Noah Rothman on the "unjustice" of social justice politics

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2019

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I'm Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism and the GOP. For the last three years or so, there has been an ongoing discussion among conservatives about identity politics and what many view as the corrosive use of identity politics in the pursuit of "social justice." As they argue, "social justice warriors" are using so-called "identity politics" -- debates around race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity -- as cudgels, often against the Right. In general, to put it mildly, I disagree. Which is why I invited Noah Rothman, an editor at Commentary magazine, an MSNBC contributor, and more relatedly, author of "Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America," released on January 29th, to join me in a discussion on this very topic. We discussed how identity politics are in no way new, and are inherent to our politics, and we talked about his view on where "social justice" went wrong. The conversation was contentious, but hopefully, productive. As you may have noticed, I am not Ezra Klein. Ezra is away on paternity leave (congratulations, Ezra!) and will return in a few weeks. Book recommendations: The Victims' Revolution by Bruce Bawer Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:52.0	Sweet tarts dare to combine.
1:07.0	Hello, WalkMills a Klein show on the Vox Media podcast network.
1:10.0	I have had a week. I have had a week.
1:15.0	Something I've not talked at all about on the show is my wife and I have been pregnant.
1:20.0	I haven't talked about it because it was just too personal.
1:23.0	I didn't want to jinx anything or say anything. I don't know. It was too much. It's all been too much.
1:31.0	But I had a whole set of ideas for how the show would go when we had our baby.
1:34.0	I was going to save up a bunch of episodes and get gas hosts to do a bunch of episodes. It was all going to be really smooth.
1:41.0	We had our baby six weeks early. We had a bunch of health complications.
1:44.0	That 24 hours, 36 hours was the scariest hours of my entire life.
1:50.0	I've never been through anything like that.
1:53.0	Thank God my wife is healthy and our baby is amazing.
2:01.0	Everything people say about what an overwhelming experience it is is true.
2:05.0	I bring up some of this for two reasons. One is that it was such a comfort to me to read the stories of parents
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