Once false accusations of racism were laid on the table, college presidents folded and the game was lost. When this process started, decades ago, it was college administrators who shrank from defending academic freedom, free speech, individual merit, and the teaching of the civilizational tradition out of which these principles emerged. The calculus counsels surrender, whether individual or institutional reputation is at stake. Thus, woke dogma has gained acquiescence from students cowed by peer pressure, administrators who dread disruption and bad publicity, and now editors and corporate leaders who fear the same. Once a critical mass of accusers stand watch over the false charges they generate, silent and sullen acquiescence is the sensible response. It is not worth the cost of fighting back against promiscuous charges of racism, even - or especially - when accusations are expanded to cover intellectual traditions, institutions, or systems. For decades, the calculus has been the same. Yet any given person who gainsays false charges of racism risks being attacked as a racist himself. Neither the Constitution nor its underlying principles can reply to such accusations. This fear supplies the woke with a formidable strategy: expand accusations of racism and bigotry to cover any disfavored policy or principle, including even the very nature of our constitutional republic and the norms that support it. Because Americans dread being shamed for any betrayal of our core belief in individual merit or worth, we shrink from anything that might provoke such an accusation, whether the charge be true or not. Woke illiberalism rides on the power of liberal principle itself. The sword of the wokerati is the accusation of racism or bigotry. For every convert to the faith, one or two others are merely cowed into silence. Yet the legions of woke possess a strength which in time may become a weakness.
Meanwhile, the decline of religion has helped transform the new belief system into an alternative faith, lending tremendous energy to its acolytes. Once the recipients of this (mis)education reached critical mass, a direct challenge to core republican principles became viable. Those beliefs were inculcated full force during the college years and to an only somewhat lesser extent in K–12. That’s because a generation of America’s elite has been steadily imbued with an alternative set of beliefs. This transformation moved slowly at first, then took hold seemingly everywhere at once. The woke assault on core American principles such as freedom of speech and individual merit germinated in the 60s, matured in the American academy in the late 80s and 90s, achieved dominance on campus in the early decades of the millennium, then spread in just the past few years out of the quad and into the leading institutions of the country at large.
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