If all truth-claims and justice-agendas are socially constructed to maintain power, then why aren’t the claims and agendas of the adherents of this view subject to the same critique? Why are the postmodern justice advocates’ claims that “This is oppression” unquestionably, morally right, while all other moral claims are mere social constructs? And if everyone is blinded by class-consciousness and social location, why aren’t they?This is, by the way, a difficulty that afflicts just about every non-theistic (or naturalistic) account of justice and morality in one way or another. In the absence of God there's no basis whatsoever for objective morality and thus no ground for saying that we ought to treat our fellow man fairly or respectfully. Every moral claim uttered by naturalists, postmodern or otherwise, is nothing more than an expression of his or her emotional state. It's simply a verbalization of their feelings.
Intersectionality claims oppressed people see things clearly—but why would they if social forces make us wholly what we are and control how we understand reality? Are they less formed by social forces than others?
And if all people with power—who “call the shots” socially, culturally, economically, and control public discourse—inevitably use it for domination, then if any revolutionaries were able to replace the oppressors at the top of the society, why would they not become people that should subsequently be rebelled against and replaced themselves? What would make them different?
The postmodern account of justice has no good answers for these questions. You cannot insist that all morality is culturally constructed and relative and then claim that your moral claims are not.
Thus, if naturalism is correct, there's no compelling reason why anyone should listen to, much less give credit to, anyone else's moral pronouncements.
Many of the critical theorists in academia reject logic and rationality as a patriarchal manifestation of white privilege. Yet, their own claims cannot avoid relying on logic and rationality. They can't get away from it, and it's a peculiarity of critical theory that its advocates must employ reason in their attempt to debunk reason.
It's also ironic that they fancy themselves to be sophisticated intellectuals, but their repudiation of reason is in fact the signature characteristic of the barbarous anti-intellectual.
Keller's next criticism (which is actually the last of his seven) is that,
This theory sees liberal values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion—as mere ways to oppress people. Often this view puts these “freedoms” in scare quotes. As a result, adherents of this theory resort to constant expressions of anger and outrage to silence critics, as well as to censorship and other kinds of social, economic, and legal pressure to marginalize opposing views.This is precisely how totalitarians always see themselves. If only they could be given total control over what Kant called the "crooked timber" of human nature they'd be able to end all inequality and oppression. That's how they start out, but they almost invariably wind up as mass murderers. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Jung Un and many lesser thugs and butchers sought to establish economic justice and all ended up murdering thousands and millions.
The postmodern view sees all injustice as happening on a human level and so demonizes human beings rather than recognizing the evil forces–“the world, the flesh, and the devil”–at work through all human life, including your own.
Adherents of this view also end up being utopian — they see themselves as saviors....
Like the mythological inn-keeper Procrustes, they found that the limbs of human nature had to be bent and severed to make them fit into the bed of their Marxist vision.
Tragically, their epigones in Antifa, Black Lives Matter and university faculty rooms, those who embrace critical theory, are cut from the same amoral cloth, and, if given the power, many of them would doubtless commit the same atrocities.
