Progressive castoffs don’t get to define the right



When woke mobs began chasing off guest speakers from college campuses and elite institutions started investigating scientists over minor infractions against gender orthodoxy, a certain class of moderate progressives realized its reign was ending. Figures like Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shermer weren’t conservatives by any stretch. In the George W. Bush or Barack Obama years, they would have qualified as mainstream progressives. But they couldn’t keep pace with the radical left.

These disaffected progressives needed a new label. But they couldn’t bring themselves to align with the “backward” conservatives they’d spent careers ridiculing. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein coined the term “Intellectual Dark Web,” which Weiss attempted to popularize in the New York Times. But most settled on “classical liberal” to describe their stance. The problem? They had spent years rejecting classical liberalism.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right.

“Classical liberal” serves as the ideal label for repackaging Obama-era liberalism in a way that reassures Republicans while keeping a safe distance from the woke left. It sounds moderate compared to identity politics. It evokes America’s founders — Washington, Jefferson, Adams. If you want to appear reasonable to conservatives while shielding yourself from attacks on your right flank, aligning with the founders is a smart move.

Whether the branding strategy was intentional remains debatable. What’s not in question is how badly this self-description distorted classical liberalism.

Some members of the Intellectual Dark Web drifted right. Most did not. They held tightly to progressive instincts. Many were atheists. Some had built careers in the New Atheist movement, penning books mocking Christianity and debating apologists for sport. Several were openly gay, and most championed same-sex marriage. These were not defenders of tradition — they spent decades undermining it.

They didn’t oppose the revolution. They led it — until the mob turned on the parts they still cherished, like feminism or science.

Toleration of all ... except atheists

When the Intellectual Dark Web embraced the “classical liberal” label, it did so to defend free speech. Most of these disillusioned progressives had been canceled — for “misgendering” someone, for not parroting the latest racial orthodoxies, or for refusing to bow to ideological litmus tests. They longed for an earlier version of progressivism, one where they still held the reins, and radical activists didn’t dictate the terms of debate.

This shared frustration became the rallying point between conservatives and anti-woke liberals. Free speech offered common ground, so both sides leaned into it. But classical liberalism involves far more than vague nods to open dialogue.

Some trace liberalism’s roots to Machiavelli or Hobbes. But in the American tradition, it begins with John Locke. Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson channeling Locke — right down to the line about “life, liberty, and property,” slightly rewritten as “the pursuit of happiness.”

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Locke argued for religious toleration among Christian sects. He even entertained the idea of tolerating Catholics — if they renounced allegiance to the pope. But Locke drew a hard line at one group: atheists.

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God,” Locke wrote. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist ... [they] undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”

For Locke, atheism was social acid. It dissolved the moral glue holding a nation together. A silent unbeliever who kept to himself might avoid trouble — but even then, Locke saw no reason to trust such a man with power. Atheism, in Locke’s view, posed a civilizational threat.

Indispensable religion

Now, consider the irony. Many of today’s self-declared “classical liberals” rose to prominence attacking religion. They led the New Atheist crusade. They mocked believers, ridiculed Christianity, and wrote bestsellers deriding faith as delusion. These weren’t defenders of liberal order. They launched a secular jihad against the very moral foundation that made liberalism possible.

Their adoption of the “classical liberal” label isn’t just unserious. It’s either historically illiterate or deliberately deceptive.

It’s a mistake to treat America’s founders as a monolith. They disagreed — often sharply — and those disagreements animate much of the "Federalist Papers." But one point remains clear: Their understanding of free speech and religious liberty diverged sharply from modern secular assumptions.

RELATED: Labeling you ‘phobic’ is how the left dodges real arguments

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Even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, several states retained official churches. Courts regularly upheld blasphemy laws well into the 20th century. Some state supreme courts continued defending them into the 1970s. Blue laws, which restrict commerce on Sundays to preserve the Sabbath, remain on the books in several states.

