The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

by Jonathan Haidt

It is useful to have specialists within the domain of justice research who focus on this subset of injustices. Furthermore, when such injustices are pointed out, members of the majority group are often motivated to ignore or deny them.22 It is among the most important requirements of a democratic society that it provide a way for people and groups to make new claims about justice. An open democratic society considers such claims, debates them, and then acts on claims that combine compelling arguments with effective political pressure. If the outcome is new laws that are supported by widely shared new norms, as happened in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, that’s pretty much the definition of moral and social progress in a democracy.