Reclaiming Civil Society: From Voluntary Servitude to ‘Parallel Polis’ | RealClearPolitics
The analogy to our current situation is inexact since our despotism comes largely, if not exclusively, from forces within civil society (and with the angry Twitter mobs as their sans-culottes). But the rise of Substack as a source of independent journalism and intellectual resistance by leading voices on the right, center, and independent left provides an imitable model of how to outmaneuver the forces of repression. (An honest, courageous, and independent liberal such as Bari Weiss is helping to show the way.) New universities and classical schools are no doubt needed since accreditation agencies at every level are committed to locking in the culture of repudiation and the new religion of diversity and inclusion (misnamed equity ) in perpetuity. Groups like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, under the energetic leadership of Johnny Burtka, now rightly see their role as providing the education in citizenship, statesmanship, classical political economy, and the Western classics that are now more or less crowded out of mainstream institutions of higher learning. Hillsdale College provides a practicable model, as does its Barney Charter School Initiative, which helps create and support independent classical academies. And the admirable efforts of Heterodox Academy, founded by the politically unclassifiable psychologist Jonathan Haidt in 2015 to defend the place of viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning, are more important than ever.
The advocates and practitioners of the parallel polis that I propose must be adroit since the forces of negation and cancellation will do what they can to thwart, discredit, and abolish these new and necessary initiatives and institutions. If the cancelers succeed in stamping down one such effort, new efforts must immediately begin in its place. Those of us committed to escaping and overcoming the new totalitarianism must also self-consciously define the new institutions as ones that in principle refuse woke, politically correct, or ideological self-definition. We must bear in mind Robert Conquest s law: Institutions that are not explicitly non-progressive or anti-ideological will become leftist and ideological in due course.
Our goal should be to build a vibrant civil society open to true debate and disputation. This parallel polis will show a path forward for all Americans left, right, and center who want to live and breathe freely. The path of anti-woke resistance is open to all patriots and independent thinkers who refuse voluntary subjugation.
Sounds like a good idea.