John Adams put it plainly: The Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The founders, and the citizens they represented, expected America to function as an explicitly Christian nation. Free speech and religious liberty existed within that framework — not apart from it.

Skin suit liberalism

So when non-woke liberals claim that “classical liberalism” demands a secular or religiously neutral government, they misrepresent history. That idea would have struck the founders as absurd. The Constitution was not written for New Atheists. Adams said so himself.

Faced with these historical facts, critics usually pivot. They argue that America has morally advanced beyond its founding values. Today, we tolerate non-Christian religions, recognize women’s rights, and legalize same-sex marriage. These changes, they claim, bring us closer to “true” American principles like freedom and equality.

Classical liberalism was a real political tradition — one that helped shape the American founding. It deserves serious treatment. Watching it get paraded around by people who reject its core values is exhausting. If Locke or Adams saw progressive atheists wearing classical liberalism like a skin suit, they’d spin in their graves.

The secular liberalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is not classical liberalism. It isn’t even an ally of conservatism. The non-woke left served as useful co-belligerents against the radical fringe, but they were never true allies — and they should never be allowed to lead the conservative movement.

Some have earned respect. Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson, and others have taken real steps to the right, even toward Christianity. That deserves credit. But let’s not kid ourselves. Many who still fly the “classical liberal” banner don’t believe in the values it represents. They reject its religious foundation. They rewrite its history. They co-opt its label while advancing a worldview its founders would have rejected outright.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right. And they certainly don’t get to lead it.

Labeling you ‘phobic’ is how the left dodges real arguments



No one wants to be called a coward. But fear is a natural and important human emotion. It gives us caution and hesitance in situations that pose a danger to oneself or others. Nevertheless, fear must be rational, and it must be controlled. Being afraid of the wrong things — or being excessively afraid of things that pose trivial risks — can be crippling.

Despite being a core component of human experience, fear is stigmatized in our society. Americans, in general, tend to be risk-takers. We instinctively recoil at cowardice. So it’s strange that the people who are dedicated to “destigmatizing” everything in our society are the same ones who work tirelessly to amplify the stigma attached to fear.

Don’t accept the framing. Don’t let the debate become a psychiatric evaluation. Don’t apologize for noticing reality.

Here, I refer to a common trend in political discourse — the left’s attribution of “phobias” to political opponents. You know the epithets: homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, transphobia. Some may bristle at the claim that this fixation on phobias is a strategic tactic used exclusively by the political left. But it’s undeniable: What equivalent “phobic” label do conservatives use to discredit progressives?

We don’t have an equivalent.

Are we to believe, then, that the political left is without fear? Certainly not. Many progressives treat Christianity with the same suspicion that some on the right harbor for the LGBTQ agenda. No one calls the former group “Christophobes,” but the latter are routinely charged as homophobic. Globalists often disdain the nationalist politics of identity, referring to nationalists as xenophobes. But no one calls the Americans who disparage everything about our nation “oikophobes” (people with an irrational fear of home).

This double standard shows that the labeling of “phobias” is a rhetorical strategy. But how does it work?

Abusing the ‘phobic’ label

Start by asking who gets branded “phobic” — and for what. These days, it doesn’t take much. Express moral concerns about “gender reassignment” surgeries for children? You’re a transphobe. Feel fatigued by the endless parade of “Pride” observances on the calendar? You’re a homophobe. Object to the illegal entry of millions of unvetted foreigners? You’re a xenophobe — just another American unwilling to embrace people “searching for a better life.”

The ease with which the left assigns the “phobic” label undermines its credibility. Can someone oppose gay marriage without harboring fear of gay people? Can a citizen reject open borders as reckless policy without fearing foreigners? Can one favor vetting immigrants from Muslim-majority countries without fearing Muslims as a group?

