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New Delhi: Liberals are at war with each other and this is due to growing polarisation, a push for ideological conformity and the cancel culture, said ThePrints Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta in episode 523 of Cut The Clutter.

Cancel culture is when someone is politically incorrect and is cancelled as a result. At this point, cancel culture goes beyond just unfollowing them and is threatening livelihoods with several people forced to resign for their diverging opinions.

Two letters have expressed concern over these trends.

The first is the strongly worded resignation letter of Bari Weiss, former editor and writer in the Opinion section of The New York Times.

Weiss accused the US newspaper of choosing stories to pander to a narrow audience due to its misjudgement about Hilary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Elections. Weiss said Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times but its become its ultimate editor that has eroded an environment for diverse opinion.

This comes just a month after the resignation of James Bennet, the former New York Times Opinion Editor, after the publishing of a controversial op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton. Senator Cotton had called for a wide-scale military crackdown on the Black Lives Matter protests in the US.

Also read: No, cancel culture isnt a threat to civilization

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The second is an open letter recently published by Harpers Magazine. It was jointly written by over 150 eminent and liberal voices including authors J.K. Rowling and Salman Rushdie, feminist critic Gloria Steinem, linguist Noam Chomsky and political scientist Fareed Zakaria.

They argued that an intolerance of public views is emerging in the US discourse, which is a threat to free speech. They also noted that cancel culture is a threat to liberalism that seeks to silence opinions and cost them their jobs.

For instance, the president and some board members of the National Book Critics Circle recently resigned amid claims of racism. This was after a colleague posted screenshots of an internal email correspondence, exposing the presidents controversial opinions on the Black Lives Matter protests.

Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, one of the signatories of the letter, called cancel culture Orwellian and said, Twitter is not an example of literate humanity.

On the other hand, critics like author Pankaj Mishra have argued that those attacking cancel culture are fighting more for their own freedom than the freedom of free speech of everybody else because they feel threatened.

However, Gupta noted, journalism and newsrooms in particular are supposed to be a large tent of diverse opinions. Expelling people from the ideological vertical for speaking out will turn journalism away from factivism and towards activism.

Global liberalism has clearly broken out into anarchy and is fighting itself, he added. This is liberal cannibalism and look whos smiling the ideological Right.

US political commentator David Rubin has described this as the liberal mob which used to attack the Right but has now turned on itself.

Watch the latest episode of CTC here:

Also read: You cant cancel Modi, RSS: Why US-style identity politics wont help Indian liberals fight

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How cancel culture has turned liberals against each other and is rocking newsrooms - ThePrint

A note to the editors of the New York Times:

When Bari Weiss says youre too liberal, youre too liberal.

Weiss is the Times opinion editor who went out last week with a bang by firing off a resignation letter in which she stated that a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isnt a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

That letter caused a big splash in the media, with many outlets labeling Weiss as a conservative.

A conservative?

Heres how Weiss described herself on a widely viewed interview with podcaster Joe Rogan:

Im a centrist. Im a Jewish, center-left on most things, person who lives on the upper west side of Manhattan and is super socially liberal on almost any issue you can choose.

Among those issues, she told Rogan, is the right to keep and bear arms. I would repeal the Second Amendment, she told Rogan.

Theres plenty more where that came from, all of which would exempt Weiss from membership in my personal circle of right-wing reactionaries.

Yet even her tame objections to Times orthodoxy got her harassed by her fellow journalists, Weiss wrote. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action, she wrote. They never are.

In the letter, Weiss also mentioned the recent flap at the Times over the decision to run an op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton headlined Send in the Troops in which he advocated using the military to keep the peace in American cities.

This is where the Times truly went over the edge. The op-ed section and the news section are separate entities there, as they are at most newspapers. The writers in the former are supposed to be subjective, the writers in the latter objective.

At least thats the ideal. But many reporters uttered howls of indignation at the thought that the Times ran the piece in question.

This is reminiscent of the flap a few months ago in which the editors at the Hachette book publishing company walked out in opposition to plans to publish Woody Allens recent book.

In a column on that, I wrote that the publisher should have informed the staff that Book editors are a dime a dozen and weve got a lot of dimes.

The same goes for the members of the Times news staff. The publisher should have told the reporters that if they wanted to express their opinions they should resign and apply for work in the opinion section.

But in both cases, the publishers succumbed to the cancel culture. Hachette dropped Allens book and the Times accepted the resignation of the opinion editor.

