First, Boehm dispenses with the identitarians-both the ideologues on the right, who fight "in terms of traditional values," and those on the left, who fight "in the name of gender and race." The MAGA versus critical race theory death match is an easy foil, two sides of the same group-centric approach that is ill-suited for pluralistic society, let alone all of humanity. But if this was his only target, a reader weary of the culture war might just easily nod along. Boehm goes further, and takes aim at the 400-year-old tradition of Western liberalism, or what he calls "false universalism." Because he is trying to invoke a politics built on essential, everlasting truths, Boehm considers the marketplace of ideas almost as much of a cul de sac as the tribal alleys of identitarians. One of the legacies of the Enlightenment, he argues, is that moral obviousness was replaced by a culture of "consensus, interest, and opinion." We reason our way to a point of view, and argue and haggle with others toward some moral compromise. In practice, we usually end up balancing delicately on the knife's edge of the thinnest majoritarianism. This might sound like a reasonable place to end up, and even the best we can hope for-except when it works to mask injustice.
Is anything morally obvious anymore?
The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal truths. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0... By @galbeckerman.bsky.social #RadicalUniversalism
