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Hello fellow lurker. I used to be a leftist. Then the left changed. Now I consider myself a classical liberal.
I happen to agree with what you claim is the "Motte consensus", but I think most modern social justice "liberals" would agree, too.
Note that here the social justice position is the anti-meritocratic one.
People who believe they gained their position through meritocracy are less likely to be charitable to the less fortunate: Prompting people to attribute their success to skill or hard work lowers their willingness to share windfalls or support public goods.. As I read it, less likely to believe in a noblesse oblige. This is, to me, a classic symptom of American dysfunction: instead of thinking a la Henry Ford about the impacts of their greed on the less fortunate, the modern upper-class is happy to raise the rent on the rest of us until we can't pay anymore. (This is enabled by their ability to financialize, lobby, and snuff out actual market competition.)
I would submit that the modern left in academia also dislikes meritocracy, but because it sets up a heirarchy. Example 1, Example 2
On Individualism. The individualism/collectivist dichotomy is something that every society needs in moderation. Too much collectivism, and you get stuck in your current rut. Too much individualism, and you cannot solve collective action problems. Too much collectivism expresses itself as groupthink, stifling social pressure, following tyrants, and people voting for the "popular" candidate in elections. Too much individualism and you have a bunch of selfish psychopaths who are impossible to govern. To put this another way, collectivist meritocracy is why every Korean kid is pushed to go to the same colleges, but rampant individualism is why Russians and Americans cannot exit burning planes quickly, but Japanese can.
Anti-individualism. I would assert that both the left and the right in the US are currently anti-individualist. The social justice left is collectivist in that it sees people as representatives of their demographics and in that it will brook no dissent. The moderate left is collectivist in that it believes that children should go to public schools for their education. The moderate right is collectivist in that it embraces orthodox religious and moral norms, and the radical right shuns leftist-adjacent behaviors and has its own shibboleths.
But individualism is all highly relative. Any American plopped into Japan would struggle to maintain Japanese social norms, whether that individual be from the left or the right. There is a certain socialization and mindset that is inculcated in early schooling in more collectivist societies, and Americans don't get that in their kindergartens and elementary schools.
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