Liberal Fragility

[Valin]

Power Line

Steven Hayward

February 29, 2024

Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.”

The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved to tears and can’t conceive of continuing. The New York Times thinks this is actually “a crisis.”

Seriously, you can’t make this up:

Rebecca Brown, at the University of Southern California, has been teaching constitutional law for 35 years. “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told me. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”

I’m skeptical that she “literally” burst into tears, though I expect she literally misused the word “literally” here. In any case, shouldn’t the phrase, “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense?” have been applied to Wickard v. Filburn ever since it was put to paper in 1942? And yet somehow the few conservative law professors that existed behind enemy lines in law schools managed for 80 years now to explain Wickard (and dozens of other ridiculous liberal Court rulings) with a straight face and without bursting into tears, or having anxiety attacks.

The Times inadvertently gives away what’s really going on here (beyond general liberal fragility):

(Snip)

It gets worse:

“We’re witnessing a transformation in the New Deal consensus,” said Mark Graber, a leading constitutional scholar and Regents professor at the University of Maryland.

Oh please, don’t get my hopes up like this!

(Snip)