In the case of the Times, the news staffers employed a particularly devious and dishonest new meme to camouflage their assault on freedom of expression.

Instead of stating frankly their desire to suppress speech with which they disagreed, a number of reporters tweeted out the columns headline followed by the sentiment Running this puts black @NY Times staff in danger.

Just how these staffers were put in danger was not stated. In Cottons op-ed, he argued that the troops would be used to prevent violence, not engage in it. He cites the 1962 decision by President Kennedy to introduce troops to keep the peace when white protesters tried to prevent the integration of the University of Mississippi.

Whether his approach is preferable is subject to debate. But the Times staffers dont want to hear it debated.

I confess I lack whatever gene causes writers to want to suppress the writings of others. I for one enjoy reading the opinions of people with whom I disagree. Most the time I have a horse laugh at their naivete. But sometimes I learn something I didnt know.

Either way, I wouldnt want to suppress such speech. But thats the way the so-called cancel culture works. Its gotten so bad that earlier this month Harpers Magazine ran a letter signed by several hundred writers attacking the culture of stifling speech.

We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters, they wrote. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.

The letter of course soon brought a response from other writers attacking the signers.

The signatories of the letter seem to be suggesting that all viewpoints should be published in opinion pages, with no limits on what those viewpoints might be, they wrote.

I dont know if thats what those signatories were suggesting.

But it sounds good to me.

ADD - ANDREW SULLIVAN GOT THE SAME TREATMENT:

Later in the week, writer Andrew Sullivan, who is considerably more conservative than Weiss, was squeezed out at New York Magazine. Note the same meme of a phony physical threat to justify suppression of speech. Heres what Sullivan said of his critics at the magazine:

They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theoryin questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually attacking,and even mocking, critical theorys ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why Im out of here.

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Sign of the Times: Editor resigns over liberal bias at New Yorks leading newspaper | Mulshine - NJ.com

Lets be clear: As coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are surging to record levels in states across America, and the lifeline of unemployment benefits keeping 30 million people afloat expires at the end of the month, the Republican Senate has decided to provide more funding for the Pentagon than the next 11 nations military budgets combined.

Under this legislation, over half of our discretionary budget would go to the Department of Defense at a time when tens of millions of Americans are food insecure and over a half-million Americans are sleeping out on the street. After adjusting for inflation, this bill would spend more money on the Pentagon than we did during the height of the Vietnam War even as up to 22 million Americans are in danger of being evicted from their homes and health workers are still forced to reuse masks, gloves and gowns.

Moreover, this extraordinary level of military spending comes at a time when the Department of Defense is the only agency of our federal government that has not been able to pass an independent audit, when defense contractors are making enormous profits while paying their CEOs outrageous compensation packages, and when the so-called War on Terror will cost some $6 trillion.

Let us never forget what Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former four-star general, said in 1953: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

What Eisenhower said was true 67 years ago, and it is true today.

If the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing has taught us anything it is that national security means a lot more than building bombs, missiles, nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction. National security also means doing everything we can to improve the lives of tens of millions of people living in desperation who have been abandoned by our government decade after decade.

That is why I have introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that the Senate will be voting on during the week of July 20th, and the House will follow suit with a companion effort led by Representatives Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). Our amendment would reduce the military budget by 10 percent and use that $74 billion in savings to invest in communities that have been ravaged by extreme poverty, mass incarceration, decades of neglect and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Under this amendment, distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds to create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public hospitals, libraries and clean drinking water facilities. These communities would also receive federal funding to hire more public school teachers, provide nutritious meals to children and parents and offer free tuition at public colleges, universities or trade schools.

This amendment gives my Senate colleagues a fundamental choice to make. They can vote to spend more money on endless wars in the Middle East while failing to provide economic security to millions of people in the United States. Or they can vote to spend less money on nuclear weapons and cost overruns, and more to rebuild struggling communities in their home states.

In Dr. Kings 1967 speech, he warned that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

He was right. At a time when half of our people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, when over 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and when 87 million lack health insurance or are underinsured, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and when millions of Americans are in danger of going hungry, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when we have no national testing program, no adequate production of protective gear and no commitment to a free vaccine, while remaining the only major country where infections spiral out of control, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when over 60,000 Americans die each year because they cant afford to get to a doctor on time, and one out of five Americans cant afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, we are approaching spiritual death.

