“The more obsessed with personal identity campus liberals become, the less willing they become to engage in reasoned political debate. Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: 'Speaking… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“Democratic politics is about persuasion, not self-expression. I’m here, I’m queer will never provoke more than a pat on the head or a roll of the eyes. Accept that you will never agree with people on everything—that’s to be expected in a democracy. One effect of engaging in social movements tied to identity is that you’ve been surrounded by the… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The other component was to build cadres through political education. Republicans sought out wealthy donors to set up foundations and think tanks as safe spaces outside the university for elaborating the Republican catechism, a document that grew from a cocktail napkin to a vast library of popular books and academic policy studies. They set up summer camps where college students… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The romantic wants to create a world where he or she will possess a fully integrated, unconflicted identity—where the answers to the questions Who… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“How we react to the presidency of Donald Trump will be the first test of our preparedness. His administration in its infancy is already… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“The universities of our time instead cultivate students so obsessed with their personal identities and campus pseudo-politics that they have much less interest in,… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“The Republicans have successfully persuaded much of the public that they are the party of Joe Sixpack and Democrats are the party of Jessica Yogamat. The result is that today certain swaths of the country are so thoroughly dominated by the radical Republican right that certain federal laws and even constitutional protections are, practically speaking, a dead letter there. If… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Mary McCarthy, though, had it wrong when she wrote that “Madame Bovary is Don Quixote in skirts.” Emma’s suffering is Platonic: she searches, in all the wrong places and with all the wrong people, for an ideal that is only imagined. Until the end she believes that she will get the love and recognition she deserves. Quixote’s suffering is Christian.… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“You might have thought that, faced with a novel anti-political picture of the nation, liberals would have countered with an imaginative, hopeful vision of… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“The Stillborn God is not a fairy tale. It is a book about the fragility of our world, the world created by the intellectual… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“The forces at work in healthy party politics are centripetal; they encourage factions and interests to come together to work out common goals and… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“Martin Luther King Jr. was the greatest movement leader in American history. But, as Hillary Clinton once correctly pointed out, his efforts would have… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“Like any other political doctrine, liberalism makes assumptions about things human and divine, and these assumptions are, and ought to remain, open to disinterested… — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
