Identity politics directly threatens the achievements of the Enlightenment, the Founding and the Civil Rights Movement, from freedom of speech to freedom of association and conscience. By partitioning America into ethnic, racial and sexual groups with antagonistic demands and grievances, Identity Politics returns us to the Plessy decision legalizing separate but supposedly equal treatment and it recalls the Dred Scott era of some Americans being less than citizens. But it actually takes further back, to the pre-Renaissance medieval idea that we are mere cogs inside the collectives into which we are born. Enough liberals and conservatives have now come to see this. The only question that remains is: Is there anything that can be done at this point? An ideologically diverse panel of intellectuals from across the country will help us sort out solutions.
