2. A few footnotes. As Bouie notes, the recent advocates of the Enlightenment are conservatives & centrists (Pinker, Goldbeg, Jordan Peterson) creating a usable past. It's worth noting how badly their own commitments fit their fictional intellectual history.
These people aren't just saying they support Enlightenment values but also that those values are purely good (i.e. David Brooks crediting Locke as father of "human equality, pluralism, democracy"
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Conversations like this breed bad faith and make us treat each other like fools. I should not need to point out to you the MANY statements in Locke that support such a notion, and it is THAT that modern pro-enlightenment people stand up for. This is all bad faith pedantry.
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I just don't think it's good history to speak of Locke as father of "human equality" without acknowledging the many contractions. Nor would I speak of, say, Democratic Party of Woodrow Wilson without acknowledging racism, authoritarianism, etc.
End of conversation
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