From the archive
Common Sense or Academic Theory: America's Modern Political Divide
Through a blend of political philosophy and cultural criticism, Alexander Zubatov incisively examines how the 2024 election revealed America's divide between those whose worldview is guided by the dictums of the educated elite, and those molded by their experiences living regular lives in community.
On November 3, 2024, two days before Election Day 2024, the prominent journalist and podcaster Megyn Kelly was called to the podium at a Trump rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In her cogent remarks that day, she shot back at the Harris campaign’s aggressive push for women to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris due to former President Donald Trump’s stance on the issue of abortion, while, at the same time, brushing back at the Left’s derision of President Trump’s claim that he will be a protector of women:
“He got mocked by the left for saying he would be a ‘protector of women.’ He will be a protector of women, and it is why I’m voting for him….
And ladies out there who want a bit of girl power in this election, let me tell you something. How can you win when the sons and the husbands and the brothers and the dads you love are losing? It’s not a win.
We care—young women and older—about the lives of our children, the safety of our children, and we need not get so obsessed with what happens when they’re in the womb that we forget about taking care of them once we’re here and they’re here and they’re loved.”
During her podcast eight days later, Kelly amplified the point, taking on the feminist left:
“I was open-minded. I was never a feminist…and then your absolute insanity radicalized me the other way: to stand up against you, to fight you with everything I have, because you’re destructive, and you’re deeply, deeply wrong, and my standing up for female empowerment, which I’ve done my entire life, does not require me to s—t all over American men. I knew what you leftists thought of feminism. It meant abortion and crapping on men, and most of us women over on the side of the normies don’t want that. We love our husband. We love our boys, our sons, our dads, our brothers, our male friends and colleagues, and we are not ready to consider this a zero-sum game where we must advance at their expense. Until you get that through your thick f—ing head, you’ll keep losing.”
At the root of the distinction Kelly was making between the narrow leftist version of “feminism” and the more expansive version of “female empowerment” is a more deep-seated contrast between the manner in which conservatives (not libertarians but conservatives) and progressives (not classical liberals but progressives) see the world.
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