Against Inclusiveness by James Kalb
Diversity. Inclusiveness. Equality.—ubiquitous words in 21st-century American political and social life. But how do those who police the limits of acceptable discourse employ these as verbal weapons to browbeat their often hapless fellows into having a “real conversation”? How do these terms function as mere doublespeak for the expectation of full-scale capitulation to the views of “right-thinking people”? Many have for far too long been afraid to touch the issues that attend these words, and have grown increasingly troubled on some level by their intellectual and moral cowardice in failing to do so. Such otherwise serious thinkers should therefore take great reassurance in an articulate statement of the kind presented in Against Inclusiveness, where the author’s approach is sober and extremely well reasoned, as he attempts to marshal truth and fairness as criteria in the examination of issues critical to modern social life.
Kalb argues that current inclusiveness ideology proceeds from the abolition of transcendent, essential forms, and natural social functions—so that “classifying people” becomes an exercise of power by the classifier that denies the dignity of the person classified. All rational consideration of human reality is thereby suspended, and the result is something arbitrary and increasingly tyrannical. Against Inclusiveness lays the foundation for what an honest, forthright, real conversation on these matters might look like.
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Praise for Against Inclusiveness
“This critique is simply unsurpassed.”—Paul Gottfried
“James Kalb’s analysis is both profound and commonsensical, and brings clarity and insight to an area fraught with fear and falsehood.”—Carol Iannone
“Jim Kalb once again drills to the bedrock of the radically centrifugal liberal ideology that has devastated our society’s institutions, its culture, its conceptions of normality, and its traditional patterns of social life.”—Robert Jackall
About the Author
James Kalb comes by his interest in political theory naturally, through politically active parents and degrees in mathematics and law (Dartmouth B.A., Yale J.D.). His parents showed him the importance of participation, mathematics showed him the importance of how principles are stated, and law taught him to study decisions to find the principles behind them. His writing explores the nature of liberal political society—what it is, what is wrong with it, why it seems so incontestable, what to do about it.
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