"What matters, both conservatives and liberals agree, is not the end result, but the liberal democratic, open-ended means."

"That shift — from specifying a single end to insisting only on playing by the rules — is the key origin of modern freedom. My central problem with critical theory is that it takes precise aim at these very core principles and rejects them. By rejecting them, in the otherwise noble cause of helping the marginalized, it is a very seductive and potent threat to liberal civilization.... The West’s idea of individual freedom — the very foundation of the American experiment — is, in their view, a way merely to ensure the permanent slavery of the non-white.... Our world is just a set of interlocking forms of oppressive structures, and has been since the West’s emergence.... When it began, critical theory was one school of thought among many. But the logic of it — it denies the core liberal premises of all the other schools and renders them all forms of oppression — means that it cannot long tolerate those other schools. It must always attack them. Critical theory is therefore always the cuckoo in the academic nest. Over time, it throws out its competitors — and not in open free debate. It does so by ending that debate, by insisting that the liberal 'reasonable person' standard of debate is, in fact, rigged in favor of the oppressors, that speech is a form of harm, even violent harm, rather than a way to seek the truth.... This debate is not about whether you are a racist or an antiracist. The debate is about whether, in your deepest heart and soul, you are a liberal or an anti-liberal."

From "Removing The Bedrock Of Liberalism/What the 'Critical Race Theory' debate is really about" by Andrew Sullivan (Substack).