes called "wokeism," the "New Left," or (in some circles) simply "Progressivism" to demarcate it from traditional liberalism. Its adherents are sometimes called "woke" or "social justice warriors."
Of course, all of those labels are amorphous, and they shift in meaning depending on who is saying what. I like Tim Urban's excellent term "Social Justice Fundamentalism" which gets at both the noble intentions of this new group ("Social Justice") and their illiberal methods ("Fundamentalism").
Social Justice Fundamentalists (SJFs) are fundamentally opposed to the bedrock principles of the West. Prominent SJFs such as Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy are explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment. Authors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic take issue with the idea of negative rights. SJFs want to remake society in a brand-new image; and while I don't doubt their noble intentions, I have grave concerns that this society will be in practice less a utopia than a dystopia.
SJFs are ardent in their desire to eradicate prejudice; but the way they intend to do this is by encouraging all of us to separate more along racial and ethnic and gender lines. This group rejects colorblindness as an ideal. Members support racial segregation in college graduations, in schools, and even in how much people are paid for the same job. Some are even opposed to the idea of interracial marriage.
SJFs also reject the idea of universalism, the concept that everyone has equal and intrinsic dignity and worth. Instead, many SJFs lump people into categories of "oppressed" or "oppressor" based on their immutable characteristics, and assign moral worth and even dignity based on membership in these categories.
Social Justice Fundamentalism takes issue with the primary knowledge-generating tools of the West, especially the scientific method. In their educational textbook Is Everyone Really Equal?, DiAngelo and Sensoy note that "Critical Theory developed in part as a response to this presumed infallibility of scientific method, and raised questions about whose rationality and whose presumed objectivity underlies scientific methods."
Instead, Social Justice Fundamentalism focuses on "alternative ways of knowing" outside of the scientific method. While their intentions are laudable in attempting to bring in alternative knowledge-generating mechanisms from historically marginalized groups, in practice this leads to unfalsifiable assertions and contradictory arguments in lieu of scientific rigor.
Besides the illiberal ends of Social Justice Fundamentalists, many of them are pioneers when it comes to illiberal means: getting people canceled for the sin of disagreeing, doxxing and threatening those who don't toe the line, online mobs that come together to humiliate and psychologically destroy dissenters. The foundation of liberalism is the idea of free speech and a robust community of heterodox thinkers who come together to improve all of our thinking, and many Social Justice Fundamentalists are deeply opposed to this vision.
An important caveat: I love and respect the Social Justice Fundamentalists I've met, and I'm lucky enough to count many of them as friends. And, some Social Justice Fundamentalists have genuinely good ideas and valuable insights for society (such as Kimberle Crenshaw's original concept of intersectionality). This movement is never about attacking people. Similarly, it is never about bunding ideas into good/bad all/nothing groups (i.e. "everything Social Justice Fundamentalists say is wrong"). It is always and only about criticizing specific ideas and about standing for specific values.
I believe that we must oppose the vision and ideas of many SJFs if we are to preserve and heal the West. But if we do not marry this with a deep love for them and a respect for the good ideas that they bring to the table, then we become no better than what we oppose.
2) Right-Wing Illiberalism
Illiberalism is not a one-party phenomenon, and right-wing illiberalism too is on the rise.
In some ways, right-wing illiberalism has been building for decades. In 2003, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks said that she was ashamed to be from the same state as then-president George W. Bush and the sky fell down on her. In an early example of cancel culture, the band was blacklisted on country radio stations, as some fans burned their CDs and even sent them death threats. In another example of how left-wing illiberalism and right-wing illiberalism often converge on the same target, long before J.K. Rowling drew the ire of Social Justice Fundamentalists for her comments on trans rights, right-wingers were making Harry Potter one of the most banned books in certain states.
In recent years, illiberalism on the right has grown and is in danger of becoming mainstream. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Stop WOKE Act and its successor threaten to stop Florida’s public universities from even discussing certain left-wing ideas. This is flatly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. At New College in Florida, Chris Rufo has publicly fired professors for expressing Constitutionally protected views.
When private entities from Major League Baseball to Disney take stands against conservative viewpoints, some right-wingers respond by trying to use the power of the state to punish them. For right-wing illiberals, there can be no dissent from approved viewpoints.
Right-wingers have doxxed and tried to cancel students for expressing (admittedly odious) pro-Hamas views. Some segments of the right are deciding to oppose free speech and even threatening to deport foreign nationals on student visas who express views that they themselves dislike.
And, while I love and admire many Trump supporters, Trump himself represents an existential threat to the liberal social contract. It’s not just his authoritarian tendencies, though those are deeply concerning. While in office, he also worked to “flood the zone with shit”; his strategy was to produce so many lies on a daily basis that his opponents wouldn’t be able to keep up. As Jonathan Rauch has documented, he’s done more than any other public official to shatter our shared sense of norms and our shared understanding of truth, and usher us into a fractured age of post-truth. And that was before he incited a coup on January 6. His willingness to gaslight his own supporters and his utter unwillingness to accept democratic norms (including and most essentially the peaceful transfer of power) make him a uniquely dangerous threat to the bedrock of liberal civilization.
3) Affective Polarization
Also called toxic polarization, affective polarization is defined as "the gap between individuals’ positive feelings toward their own political party and negative feelings toward the opposing party." In other words, it's when we don't just disagree with members of the other party–we actively fear and hate them.
