Who does not want to be a good person? Certainly, very few of us. Perhaps some sociopaths on the fringe don’t care, but the rest of us—including the overwhelming number of both liberals and conservatives—count ourselves among the good guys.
This has created an existential crisis for those on the left. The better that Donald Trump does, the more this disconfirms their cherished beliefs. It puts them in the unenviable position of defending policies that have negative consequences, while simultaneously attacking those that help people.
The fact is the liberalism is dying. (See my book Post-Liberalism.) Over the last several decades most of its initiatives have had disappointing results. Whether in the economy, education, crime, race relations, family stability, or health, its central prescriptions have failed miserably.
But liberals cannot admit this. To do so would endanger their self-image as compassionate intellectuals. As a result, they do more than engage in denial. They double down on their failures and drift to ever more extreme positions.
Let me explain. Many of our moral beliefs are tied to our ideological commitments. Both our religious and political convictions help us identify what is good as opposed to bad. These creeds essentially supply us with a moral compass. They therefore provide the foundation for our world-views—including our own moral worth.
The point is that the moral worth of liberals is under attack. They know better than anyone that their exalted view of themselves is in jeopardy. This can be very disorienting. It leaves them without a strategy for deciding how best to conduct themselves.
And so there is a violent counter-reaction. First of all they deny that anything is wrong. They have plainly made no mistakes. It is those other guys—the bad guys, the conservatives—who are responsible for every problem to which flesh is heir. The monster in chief, of course, is Donald Trump.
Next comes tripling down on programs that have been tried and found wanting. A case in point is ObamaCare. It did not improve the nation’s health or lower costs, so lets nationalize the system entirely. Why not install an extravagantly expensive MediCare for everyone?
Or how about college for everyone? We have already lowered the standards of higher education, so why not send them to the sub-basement by making school free to all? Young voters love this, and hey, won’t this be a giant step toward universal equality.
This inclination toward obsolete solutions is not just a matter of intensified advocacy of long held policies; it also entails pushing them to extremes. Liberals have long accused conservatives of being extremists, but the veil has fallen. In order to promote their ideals, they have had to reveal their immoderate parameters.
The new-found legitimacy of socialism is a prime example. Once liberals eschewed this label like the plague. They knew that it exposed their innermost connections with communism. Now they don’t care that neither of these “isms” have worked anytime, anywhere. They don’t even care about their sorry record of atrocities.
The latest wrinkle in this march to pseudo-idealized extremism is the campaign to close down ICE. Despite periodic denials that Democrats want open borders, it has become obvious they do. After all, without enforcement agents how do you have a border?
One other indicator of how panicked liberals are is the escalation in incivility. Their language was always coarser than conservatives, but now it has jumped the rails. The same goes for approving of assaults on opposition politicos. In the past, this was avoided because it was understood that this sort of nihilism was detrimental to democratic practices.
Let’s put this in perspective. Never before have we seen the liberal media so relentlessly vile in covering an incumbent president. Never before have we witnessed ordinary liberals as disrespectful of friends who differ with their political views.
To borrow an over-used Obamaism, this is unprecedented. Something like it occurred during the run-up to the civil war, but today’s family hostilities are on an unparalleled scale.
Maybe it is time for liberals to look inward. Once they realize that the current public clamor emanates from their own hearts and minds, they can address the source of their dismay—without projecting it onto others.
Extremism in defense of broken ideas will help no one. If liberals really want to be good people, they need the courage to reevaluate what is authentically good.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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