Now, at this unprecedented moment in American history, it is time to rethink what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities. Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human needs is a modest way to begin that process. Let's get it done.

See the rest here:

Opinion | Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case - POLITICO

This weeks Liberal Media Scream features CNN wading into the intolerance debate where it finds that its the conservatives outlets, and even religious colleges, that are close-minded.

In the wake of New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss falling victim to the cancel culture for daring to run pieces that went counter to left-wing orthodoxy, CNN brought aboard a guest to defend the New York Times and claim the intolerance of opinion is on the Right, not the Left.

I do think there is a growing intolerance of oppositional political views, Jill Filipovic said on Reliable Sources, but not at mainstream and progressive outlets.

Filipovic, an opinion writer and author of the upcoming book, OK BOOMER, LET'S TALK: How My Generation Got Left Behind, said, Its really conservative news outlets, as well as conservative institutions like religious colleges, where youre lacking diversity of opinion.

From Sundays Reliable Sources on CNN:

Brian Stelter: Is there growing intolerance in American newsrooms? Is what people like Bari Weiss, is what theyre pointing to a real and serious threat?

Jill Filipovic: Yes, I do think that there is growing intolerance of oppositional political views. I think where we get it wrong in this conversation is looking at mostly mainstream and progressive outlets. The reality is, places like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, host a really wide variety of perspectives. Both the Post and the Times have conservative columnists. Theres really not a day that goes by that you cant find conservative perspectives on those websites. You really cant say the same thing about Fox News, about Breitbart, about web sites like Townhall.com. Its really conservative news outlets, as well as conservative institutions like religious colleges, where youre lacking diversity of opinion. And what I see happening here is, yes, pointing to something that is a frustrating problem, but by honing in on, quote/unquote, liberal outlets, I think you really miss the fuller story and the ways in which I think the Right is really working the refs on this one.

Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our weekly pick: Talk about working the refs. In what alternative universe does Filipovic live? The term cancel culture was created to describe what mainstream and progressive outlets do to those who dare stray from the approved left-wing view of an issue. Cancel culture is real at liberal outlets and has cost several journalists their jobs. And theres a lot more diversity of political views on Fox News Channel than on CNN or MSNBC. When did you last hear a pro-Trump voice on CNN or MSNBC?

Rating: Four out of five screams.

Originally posted here:

Liberal Media Scream: In CNNs world, conservative outlets, not Times, Post, are intolerant - Washington Examiner

Three South Australian Liberal MPs, including two Cabinet ministers, will be forced to repay more than $70,000 of taxpayers' money claimed in accommodation allowances.

SA Premier Steven Marshall said the payments were claimed in error and denied there had been any deliberate wrongdoing.

It comes as it was announced on Tuesday that some SA Liberal MPs will be forced to repay money incorrectly claimed under a parliamentary allowance provided for country MPs to stay in the city on official business.

Mr Marshall said some MPs have come forward to him admitting "administrative errors" in claiming the allowance, which is worth more than $31,000 a year.

"There have been some administrative errors and I've made it clear to my team they need to make it clear what those administrative errors were and rectify them as quickly as possible, and all of that information will be provided to the Parliament this afternoon," Mr Marshall said.

"But I'm not of the opinion there's been any deliberate dishonesty."

The revelation came minutes before the Parliament released 10 years' worth of claims under the allowance, prompted by an ABC investigation into the eligibility of Legislative Council President Terry Stephens to claim.

A series of ABC stories demonstrated Mr Stephens spent significant time at his million-dollar-plus suburban Adelaide property while claiming tens of thousands of dollars in allowance.

Those questions have now been referred to the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Bruce Lander, while the Auditor-General, Taxation Commissioner and Electoral Commissioner have also been asked to examine the senior Liberal MP's living arrangements.

Infrastructure Minister Stephan Knoll will repay more than $29,000 for all Country Members Accommodation Allowance payments made since December 2018.

He has also committed to repay another night's allowance from April 2018, saying the payment was claimed by "administrative error".

Primary Industries Minister Tim Whetstone unreservedly apologised for claiming in error more than $20,000 for 90 nights from 2012 until now.

However, he will only have to repay $6,993 for nights claimed before he became a minister in 2018.

That's because since becoming a minister he has spent nights in Adelaide beyond the annual allowance cap of 135 nights and some of those additional nights have now been substituted for those he incorrectly claimed.