Affective polarization is an existential threat to the West. Our republic relies on a shared willingness across the political spectrum to cede power to our opponents when we lose an election. But when we see the other side not as decent human beings who see the world differently from us, but as enemies who actively seek our demise, then we lose our willingness to cede power. We try to stage coups to cling to office. We try to change the rules of the game so that our side never loses. We become less process-oriented and more outcome-oriented; we shift from "the rules are what matter, and as long as the rules are fair my side can lose an election here and there" to "My side must win at all costs, including by rewriting the rules if necessary." Republics cannot long survive in these conditions.
Affective polarization is also a threat on an individual level. It is making us more scared and angry towards strangers, including people who might otherwise be our friends. It is both a cause and an effect of our eroding sense of community. It is a partial driver of what Surgeon General Dr. Vivek A. Murthy has called a "loneliness epidemic."
Both individually and communally, it is no way to live.
* * *
So those are the three existential threats I see to the West. But that's only half of the coin; it's a negative vision of the threats we want to avert, not a positive vision of the world that we want to build. When we say that we need to heal the West, what do we mean?
What Is the West?
The West has always been an idea more than a geographic entity. It has its roots in the Enlightenment, and the writings of scholars such as John Locke (called the “father of liberalism”) and John Milton. This idea has spread across borders like ink spilled across a map, sometimes more concentrated in one area and sometimes more concentrated in other areas. For much of the 19th century, for instance, England was considered a bright spot of liberalism in the world (though they are living up to that reputation less and less these days).
But when I think of the West today, I think of America. The United States was built on the ideals of the Enlightenment, and our founding documents borrowed heavily from John Locke. Our foundational premise is the liberal social contract. While liberalism has been on the decline in the United States recently, I still see my country as that shining city on the hill. Partly due to my love of country and partly because I live here, I focus most of my political commentary on the United States.
What Does It Mean to Heal the West?
When I say that we need to heal the West, I mean this: we need to build on, rebuild, preserve, and get back to the foundations that made the West so uniquely good for so many people; and that can lead us into ever greater peace and prosperity if we focus on restoring them.
I have in mind three key principles.
1) Universalism
A bedrock principle of the West is the concept of universalism. Universalism says that every human being has equal and intrinsic dignity and worth.
Universalism is summed up in the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Universalism is a historical anomaly. First advocated for during the Enlightenment, it has never been fully realized. The man who wrote the words above was a slave holder. Women were denied the right to vote and hold property until recently. Gay and lesbian people have faced (and continue to face, in some areas) immense persecution.
Nonetheless, universalism ought to be our guiding North Star. Our societies get better when we get closer to it. We move away from it at our existential peril.
2) Free Speech
Free speech as a robust and well-practiced concept is relatively unique to the West. As Jacob Mchangama documents in his excellent book Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, most governments throughout history have not encouraged their citizens to speak freely. People were silenced, thrown in prison, and even executed for criticizing the government or going against the prevailing orthodoxy of the day.
For the past two and a half centuries, the United States has given us something different. We have cultivated a robust culture of free speech that has increasingly found backing and support in pro-free-speech Supreme Court decisions. This culture not only allows everyone room to breathe and think, to give voice to the light and spark inside of them without fear. It has also produced some of the greatest advances the world has ever seen; because a culture that encourages free speech is a culture in which the brightest minds come together to debate issues and sharpen each others' ideas–to all of our benefit.
3) Civic Culture
One of the characteristics of the West, going back to the founding of the United States, is a robust civic culture. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans formed a rich web of civic associations. In the 20th century, these associations included churches, charities, trade unions, interest groups, sports organizations, and more. They knit our communities together, counteracting the atomistic individualism that can characterize some free-market societies.
I was given a visceral reminder of this recently when I watched Christmas with the Cranks with my fiancé and her family. As a libertarian, I found the busybody neighbors at times cloying and invasive ("I'm not celebrating Christmas because I'm a grown man and I can decide for myself, Helen."). But they also knew each other, took care of each other, and ultimately rallied around each other in a truly heartwarming way.
C.S. Lewis wrote of friendship:
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."
If we want to heal the West, it is not enough to fight against the existential threats. We also have to (re)build the kind of close-knit community that makes life ultimately worth living.
So How Is This Substack Different?
Heal the West isn't just a newsletter. It's not a series of essays that I write and that you will passively consume.
We're already drowning in information. We don't need another source of it. And reading articles, while deeply enjoyable, isn't by itself going to change the world.
Instead, Heal the West is designed to be a movement. We'll talk together and learn together. We'll identify obstacles to healing the West together, and work together to overcome those obstacles.
Ultimately, we'll take action together. Each post will have an action step that I invite readers to take. These will be deep, not superficial.
Superficial action item: "Call your Congressman and demand passage of XYZ new bill."
Deep action item: "Meditate for 30 minutes to find your own still small voice. Listen to it. And then, even if you are scared, act on what it says."
Action Item
If you've read this far and you like what you read, here's your first action item: subscribe. I'm kidding!
Here's my actual recommendation:
Find the courage of your convictions. Take a minute–or 30–and listen to your still small voice. What does it want you to say? Where does it want you to speak out?
Speaking out is riskier for some people than for others. As a professional author, who sells most of my pieces to publications that oppose cancel culture, I'm more or less uncancelable. My friends who are professors are less lucky; they could face real consequences for speaking out.
But the moment calls for courage. The time to stay silent has passed. As Bari Weiss said in a recent address to The Federalist Society, "This is the fight of—and for—our lives."
Commit, right now, today, to speaking up. You can speak quietly or even anonymously if doing so is the only way to continue to provide for your family; but commit to making your voice heard.
It is time to speak.
Heal the West is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or becoming a founding member. Your support is greatly appreciated.