The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

After the election of Donald Trump, many leftists desperately sought to understand why people had not voted for their preferred candidate. It soon became clear that a nuanced discussion of the possibilities was to be rejected in favour of groundless assertions. For instance, cultural commentator Laurie Penny decided that Trump won because of ‘white resentment’ born of a frustration that ‘women, migrants and people of colour no longer seem to know their proper place’. When Trump voters express concern for ‘ordinary people’, Penny tells us, ‘they mean white people’. Few would be foolish enough to deny that there are many individuals whose politics are motivated by prejudice, but this kind of blanket assessment of such a broad contingent of the electorate is hardly a productive approach. Nor is this kind of airy postulation ever likely to be accurate. Whenever I read remarks of this kind, I am always struck by the sheer sense of certitude on display. This sort of rigidity is inevitable when critical thinking is abandoned. To close oneself off to the possibility of alternative opinions, and only to see the world through the lens of confirmation bias, is a form of intellectual death. It is always worth remembering the uncomfortable truth that, to borrow the words of novelist Philip Roth, ‘our understanding of people must always be at best slightly wrong’. We live, as George Orwell put it, in a state of ‘star-like isolation’. Empathy is our attempt to make connections against te...