Liberal backbencher Fraser Ellis has also agreed to repay $42,130.

Emails from all three MPs were tabled in Parliament, amid a tranche of allowance claims made by regional MPs dating back a decade.

Mr Knoll and Mr Ellis's commitments to repay are based upon wording in a Remuneration Tribunal determination, which require members to incur "actual expenditure" in order to claim the allowance.

The ABC has previously revealed that Mr Ellis stayed rent free at the Norwood residence of fellow Liberal MP Terry Stephens while claiming the allowance.

Mr Whetstone said an audit by his staff identified "a number of administrative errors where claims had been made for nights which were not eligible as required by the guidelines".

He said he took "full responsibility".

"I apologise to the people of Chaffey and to South Australia for those errors," he said.

"But what I will say is that all of that information has now been provided to the Parliament and it is now publicly available."

Mr Knoll said he believes he "complied with all of the guidelines in relation to the claiming of this allowance".

"I do stay with my parents and I do incur expenses when I do so, but it is fair to say that since the November 2018 determination, there has been ambiguity around this allowance," he said.

"Until that ambiguity is resolved, I have sought to, out of an abundance of caution and to put this issue beyond doubt, I've repaid that money and I am not going to claim the allowance until that ambiguity is resolved."

A further two regional Liberal MPs, Adrian Pederick and Peter Treloar, have retrospectively amended their returns to change dates that they stayed in Adelaide, but have not sought to repay money.

Mr Marshall admitted greater transparency was needed, and said both the Speaker of the House of Assembly Vincent Tarzia and Legislative Council President Terry Stephens would push for records of the Country Members Accommodation Allowance to be published monthly.

Mr Marshall said the government had also written to the Auditor-General, seeking increased scrutiny, including random audits.

"We need to assure the people of SA that when their money is spent it's spent in accordance with the guidelines," Mr Marshall said.

He said the government would also write to the state's remuneration tribunal seeking "greater certainty and clarity" over when the allowance could be claimed.

"I think there has been ambiguity over a long period of time and it's now time to clean up this situation and provide much greater certainty going forward," the Premier said.

However, Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said both Mr Knoll and Mr Whetstone should be dumped from Cabinet.

"This is unacceptable the Premier's got to show leadership," he said.

"I mean, we're talking about taxpayers' money here going into the direct pocket of members of Parliament and what Steven Marshall wants to do is have everyone look the other way."

Do you know more about this story? Email SA.tips@abc.net.au.

Go here to see the original:

Liberal MPs to pay back allowance claimed in error after ABC investigation, but Premier denies deliberate wrongdoing - ABC News

Among the courses that form part of the Computer Application Major are Computing Skills, Data Science, Cloud Computing and Cyber Security. These will equip the student to take up a career in a host of Computer Application areas.

The addition of Computer Application will benefit students of other Majors too. For instance, the Journalism, Marketing or Economics students can take Data Mining as an Elective. Advertising & Public Relations students can take Introduction to Social Media Analysis or E-Commerce and Social Media Analytics as their Electives.

Similarly, students of Psychology and Philosophy can study Human Computer Interaction as part of their Electives while students of all Majors can enlarge their horizons by studying subjects such as Introduction to Forensics and Cyber Law.

A big advantage for students opting for Computer Application Major is that it will be taught by the same Faculty that teaches B.Tech and BCA courses in Bennett Universitys Computer Science Engineering department. The students can therefore expect their learning to be at par with all other Computer Science graduates.

Another major advantage for them will be their exposure to ten other Liberal Arts disciplines. They will have both breadth and depth of knowledge when they pass out as Liberal Arts graduates from Bennett University.

Or Call: Contact number - 1800 103 8484

Disclaimer: Content Produced by Bennett University

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Bennett University adds Computer Application as eleventh Major in Liberal Arts - Times of India

You can be forgiven for not knowing theres a Liberal Democrat leadership contest going on. You can also, to a degree, be forgiven for not caring very much either. For the record, the candidates are the acting leader, Ed Davey, who is a green and a centrist, and the education spokeswoman, Layla Moran, who is more on the partys left. The result, due on 27 August, is likely to be met with almost total indifference outside the partys own ranks.

