Put Down the Woke Man’s Burden
- sofiapbaker
- Aug 24, 2022
- 1 min read
I was profiled recently in the Wall Street Journal, which was an interesting experience for a mild-mannered, retiring professor. It illustrated for me how things I’ve written about the Renaissance get filtered through current political passions. Quidquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis, as Aquinas used to say: People receive what they are prepared to receive. (I knew enough not to read the comments section. It’s not good for faith, hope, or charity. Or sleep.)
Anyway, I was grateful to the WSJ writer, Barton Swaim, for taking an interest in my 2019 book, Virtue Politics. For a non-historian coming to the subject for the first time, he did a creditable job of making sense of the book. He took my argument seriously and placed me firmly on the side of the angels. But I couldn’t help concluding that WSJ readers would come away thinking that what I was recommending, political meritocracy, was a bit naïve or utopian…