Two answers follow. The first, and more reasonable, says yes — of course people can hold such views without irrational fear. That would make the “phobic” smear inaccurate. But if that’s true, why does the left cling so fiercely to these labels? The second answer assumes the opposite: that you must be afraid — of gays, of immigrants, of Muslims — if you hold such views. But if every opinion stems from fear, then “phobia” becomes a catch-all insult, not a diagnosis.

And yet the accusation sticks. Why?

Exploiting social fears

The power of the “phobic” label stems from how society treats fear. We treat fear not as a natural response, but as a sign of weakness or irrationality — especially when aimed at supposedly harmless things.

Admitting fear carries a social cost. Labeling someone “phobic” pressures the person to conform, not through persuasion but through social coercion. It’s a tactic, not an argument. It manipulates the desire for status and respect by suggesting the presence of a psychological defect. And it works — not because it’s true, but because it shames.

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Are unvetted illegal immigrants always harmless? No. Most aren’t violent, but some are dangerous. Yet the “xenophobic” smear exists to deny that fact and humiliate anyone who dares say it aloud. Does importing large numbers of military-age men from Yemen pose no threat? Some Yemenis are admirable people. But recent history offers proof that some have come here to commit acts of terrorism. Labeling such concerns “Islamophobic” is an attempt to gaslight the public — dismissing valid fears and punishing the act of remembering.

Diagnosing as ‘crazy’

The label does more than stigmatize. It diagnoses. “Phobia” is a clinical term. To call someone a homophobe isn’t just to accuse the person of bigotry; it’s to classify the person as mentally ill. Arachnophobes are “crazy.” Agoraphobes are crazy. And society doesn’t argue with crazy people — it ignores them. Once someone becomes “irrational,” you don’t debate that person. You dismiss him. His views no longer require engagement. They require containment.

Attaching a “phobic” label turns political opposition into psychological pathology. It justifies censorship and marginalization. Ironically, the only people the left eagerly diagnoses and silences are those it brands with a phobia. So much for compassion around mental illness.

Conservatives must reject this tactic outright. Don’t accept the framing. Don’t let the debate become a psychiatric evaluation. Don’t apologize for noticing reality. Push back, not only by refusing the label but by highlighting the contradiction. If leftists truly care about destigmatizing mental illness, they should stop flinging “phobia” at every disagreement. Expose the hypocrisy. Force them to play by their own rules — and win.

Democrats want a new Joe Rogan — but their dogma won’t allow it



A New York Times report this week revealed how the Democratic Party is mobilizing its donor class in a coordinated effort to reclaim cultural dominance. In the aftermath of the 2024 election, the dominant progressive narrative has avoided serious self-critique. Rather than acknowledge Kamala Harris’ unpopularity or the unappealing nature of her platform, Democrats have instead blamed independent media — most notably Joe Rogan’s podcast — for her defeat.

This obsession with podcasting has driven Democrats to propose 26 separate initiatives aimed at restoring their lost cultural dominance, backed by tens of millions of donor dollars. But no matter how much they spend, they cannot purchase the one thing they now lack: authenticity.

The Democratic Party cannot manufacture its own Joe Rogan, because its ideology forbids the conditions that make someone like Rogan possible.

When politics becomes a surrogate religion, every policy becomes an article of faith. Apostasy, even for strategic reasons, is unthinkable. The 2024 election dealt a decisive blow to the progressive project. In a normal political environment, such a loss would prompt recalibration. But for Democrats, adjustment is impossible. Wokeness is no longer a means to an end — it has become the end itself.

Some within the party briefly suggested a return to the economic populism associated with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Those suggestions were quickly silenced. Party elites rejected substance in favor of narrative, attributing their defeat not to ideology but to communication failure. Their solution is to manufacture a parallel influencer ecosystem — essentially, a Manhattan Project for progressive social media.

Democratic strategists openly discuss their desire to create a “left-wing Joe Rogan.” The irony is glaring: They already had one. His name was Joe Rogan. But they pushed him out of the coalition for refusing to submit to ideological conformity.