It isnt hard to see why. The Lib Dems have not recovered from the 2010-15 coalition. A decade ago they had 57 MPs. Today they have 11. Hopes of a revival in the 2019 election proved fanciful. Foolish enthusiasm for an early election, the failure of the partys Brexit revocation policy, Jo Swinsons heavy-footed leadership and some bad seat-targeting combined to roll that latest Lib Dem bandwagon back down to the bottom of the electoral hill.

Since the general election, things have got even tougher. The partys vote share has fallen to 8% in an average of recent UK polls (from 12% at the election). Keir Starmer has meanwhile begun rebuilding support for Labour that was lost, some of it to the Lib Dems, under Jeremy Corbyn. Crucially, much of the air has gone out of Brexit, on which the Lib Dems once sometimes seemed to speak for half of the British public.

Put all that together, and the Lib Dems seem almost a busted flush. Whether Davey wins or Moran, the next leader will be a marginal figure. And yet, in spite of that, the 2020 Lib Dem contest actually matters a lot more widely than this tale of unremitting Lib Dem party woe might suggest.

There are two principal reasons for saying this. The first is UK-specific, while the second is more global. Ironically, the first is the Lib Dems electoral influence. Eight per cent in the polls is dreadful. But it is an 8% that affects the rest of the inter-party battle. The Lib Dems stand in almost every UK seat. Three and a half million people voted for them last December. As long as that continues, the Lib Dems will be one factor alongside the Scottish National party in Scotland and Conservative inroads in England making a Labour victory under the winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post system much harder.

The second reason is not confined to Britain. Liberalism is fragmenting and in some respects retreating, here as elsewhere in the west. Many aspects of economic liberalism are under challenge, from recession and climate change, and especially from nationalism. Meanwhile, a raft of traditional moderate liberal values around conscience, tolerance and rights are also being confronted by forms of sometimes highly illiberal progressivism. The apparent post-cold war triumph of liberal capitalism is rapidly giving way to a variety of forms of post-liberalism in economics, politics and cultural life. In some of these, traditional liberalism is fighting for its life. There are multiple moments of reckoning.

One of these certainly affects the Lib Dems. But the same issues affect all other parties, and other institutions too, including universities, artistic life and most forms of the media. In Britain it is undoubtedly also true of the Labour party. The 2019 election result asked whether, in the wake of the Brexit divide and other stresses, a 21st-century Labour party can any longer achieve a winning coalition rooted both in liberal values and class politics. Starmer is trying to show that it can still be done by better leadership than preceded him. But in the face of the current fragmentation both of values and of class politics, as well as the revival of nationalism, it is an uphill task.

The political impact of all this on both Labour and the Lib Dems is existential. Both lay claim in different ways to being parties that can combine social justice goals and liberal values. So, it should also be added, do many important traditions within the Tory party, arguably including Boris Johnsons. But the balance between the two traditions that they all wish to appeal to is not stable.

A century ago, Labour was a working-class party with some middle-class supporters. Today it is increasingly the reverse. The tension between those who see Labour as a party of the poor and struggling, and those who see it as a party of liberal and progressive values, has a long history. But the coalition between them that worked in 1945, 1966 and 1997 came close to breaking apart in 2019 when significant numbers of English working-class former Labour voters turned to the Conservatives to deliver Brexit. It is hard to see it being reforged without significant compromises and moderation on both sides. Starmer gets this. Many in his party and beyond do not. In some parts of post-liberal politics, compromise and moderation are anathema and worse. This will not be easy.

It is made even more difficult by the electoral system. In potted histories of British politics since 1900, it is often said that Labour replaced the Liberals as the main rival of the Tories. So it did, in broad terms. But not in all ways. The Liberals never quite died, even after 1945. Their successor party is not dead today either. Since the 1970s, the Greens have become a third opposition option against the Conservatives.

Liberalism has many guises. Its crisis likewise takes multiple forms. The parties that draw on liberal traditions, or owe their existence to it, face a choice. They can either go on as before, each parading their own untarnishable virtue. Or they can try to fashion compromises within their own ranks and between one another. If they do the former, the Conservatives are well placed to go on defeating them, as they did to such effect in 2019. But if they choose cooperation and compromise, there may be a way back. The Lib Dem leadership contest may just help to decide which it will be.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Liberalism is fighting for its life. There is only one way to survive - The Guardian

Shyam Saran

Former Foreign Secretary and Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research

The liberal spirit is suffering from terminal angst. Its political expression in liberal democracy is an endangered political species. What is the liberal spirit? It is a conception of society where the dignity of the individual is sacrosanct and rights are citizen based. A liberal society upholds the fundamental rights of each individual to life, liberty, expression and association, the only restraint being the rule of law, not the rule of state or a group or community. The liberal spirit not merely tolerates but celebrates dissent. It believes in the dictum that what is more dangerous is not when there are questions to which there are no answers but rather when there are answers which are not open to question. A liberal society creates equal opportunities for each individual to develop his innate genius and realise his potential. It is non-discriminatory among individuals irrespective of caste, creed or religion. But fraternity is equally fundamental because a sense of affinity with ones fellow citizens, the empathy for one another in recognition of a larger humanity, these are values without which a liberal society has no meaning.

