An old line is that revolutions devour their children, but apparently they’re equally unkind to their elders.
Ruy Teixeira
spent many years at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive Washington think tank that provides much of the agenda for Democrats. Now he’s joining the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “I’m just a social democrat, man,” Mr. Teixeira told Politico. “Trying to make the world a better place.”
Ruy Teixeira
Photo:
Courtesy of Center for American Progress
At age 70, he hasn’t changed his views on the importance of economic class. Yet he said CAP is being warped by a junior staff for whom identity politics is everything. “It’s become very hard to have a conversation about race and gender and trans issues, even crime and immigration,” Mr. Teixeira said. “You know, ‘How should the left handle these?’ There’s a default assumption about how you’re supposed to talk about these things, even the language. There’s a real chilling effect on all of these organizations.”
He’s exhausted by internal staff politicking. “It’s just cloud cuckoo land,” Mr. Teixeira said. “The fact that nobody is willing to call b—, it just freaks me out.” He’s also frustrated by the lack of support he received for a project that aimed to unite the black and white working classes. “Nobody wanted to touch it,” he said. “You could tell. People were leery of talking about the white working class, as if it was de facto racist.”
Wow, and you thought your office had issues. Last month the Intercept ran a story about similar woke meltdowns inside groups like the Sierra Club and the Guttmacher Institute.
“A lot of staff that work for me, they expect the organization to be all the things: a movement, OK, get out the vote, OK, healing, OK, take care of you when you’re sick, OK,” complained an anonymous executive director. “Can you get your love and healing at home, please? But I can’t say that, they would crucify me.”
These are signs of political and cultural sickness. How do lefty outfits expect to achieve anything if they spend their time trying to decolonize their own HR handbooks? Sorry, the Guttmacher Institute isn’t your mommy.
Conversely, it’s a sign of conservative vigor that AEI is granting Mr. Teixeira political asylum. “I like taking chances,” AEI’s president,
Robert Doar,
told Politico. “I want interesting stuff produced by scholars.” Shibboleths are the opposite of interesting.
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Appeared in the July 16, 2022, print edition.