Progressives recognize the importance of cultural power. What they fail to grasp is that the culture they hope to reproduce cannot be engineered through funding or message discipline. The problem is not the messenger — it’s the message.

Rogan and other prominent podcasters such as Tim Dillon and Theo Von are not natural conservatives. They are comedians, drawn toward irreverence and instinctively opposed to rigid social norms. Popular culture has long associated moral puritanism with the religious right, but for decades now, it has been the left enforcing an increasingly suffocating moral orthodoxy. That men like Rogan have drifted away from progressivism under pressure from this new puritanism only underscores how deeply censorious the modern left has become.

The New York Times story concedes as much. It quotes Democratic consultants who say the goal is to “avoid the hall monitor mentality” that dominates their political brand. But that mentality is not a rhetorical accident — it is central to their identity.

Progressivism, as practiced today, functions like a disciplinary institution. Its adherents find moral satisfaction in correction and control. This dynamic alienates key demographics, especially young men, who have left the party in large numbers. And yet the behavior continues, because it is integral to the ideological structure. Asking the left to abandon its scolding posture is like asking a devout Christian to deny Christ — it’s not just a tactic; it’s the organizing principle.

Podcasting feels authentic not because conservatives suddenly became more truthful but because the podcast space allowed genuine conversations to emerge. Legacy conservative media was often as sterile and contrived as its progressive counterpart. But podcasting, by its decentralized and long-form nature, made room for the unscripted. And when people are allowed to speak freely, their conclusions tend to drift right — not because of partisanship but because truth tends to align with natural order, and natural order is inherently at odds with progressive orthodoxy.

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Photo by Steve Liss/Getty Images

The GOP had no role in building the podcast sphere — and to its discredit, it never would have tried. Republican institutions still treat culture as peripheral to politics, investing only in short-term electoral returns. Democrats, by contrast, understand that cultural influence is a long game. That’s why they’re panicking now.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter may not have resulted in immediate legislative victories, but it was arguably the most important right-aligned political event of the past decade. It shifted the terrain of public discourse in ways that conventional politics never could.

This is the source of the left’s anxiety. The podcast sphere, despite its independence from traditional conservative infrastructure, now functions as a cultural counterweight. Not because it was funded by think tanks or coordinated by campaigns but because it grew organically out of cultural exhaustion. Its voices include comedians, disillusioned academics, and rogue cartoonists like Scott Adams — people driven not by ideology but by the sense that something fundamental in their world had broken.

The Democratic Party cannot manufacture its own Joe Rogan, because its ideology forbids the conditions that make someone like Rogan possible. It cannot reach the audiences it most desperately needs — especially young white men — because it has built its entire moral framework around blaming them for the ills of society.

Conservatives should take note. The left understands that culture drives politics. The right must learn the same lesson — and fast. While the right didn’t build the podcast sphere, it can nurture and expand it. That requires more than talking points or candidate funding. It requires investment in art, literature, music, and media that affirm reality and speak to a deeper longing for order and meaning.

Cultural power matters. The left knows this. The right must act like it does, too — before the window of opportunity closes.

The revolutionary who switched sides — and never wavered



David Horowitz, the ex-radical firebrand who spent the last 40 years of his life exposing the left’s lies, hypocrisies, and crimes, died on April 29 after a long battle with cancer. He was 86.

A former Marxist intellectual and New Left insider who became one of the most prolific and pugilistic conservative writers of his time, Horowitz was many things: essayist, agitator, memoirist, mentor, and iconoclast. But above all, he was a political street fighter of the first order. He saw himself on a battlefield of ideas — and he had no interest in compromise.

Horowitz spent the second half of his life warning Americans about the first half. And he never, ever backed down.

He was also my first boss.

