No doubt the so-called "second wave" feminist movement that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s and later also contributed to the white backlash against Hillary.
No doubt certain Protestant and Catholic anti-abortion zealots, including both white men and white women, contributed to Trump's victories in certain crucial battleground states. The Supreme Court's 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade is still a hot button issue. Like certain other Republican presidential candidates in the past, Trump made big-sounding statements against legalized abortion. For her part, Hillary strongly endorsed legalized abortion. But both Lilla and Douthat are silent about legalized abortion.
In the 2007 book Render unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade against Science, James H. Fetzer uses deontological moral theory (derived from Kant) to articulate a reasonable philosophical position for allowing legalized abortion in the first trimester (pages 95-120). Nevertheless, I do not expect to see legalized abortion in the first trimester cease to be a hot-button issue in the near future.
In any event, I would also point out that the diversity groups enumerated by Douthat are imagined by diversity champions as somehow being outsiders. Now, certain French existentialists in the 1940s helped establish the vogue for outsiders. So the vogue for outsiders was further advanced by the black civil rights movement and the feminist movement.
My favorite scholar, the white male American Jesuit polymath wrote perceptively about the existentialists' interest in outsiders in his essay "The Barbarian Within: Outsiders Inside Society Today" in his book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, 1962, pages 260-285). In that essay, Ong works with the Greek/barbarian contrast from ancient Greek culture. Of course our political-correctness police today would object to his characterization of outsiders as barbarians, and they might also object to his characterization of Greeks.
More recently, Grace Elizabeth Hale has published the book A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2011). Evidently, many white middle-class men and women in certain crucial battleground states also fell in love with Trump's rebellion against the spirit of "political correctness" and "identity politics."
So what, if anything, is wrong with the spirit of "identity politics" that both Lilla and Douthat criticize?
In the 2016 book Essays on Ethics, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the recipient of the 2016 Templeton Prize, refers to "ill-thought-out multiculturalism" (page xxxiv). I agree with him that the "identity politics" grows out of an ill-thought-out multiculturalism. But he does not proceed to undertake to delineate the contours of a well-thought-out multiculturalism. Nor am I going to undertake this much needed project in the present essay. Nevertheless, I think that our contemporary multiculturalism needs to evolve.
As to stating what's wrong with "identity politics" as politics, I tend to prefer the admittedly non-catchy terms of non-materialist concerns and post-materialist concerns that Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson use in their book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon & Schuster, 2010). On November 26, 2010, I published my review of Hacker and Pierson's book at OEN:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Will-Winner-Take-All-by-Thomas-Farrell-10112010-495.html
Trump's successes in certain crucial battleground states can be attributed in large part to materialist economic concerns of many Trump voters, as well as their moral concerns about legalized abortion. Of course it now remains to be seen if Trump can deliver on the economic concerns for those voters and on his big-sounding statements against legalized abortion.
If we allow that Hacker and Pierson's terminology about "non-materialist" and "post-materialist" concerns might also be described as metaphysical, then we should give credit where credit is due to Douthat for noting that "identity politics" "privileges the metaphysical over the material."
In contrast to Trump, Hillary publicized her support for legalized abortion, as noted above, but made no big-sounding statements about the economy. As a result, the Democratic Party now needs to undertake rebuilding itself as a political party with an economic message for Americans, including white men.
Overall, the 2016 presidential campaign was not a contest between Trump's big-sounding campaign statements versus Hillary's, because she characteristically did not make very many big-sounding campaign statements. As a matter of fact, she did not make very many aspirational or inspirational campaign statements.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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