To survive and to flourish, a liberal society needs a unique state structure, namely, the political dispensation of a liberal democracy. The state is as much bound by the rule of law as is the citizen and exercise of state authority is subject to challenge by even the most humble of its citizens. Another feature is the existence of independent and constitutionally empowered institutions which serve to restrain the arbitrary exercise of state power. An independent media and a robust civil society are its other essential ingredients. For a concrete and comprehensive articulation of the liberal spirit and the institution of liberal democracy, one need look no further than the Constitution of India. But while lip service is paid to the Constitution and constitutionally empowered institutions still remain in place, these are being systematically and relentlessly hollowed out. This is not just true in India but in other democracies as well. How has this happened?

I trace the origins of this slide to 1980 when Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK led the retreat of the state from the economy and elevated laissez-faire economic strategies as instruments of both economic prosperity and social welfare. The role of the state in wealth and income redistribution was progressively decimated and even made illegitimate. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s gave further momentum to this trend. The magic of the marketplace was now hitched together to the notion of liberal democracy. Free markets led to successful liberal democracies and liberal democracies became synonymous with free markets. Thus was born the touching faith in the inevitability of Chinas embrace of capitalism leading to its becoming like one of us. But the very moment of seeming victory of liberal democracy marked the beginning of its unravelling. It became obvious that there was nothing automatic about a free market leading to egalitarian society. The enshrinement of competition, above all else, in delivering prosperity paid no attention to those left behind.

The failure of liberalism lies precisely in its acquiescence in this new orthodoxy, its failure to question these answers. Globalisation delivered immense benefits across the board in terms of rising prosperity but states failed to ensure the egalitarian distribution of these benefits because the free market was assumed to achieve that automatically. Globalisation is not responsible for inequalities of income, wealth and opportunity. It is the failure of public policy which liberals failed to expose. When the free market went into free fall in 2007-08, so did the credibility of the liberal democratic ideal. India has not been immune to these forces. The orthodoxies of the past four decades are no longer tenable. How can one salvage the liberal ideal and liberal democracy?

The liberal idea must be preserved. It still has the power to help us deal with the challenges we confront today because it is the unbounded contention of ideas that will engender possible solutions. If globalisation is here to stay, as I am convinced it is, then we need societies that are capable of adapting to change, of being able to handle immense diversity and cultivate a new spirit of cosmopolitanism and internationalism. Only liberal democracies with their respect for diversity and commitment to non-discrimination are best suited to navigate the new landscape. The pandemic raging in our midst is laying bare the bankruptcy of populist authoritarianism and crass mediocrity that pretends to represent the disempowered and deprived but is unable, unwilling and incapable of mobilising society to deal with current and looming challenges. Instead, there is a constant recourse to quick fixes, the bypassing of institutions and of constitutional norms, and worse, the overturning of the very notion of the rule of law. This is how in India, we have ended up with brazen encounter killings to applause from large sections of society which are unable to understand that once the rule of law is breached they will be its next victims.

How do we engage in a discourse that leads us back to a contemporary design of liberal democracy? What must be its key features? The renewed exploration of the Constitution is a good starting point. Even those paying lip service can hardly object.

If liberalism survives in India, its future in the rest of the world may be brighter.

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Reclaiming the liberal idea - The Tribune India

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for a group portrait. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for a group portrait.

The recently concluded Supreme Court term was remarkable for many reasons. But for SCOTUS geeks who love numbers, it's worth looking at how the conservatives often split among themselves, while the liberal justices, understanding that they are playing defense, stuck together far more often, refusing to dilute the outcome of their victories by disagreeing with one another.

In all, the four hard-line conservatives wrote way more separate opinions.

They wrote nearly two-thirds of the concurring opinions. These are the opinions in which individual justices do not agree with some or all of the reasoning in the majority opinion.