Born in Forest Hills, New York, in 1939 to Communist Party members, Horowitz was steeped in ideological certainty from the cradle. He earned degrees at Columbia and UC Berkeley, gravitated toward literary criticism, and helped lead the radical journal Ramparts in the 1960s. By the early ’70s, he was deep in the orbit of the Black Panthers, whose criminality and murder of Horowitz’s friend Betty Van Patter all but obliterated his faith in the left.

That trauma marked the turning point and the beginning of a long journey rightward. He completed his break from his old comrades in 1985, when he and his longtime friend and collaborator Peter Collier published a scorching essay in the Washington Post Magazine with the cheeky title “Lefties for Reagan.”

“One of the few saving graces of age is a deeper perspective on the passions of youth,” they wrote. “Looking back on the left’s revolutionary enthusiasms of the last 25 years, we have painfully learned what should have been obvious all along: that we live in an imperfect world that is bettered only with great difficulty and easily made worse — much worse. This is a conservative assessment, but on the basis of half a lifetime’s experience, it seems about right.”

Horowitz would later write in his autobiography that his “moral conscience could no longer be reconciled with the lies of the Left.” If it could kill and lie and justify it all in the name of justice, what the hell kind of justice was it?

Horowitz’s political evolution was more than a turn — it was a total break. And once broken, he threw himself into the cause of exposing the radicalism, corruption, and totalitarian impulses of his former comrades. He brought to the right a kind of inside knowledge and rhetorical ferocity that few others could match.

In the late 1980s, he and Collier (who died in 2019) launched the Center for the Study of Popular Culture — originally just a room in Horowitz’s house in the San Fernando Valley. “The name identified its focus,” Horowitz wrote, “but also made it harder for the Left to attack.” It wasn’t a think tank like Heritage or Cato. “Our combative temperament was hardly suited to policy analysis,” he admitted. The CSPC would become the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 1998 — what Horowitz proudly called a “battle tank.”

I started working there in 1994, fresh out of college. David and Peter gave me my first real job. I wasn’t there long — only a couple of years — but the lessons stuck. When I gave notice to join the Claremont Institute, Peter warned me: “I certainly wish you luck. I don’t think David will take the news very well, though.” Oh, boy, was he right.

“JESUS CHRIST! HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME?” was David’s immediate, explosive reaction. Such outbursts were legendary in the office — others had gotten the same treatment — but after a talk, he settled down. I finished my two weeks, and he shook my hand and wished me well as I left.

It took me a while to understand his wild response. But as he admitted in “Radical Son,” he had “a strain of loyalty in me” and “an inability to let go of something I had committed myself to.” That loyalty was fierce. And once you were in David’s circle — whether as comrade or colleague — he expected you to stay. Nothing mattered but the cause. “I would not run when things got tough,” he wrote of his hesitation to break from the Panthers. It was personal for him, always.

Peter once described his friend to me as “four-fifths of a human being.” That was generous on some days. Horowitz could be cold, irascible, and prone to volcanic rage. But he also had a great heart, one which bore scars from a lifetime of tragedy and regret. One of his most affecting books is “A Cracking of the Heart,” the 2009 memoir of his rocky relationship with his daughter Sarah, a gifted writer in her own right, who died suddenly in 2008 at the age of 44. It’s the reflection of a fully formed human being.

I was proud to publish David’s work years later. It always tickled me when he pitched articles — my old boss, pitching me — but I was pleased to publish them out of gratitude for the start he and Peter gave me.

While David became famous for his political transformation, in some ways he never changed. “You can take the boy out of the left,” one wag quipped, “but you can’t take the left out of the boy.” Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, David’s son, put it even more precisely: “While David became known for his change in views, in a sense he never changed at all.” His method of ideological engagement — fierce, unrelenting, totalizing, moralistic — remained constant. Once an ideologue, always an ideologue.

And thank God for that.

David launched and encouraged the careers of many others, including Donald Trump’s domestic adviser Stephen Miller and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. His Freedom Center helped shape the new generation of conservative activists — and sharpened the right’s sense of urgency and resolve. Though he often complained that Republicans lacked the stomach to fight, he lived long enough to see another political pugilist from Queens take and retake the Oval Office.

