This pithy essay makes three outstanding contributions to our contemporary dialogue around race and racism. First, it characterizes the body of dogma, anti-empiricism, illogic and moral imperative that form “Third Wave Antiracism” as essentially religious in nature.

Reasonable people will disagree about the utility of arguing with people of faith about their beliefs. Mr. McWhorter considers it futile, but the example he cites (“Of a hundred fundamentalist Christians, how many do you suppose could be convinced via argument to become atheists?”) reveals how little respect for or understanding he has of religious believers. One might just as well ask: Of a hundred fundamentalist Christians today, how many will still be fundamentalist Christians ten years from now? People are very complex; we should be cautious in our claims about the immutability of their beliefs.

But all of that said, McWhorter’s insight maps out the essential nature of the problem. That insight is indispensable if we are to shield vulnerable people from the dehumanizing effect of this shallow new zealotry. We are no longer addressing falsifiable claims about the world. We are up against something deeper, more powerful and far more dangerous: the moral certainty of a new religion. Our ability to effectively counter the illiberal and totalistic nature of the movement, at this late moment, depends on seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. I have not seen anyone make this case as plainly and as persuasively as Mr. McWhorter does here.

The second enormous contribution the author makes to the conversation is to recommend that we refer to the leaders and acolytes of this new religion as “The Elect” (a term he attributes to Joseph Bottum). It’s so brilliant, so precisely calibrated in it’s subversive mockery. It cuts to the chase. It gets at the essence of the thing. It lays out the actual choice a person is being offered when she tries to parse the illogical or absurd jargon of the proselytizers: agree, and you join The Elect for all to see and know. A tent house preacher could not make it clearer.

And that brings me to the third indispensable facet of John McWhorter’s essay: the new religion arrives “in the guise of world progress.” Students of comparative religion know that they all arrive in the guise of world progress, but that doesn’t diminish the critical importance of McWhorter’s observation. Why? Because the promise of heaven is the sticky paste which binds and conceals the self-contradictory pieces of a religion - new or old - into a form that enables intelligent, decent, thoughtful people to see, say and believe lies and absurdities.

The belief in a better world to come justifies cruelty, hatred and bigotry. Here the zealot has logic on his side: if fill-in-the-blank (“the bourgeoisie”, “Kulaks”, “Jews”, “anti-revolutionaries”, “whiteness”, “The Four Olds”, “infidels”, “the rich”, “the defective” - humans are endlessly creative here) then their elimination or suppression is a positive good. Any failure to act zealously and accordingly sets heaven itself back. And so ordinary people, McWhorter’s “friendly school principals, people who work quietly in publishing, lawyer pals. Heavy readers, good cooks, musicians” find themselves slowly turned into the kind of people who will casually contribute to the destruction of strangers’ lives (“I Like” that horrifying and unfair and unforgiving social media post) without even seeing it happen.

Is the best defense skillful and competent argumentation? For people who can write like John McWhorter or Andrew Sullivan or Coleman Hughes or Thomas Sowell - sure. The rest of us can remember McWhorter’s essay, try our best to see the world as clearly and forthrightly as we can, and never, ever agree to say that manifestly false things are true. We must hang tightly to the freedom which let’s us claim that two plus two equals four, and never more so than now.