{"id":420939,"date":"2021-04-14T10:28:36","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T14:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=420939"},"modified":"2021-04-14T10:28:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T14:28:39","slug":"shapiro-the-fight-over-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-the-fight-over-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"SHAPIRO: The Fight Over Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fshapiro-the-fight-over-identity%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=420939&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1829.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>America has been wrecked on the shoals of identity.<\/p>\n<p>Identity politics has been characterized casually as a form of tribalism: Americans grouping themselves according to biological or sexual characteristics, in opposition to other groups associated by biological or sexual characteristics. There is certainly truth to the idea that such tribalism has damaged America in extraordinary ways \u2014 that tribalism acts as the sort of factionalism the Founding Fathers feared, tearing Americans from one another and forcing them into polarized units to compete against others in a battle over control.<\/p>\n<p>But there is another form of identity politics even more sinister than the sort of tribalism we see so openly today, a form that focuses less on politics than on identity: the redefinition of identity itself.<\/p>\n<p>For thousands of years, human beings established their identities by learning how to adapt to the systems in which they lived, gradually changing those systems for the better after determining the flaws within them. This is how parents traditionally&nbsp;<i>civilized&nbsp;<\/i>children \u2014 by adapting them to their civilization.<\/p>\n<p>But as Carl Trueman explains in his masterful book \u201cThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,\u201d the post-Enlightenment era tore away at the core assumption of such notions of identity. Instead of adapting ourselves to the institutions around us and forming our identity within those institutions, human beings in the West began to locate their identity&nbsp;<i>within&nbsp;<\/i>\u2014 to look to their own sense of authenticity as the guide to fulfillment. In this view, identity was not formed in tandem with civilization but in opposition to it. Only by rebelling against the strictures of a surrounding society, by breaking free of convention, could individuals finally achieve fulfillment.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, fulfillment would require not merely an interior sense of identity but a sense of identity cheered and celebrated by everyone else. After all, human beings still feel the need for acceptance. To reject someone else\u2019s authentic sense of self-identification, therefore, becomes an act of emotional violence.<\/p>\n<p>We have now taken this view to its logical endpoint: total subjectivism, requiring the destruction of any and all conflicting viewpoints or data. Take, for example, a recent New York Times piece applauding the rise of so-called neopronouns. With the explosion of new subjective identities \u2014 and the demand that others endorse them \u2014 has come a wave of new pronouns. We are no longer talking about biological males demanding that others identify them as \u201cshe\/her\u201d in contravention of all available objective science. We are talking about people insisting that others call them \u201ckitten\/kittenself\u201d or \u201cvamp\/vampself.\u201d Now, some might find this to be frivolous nonsense disconnected from any true sense of identity. But as The New York Times blithely notes, \u201cwhat\u2019s the difference between an aesthetic and an identity anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is saying the quiet part out loud. For decades, those who insist that identity is constructed in opposition to society\u2019s rules \u2014 rules that must be eliminated in order to achieve human flourishing \u2014 have suggested that authentic identity is more than mere aesthetics. But now The Times has given away the show: When you construct identity as a tabula rasa, seeing all history and science as obstacles to happiness, identity quickly flattens into aesthetics. And we are all expected to agree with your sense of aesthetics. (Unless, as The Times notes, you identify as \u201cBLM\u201d or other terms related to Black Lives Matter. In that case, you are encroaching on longstanding areas of sensitivity and must atone.)<\/p>\n<p>When identity becomes pure aesthetics, society completely atomizes. No free society can be rooted in utter subjectivity \u2014 someone must enforce silence from the top, bar dissenters and punish those who insist on objective data. And that\u2019s precisely what we are seeing from an authoritarian left: an authoritarian left that arrived with the promise of fulfillment and authenticity and has instead delivered emptiness and aesthetic pretension, enforced by institutional fiat.<\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America has been wrecked on the shoals of identity.Identity politics has been characterized casually as a form of tribalism: Americans grouping themselves according to biological or sexual characteristics, in opposition &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2312156,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1829.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"SHAPIRO: The Fight Over Identity","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1829.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"SHAPIRO: The Fight Over Identity","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2312156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}