His nine-volume “The Black Book of the American Left” was arguably his life’s last great project, modeled in part on “The Black Book of Communism.” Where others flinched or equivocated, Horowitz named the threat. The left wasn’t simply wrong — it was dangerous, deceitful, and, at its root, totalitarian.

David Horowitz is survived by his wife, April, four children, and several grandchildren.

He spent the second half of his life warning Americans about the first half. And he never, ever backed down.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at Chronicles Magazine.

The right needs to stop hiding and start speaking up



Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a feature on the ideological divide in a southeastern Pennsylvania borough — where I happen to live. The article featured a photo of Elizabethtown High School, about half a mile from my home, with a group of teenagers and an adult organizer outside, calling for greater recognition of transgender identities. According to the report, the borough is “tearing itself apart” over “preferred pronouns.”

One protester held a sign mocking churches that opposed the left’s political agenda, a message that borough residents would recognize as part of the broader culture war. Pastor Doug Lamb of LifeGate Church, located nearby, has been outspoken against allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. Evangelical Protestants have been at the forefront of this battle.

The right should not wait for leftist aggression to make its presence known. Instead of retreating into silence, the local right must match the left’s level of commitment.

Their activism played a key role in the local school board’s recent 8-1 vote to ban transgender athletes from contact sports. The board has a history of taking conservative stances, including a 1990s resolution praising “the traditional family.” At the time, board members also condemned unionized teachers for promoting “pro-homosexual propaganda against parents’ wishes.”

For years, I have written about the culture war in the northwestern corner of Lancaster County, an area known for its large Amish population. This is not a battle between evenly matched sides. Most of my neighbors are conservative Protestants, and the town votes overwhelmingly Republican. Donald Trump won handily in last November’s election, and our Republican congressman, Lloyd Smucker — who takes pride in his Amish ancestry — wins bigly in these parts.

The cultural conflict in Elizabethtown would not be happening if conservatives were in the minority. If this were Waltham, Massachusetts, or Portland, Maine, the right would have little influence. Leftists excel at making their opponents uncomfortable and forcing them to conceal their beliefs. They are also far more relentless in shoving their views in everyone’s face.

Around here, traditionalists have been only intermittently engaged in the cultural battles waged by the left. While progressives remain in a constant state of mobilization, the right tends to focus on other aspects of life — attending church socials, maintaining their lawns, and going to Little League games. The Wall Street Journal reports that those on the local right are energized by having a president who supports them, but they should not rely on help from Washington.

Even before last year’s election, the left — despite being vastly outnumbered — put up at least as many Kamala Harris signs as there were signs for Trump. Trump signs routinely disappeared overnight, but Democrat signs remained untouched.

I’ve noticed something else over the years about this asymmetrical confrontation. The social progressives show far more pugnacity than their adversaries, even when their adversaries enjoy a numerical edge. Left-wing militants at our college, among the unionized teachers in the local schools, and among the embattled feminists in my neighborhood never hide where they’re coming from. In fact, these militants want everyone to know where they stand, even if you don’t want to listen.

My conservative neighbors take a different approach. Many hesitate to share their political views, fearing they might lose friends or customers if they speak openly. The boldest statement they make is often a bland lawn sign indicating “We Support the Police.”

At the Turkey Hill store down the block, however, no one hides their MAGA loyalty. The same is true for some high school dropouts and others who fall slightly below our concept of social respectability. Fundamentalists will also admit to supporting Trump, though their endorsement often comes with a reminder that we are living in the end times.

The right should not wait for leftist aggression to make its presence known. Instead of retreating into silence, conservatives should provide clear, reasoned arguments against progressive ideology — not just biblical references, however much we may respect their moral authority.

