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by Michael Shellenberger

For most of the post-war period, liberalism in the United States was defined around freedom of speech, the needs of the working class, and the fight against racism and sexism. It was liberals who defended the right to burn the American flag, and of neo-Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. It was liberals who fought against corporate power and for the rights of working people. And it was liberals who fought to end racial segregation and to protect girls and women, including in sports.

All of that has changed. Today, it is conservatives who are fighting the racial re-segregation of classrooms and workforces by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) administrators in thrall to Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is conservatives who are defending the right to freedom of expression online from progressives demanding greater censorship by Big Tech and the government. And it is conservatives who are defending the rights of girls and women to female-only spaces and sports from natal males.

The reversal of liberal and conservative positions is not total. More liberals than conservatives favor the right of same-sex couples to wed and the federal right to abortion. More liberals than conservatives favor labor unions and the minimum wage. And more liberals than conservatives favor entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

But the importance of those issues has declined. Republicans have largely given up trying to end same-sex marriage, and abortion policy is now up to the states. Just 10% of Americans are in a union, and the percentage has steadily declined, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, for decades. And there has been no significant effort by Republicans to modify Social Security and Medicare ever since Donald Trump pledged to support both.

As a result, conservatives find themselves in the paradoxical position of defending traditional liberal values like free speech and racial equality from progressives. Indeed, the person described by the Left and Right alike as “the most effective conservative activist in America,” Chris Rufo, has done more to roll back CRT-DEI-motivated racial segregation, over the last three years, than any progressive. And over the last year and a half, Rufo, a Senior Fellow at the center-Right Manhattan Institute, has turned his formidable investigative powers to fighting gender ideology.

Why is that? Why did a conservative, rather than a liberal, do more than any other individual in America to defend traditional liberal policies and values? To answer that question, I interviewed Rufo last week about his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, and his policy advocacy, which includes advising Republican presidential candidate, and Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis.