Recently, Peter Beinart took to the pages of the Atlantic to make a confession. Beinart confessed that he -- yes he -- had benefited from affirmative action. The New Republic, he claimed, had a policy of favoring well-educated white men from ivy league schools.

“I considered myself qualified. Because I’d spent years mimicking TNR’s writing style, I had the right sort of clips. But as a white man graduating from an Ivy League school, I also had the right sort of identity. It was difficult to disentangle the two. And I didn’t really try.”

“I didn’t try because the magazine afforded me extraordinary opportunity. Soon, I was not only working alongside people I revered, I was being given the chance to ascend to their level. Asking how much of their success was due to race, gender, and class -- as opposed to merit -- would have meant asking the same of myself.”

Evaluating writing and writers is inherently subjective, as E.B White wrote, “Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?” While it’s possible Beinart benefited from being white and male, it’s clear that the New Republic was a much more widely read and better regarded publication when he worked there. Further, a large number of the writers hired by Peretz achieved tremendous professional success after leaving TNR, including Beinart himself.

While the evaluation of writing is inherently subjective, the evaluation of college applicants and civil servants is much less so. Yet “diversity” advocates strenuously oppose the most objective measure we have, standardized tests. Diversity advocates want to make applying to college more like applying to work at the New Republic, replacing grades and SATs with college essays and “holistic” admissions.

Beinart also confuses editorial slant with discrimination, writing “The absence of women and people of color in senior editorial jobs was intertwined with the magazine’s long-standing, jaundiced view of the African American and feminist left. Had I challenged that culture more emphatically, I would probably not have become editor in the first place.”

Under Marty Peretz, the New Republic tended to hire centrist Democrats instead of people on the hard left. They also didn’t hire many gun-rights supporters, abortion opponents, or religious conservatives. This reflected TNR’s editorial stance; conflating a publication’s editorial stance with discrimination is asinine.

During the Peretz era, the New Republic co-existed with a large number of publications further to their left, such as the Nation. Progressive democrats who opposed welfare reform, supported affirmative action, or hated Clintonian centrism, had a multitude of outlets to publish in.

In the post Peretz-era, it has become impossible for anyone on the left to take a nuanced position on any issue touching on race or gender. Progressive Democrat James Webb was pilloried for questioning the scope of contemporary affirmative action, and Jeralyn Merritt was savaged for her fact-based defense of the Zimmerman verdict.

Left-wing publications supportive of feminism and progressive approaches to race have always existed. However, in the post Peretz-era heterodox views on race and gender have been completely silenced in liberal circles, leaving the most doctrinaire and politically correct in charge of the discussion.

Beinart’s virtue signaling would have been incomplete without reference to the “misconduct” scandal engulfing former TNR employee Leon Wieseltier. Following allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior at TNR, Wieseltier has been fired from his most recent job as editor of a forthcoming online magazine.

Several women came forward to allege that Wieseltier made them uncomfortable with his sexual banter, and flirtation. They also accused Wieseltier of occasionally going in for an unwanted kiss, while socializing after work. More cynical readers will wonder whether, like a stripper carrying thirty extra pounds of lard, Wieseltier’s real sin was being unsexy.

Still, Beinart can’t resist kicking the old boy while he’s down, relating a story of how he staged an intervention after Leon tried to smooch one of his co-workers after a night of drinking. Beinart writes, “The magazine had no sexual-harassment procedures. So I called Marty -- who spent most of his time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York -- and asked him to come to Washington to tell Leon that his behavior was unacceptable.”

“Marty, Leon, and I met at the Willard Hotel. When I confronted him, Leon -- who had a gift for intimidation -- reacted ferociously. ‘Is this some kind of intervention?’ he roared. Marty didn’t push back. That was it. Leon never admitted to having done anything wrong, and he received no punishment. Sarah, having incurred Leon’s wrath, felt isolated at the magazine and left.”

Beinart describes a conversation many of us have had to have, or perhaps someone had to have with us. Occasionally, one has to tell a friend, “she’s just not that into you.” How the recipient handles the unwelcome news ought to define our judgment of them. Do they accept the bad news like a big boy or big girl, or do they keep pestering the object of their desire?

According to Sarah Wildman, Leon did not pursue her further, or retaliate against her for reporting the incident. He accepted her rejection and moved on. Beinart uses this incident as an example of how women were denied opportunity at the New Republic, writing, “What I do know is that the affirmative action I enjoyed, and the sexual harassment Sarah suffered, were connected. I was given extraordinary opportunity at TNR, in large measure, because talented women like Sarah Wildman were not.”

That’s a stretch.

Beinart concludes that he, as the former editor of the New Republic and contributing editor to the Atlantic, has much in common with angry white male Trump supporters.

“In this regard, I suspect, I have something in common with the supporters of Donald Trump. It’s not pleasant to realize that the bygone age you romanticize -- the age when America was still great -- was great for you, or people like you, because others were denied a fair shot. In the America of the 1950s, or even the 1980s, white, straight, native-born American men didn’t worry as much about competing with Salvadoran immigrants and Chinese factory workers and professional women and Joshua-generation African Americans.”

Here, Beinart takes a divergent collection of issues and reduces them to a single factor: white male resentment. Trade, immigration, affirmative action, sexual harassment, all reduced to white male whining. Never mind that, for example, African Americans may be one of the groups most hurt by mass immigration.

It’s probably true that white working-class Trump voters are motivated by the type of economic and cultural fears Beinart cites. However, that doesn’t make their views on trade, immigration, sexual harassment, or affirmative action wrong. Beinart commits a basic ad-hominem fallacy, holding that Trumpers are wrong by virtue of being white and male.

Gay intellectuals coined the term the “performative masculinity” to describe the pressured conformance to norms of masculinity. Beinart’s writing inspired this author to coin his own term, the “performativity of woke-ness.” Beinart’s column is a fifteen-hundred word virtue signal, letting the reader know that he Peter Beinart is down with the cause despite being stale, pale, and male.