More importantly, the local right must match the left’s level of commitment. Don’t hide your views! There is a middle ground between bullying neighbors and behaving like scaredy-cats. Rather than responding only when forced to defend traditional family values, conservatives should be as outspoken about their beliefs as leftists are about their own.

Above all, the right must make clear to the other side that we deserve our own “safe space.” The woke left already controls and in some cases plainly tyrannizes over most of the densely populated regions of this country. It doesn’t need our borough as an extra trophy.

DEI is on its last legs, but the right risks keeping it alive



It seems one of the only sources of bipartisan agreement in the culture today is that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are how black people get jobs. In what will be yet another example of people stretching a term past the point of no return, the pushback against DEI is well on its way to the same rhetorical ash heap as “racist,” “fascist,” and “Nazi.”

One conservative influencer with three million followers on X called Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance a “DEI halftime show.” Another right-wing commentator with more than one million followers linked a Black History Month event at the White House to DEI — and, for good measure, blamed DEI for Michelle Obama’s decision to wear long nails.

The truth is that both the left and right seem intent on using 'DEI' as a euphemism for 'black' when it suits them politically.

If things continue at their current pace, conservatives will need to update the popular meme “Everyone I don’t like is a racist” to reflect their current DEI bugaboo.

Anyone with common sense can admit that separating and prioritizing the population along identity lines violates our founding principles and is a recipe for social unrest. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case, famously remarked:

In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.

This message holds as true for white people today as it did for black people 100 years ago. DEI is dying a quick death because far too many institutions thought they could use historical wrongs to justify present-day discrimination.

The former DEI chief at Johns Hopkins University Hospital sent out a New Year’s message last January with a list of “privileged” identity groups, which included white people, heterosexuals, “cisgender” people, and Christians. Progressives see this type of rhetoric as perfectly normal, but I’m not sure how many lives will be saved at a hospital just because doctors believe it’s a privilege to be white.

Companies and government agencies that thought they could set aside programs for blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, and LGBT-identifying people without any response from straight white men don’t understand human nature. It’s an iron law of human dynamics: Providing special benefits to one person in a group automatically triggers the other members to ask, “What about me?”

Exposing and rooting out the excesses of the DEI industrial complex from public life marks a positive step. However, like all political movements, the temptation to swing the pendulum too far remains ever-present. Overcorrection often becomes the rule rather than the exception in politics.

The irony is that conservatives never assume black people on the right are DEI hires.

Justice Clarence Thomas served on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals — his only experience as a federal judge — for a little over a year before President George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1991. For comparison, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson served close to nine years in the federal judiciary before her appointment.

Conservatives cheered when President Trump selected Dr. Ben Carson to be his secretary of Housing and Urban Development during his first term. Prior to entering the political arena, Carson was a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon doing cutting-edge work at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. But somehow the man who led a team that separated conjoined twins was deemed qualified to lead HUD. Charlie Kirk floated Carson’s name to lead the Department of Agriculture in the second Trump administration — one week after he claimed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was a “DEI pick.”

Nothing undercuts the conservative push to rid the culture of the identity-obsession created by DEI programs more than arguing that a four-star general who spent decades in leadership is unfit to run the military while a decorated surgeon is qualified to rightsize the Section 8 program.

It’s clear that the left has its own DEI blind spots. Progressives spent years making skin color, sex, and bedroom activities the most important qualities in public life. Now, they lament the loss of DEI programs in corporations, government agencies, and other institutions as if they were the only thing keeping black people from suffering Jim Crow-style discrimination at the hands of employers.

The truth is that both the left and right seem intent on using “DEI” as a euphemism for “black” when it suits them politically. Using the term haphazardly distorts its meaning and drains it of political potency.

Conservatives should resist that temptation because nothing hardens a group more than overusing the terms used to police its behavior. It’s the reason many right-wing pundits stopped caring about being called “racist.” Doing the same with DEI is the blueprint for breathing life into identity obsession, not what you do if you want it to die.

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