The conservative justices were also more likely to speak for themselves alone. Of the 45 solo opinions, the four most conservative justices wrote 31.

In addition, they wrote more pages than the liberal justices, writing 734 pages of concurring and dissenting opinions, out of 1,214 such pages total.

The most restrained conservative author was Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote just one concurring opinion and one dissent. But he was the deciding vote in a lot of cases and often wrote the majority opinion in the most important decisions.

The other four conservatives put pen to paper for themselves in especially ideologically charged cases, whereas the liberal justices stayed their hands in most of these.

On the liberal side of the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the most concurring opinions eight of them solo and one joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But in six of those cases, the decisions were either unanimous or 8-1.

While members of each bloc of justices banded together in most cases, the liberal justices more often stuck together overall. Of the 60 votes cast this term, the liberals voted as a unified group 80% of the time. The four most conservative justices voted together in 70% of cases.

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In Supreme Court Term, Liberals Stuck Together While Conservatives Appeared Fractured - NPR

It isnt really about Bari Weiss.

The mob inside The New York Times didnt target Weiss, an opinion editor and writer there since 2017, for cancellation to get her specifically though her smart writing and editing surely didnt endear her to some of the third-rate digital-media hacks and talentless millennials who enjoyed the pursuit of this journalistic star on the rise due to their loathsome envy.

As Weiss detailed in a widely read public resignation letter on Tuesday, she left her job after constant bullying by more left-wing colleagues (the vast majority) that included underhanded gossip, anti-Semitic innuendo and public attacks against her that would never have been tolerated had she been the one meting them out.

She also described an atmosphere of pervasive ideological intimidation and conformity that finally made commissioning diverse viewpoints and writing and thinking freely essential to opinion journalism all but impossible.

So Weiss left. But again, it wasnt ultimately about her. The mobs real targets are twofold.

First, the mob yearns to scare into submission everyone in a position of authority at the Times and any other liberal institution in America who might think it wise to hire someone like Bari Weiss someone who draws outside the ideological lines and brings a fresh perspective.

You can see how this works in the cowardice manifested by Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. As Weiss noted in her letter, Sulzberger praised her in private, even as he simultaneously failed to defend her in public from the threats and slanders of her own colleagues, both in internal communications and on Twitter. Such conduct marks the journalistic scion forevermore as less a man than a mouse.

Consider, too, that Weiss blistering resignation letter shows how Sulzberger and the Times leadership are likely guilty of several employment-related offenses, particularly in their refusal to intervene to end the hostile work environment in which she had found herself due at least in part to how she was being treated by colleagues as a member of a minority religion.

It should be said, right here, that Weiss, who is a friend of mine, is not a conservative. She calls herself a centrist, and as someone who has argued with her on matters of ideology, I can confirm this is an entirely fair description.

She is, however, versed in conservative thinking and argument and open to both. This is a thought-crime in woke circles.

Even more telling, she is a Zionist, a stout defender of Israel and someone willing to call out anti-Semitism on the left views that, in our garbage cultural and political movement, have become tragically unacceptable in many woke quarters.

She was targeted for holding these opinions and because she became well-known on TV and elsewhere for the eloquence with which she espouses them. Those who targeted her did so at her place of work and in public fora. And yet Sulzberger & Co. did not come to her defense or aid, even though their business was facing legal exposure, because it was safer for them to risk a Weiss lawsuit than to discipline those who had threatened her.

Why? Because they are more frightened of the mob. They are terrified of being subjected to the same treatment. Its that simple. Sulzberger let the wolves try to devour Weiss to save his own rich-boy hide. She refused to participate in her own sacrifice.

Which brings us to the mobs second object: The wokesters want to scare everyone who might emulate Bari Weiss in the future. And this, of course, is the real purpose of cancel culture. It is less about silencing the voice who is so annoying to the cancelers in the present and far more about silencing the perspective that voice represents in the future.

This goes far beyond The New York Times. It is an effort pervading every major cultural institution in America.

Against this generational menace, the milquetoast mandarins who run these places refuse to defend themselves, the principle of free expression or anything but the maintenance of their own jobs. Their surrender of all principle in pursuit of that lowly aim is a mark of just how morally, spiritually, politically, intellectually and practically decayed they and their organizations have become.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

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Woke wolves and the cowardly leaders of liberal America - New York Post