Against the New Politics of Identity: How the Left's Dogmas on Race and Equity Harm Liberal Democracy-and Invigorate Christian Nationalism

In Against the New Politics of Identity, philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay offers a sustained criticism of the far-reaching cultural transformation occurring across much of the West by which individuals are defined primarily by their group identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Driven largely by the political Left, this transformation has led to the wholesale grouping of individuals into oppressed and oppressor classes in both theory and practice. He warns that the push for identity politics on the Left predictably elicits a parallel reaction from the Right, including the Right's own version of identity politics in the form of Christian nationalism. As Lindsay makes clear, the symbiotic relationship that has formed between these two political poles risks producing even deeper threats to Enlightenment values and Western democracy. If we are to preserve a liberal democracy in which the rights of individuals are respected, he concludes, the dogmas of identity politics must be challenged and refuted. Against the New Politics of Identity offers a principled path for doing so.

About the Author :
Ronald A. Lindsay is former president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and of its affiliates, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University, with a concentration in bioethics, and a JD from the University of Virginia. He lives in Northern Virginia.

Review :
“'Speaking as a . . .' The silly idea that 'lived experience' trumps objective evidence is now epidemic in America. Known as standpoint theory or identitarianism, it is the target, in its various forms, of Ron Lindsay’s book. Lindsay knows a good nail when he sees it and he hits it on the head with the accuracy and force that comes from great clarity of thought. An excellent and regrettably necessary book, strongly recommended."—Richard Dawkins "Lindsay diagnoses the fevers inflaming our intellectual body politic. He skewers the nonsense that Left and Right take for conventional wisdom. He illuminates the principles of liberal democracy while identifying the dogmatic prejudices of its detractors." —David Kadue, author and legal scholar  "The ten-dollar ideas that the progressive left deploys in its war to re-engineer society are backed by little more than fallacious reasoning, flawed analysis, and illiberal ideology. (Think, e.g., 'standpoint theory,' 'epistemic X, Y, or Z,' 'intersectionality,' etc.) By exposing the fiat scholarship that increasingly threatens Western democracies, Ronald A. Lindsay offers us a treasure map for returning academia and society at large to a gold standard—one based on Enlightenment values and liberal principles." —Peter Boghossian, philosopher and author