We classical liberals need to reclaim the term "liberalism" from the left. Twenty-first Century progressivism is increasingly illiberal, and that is now the orthodoxy of the left (and not even the most extreme faction of the left).
There are now three dominant factions in American politics: progressives, liberals, and populist nationalists. Of these, I worry that liberalism is on the defensive and fading fast in the face of authoritarian pressure from the left and right.
Another worrying factor: liberalism is primarily centered around ideas, while progressivism and populist nationalism are increasingly centered around constituencies. Ideas can be debated and exchanged. What does a free republic do with constituencies seeking power, patronage and extraction?
As someone who identifies as a classical liberal, I largely agree. Liberalism should be self correcting, and in several important areas it has not been for quite some time. It would benefit Democrats to be less ideologically rigid and more genuinely open to feedback (particularly on issues like immigration and certain aspects of trans policy), where inflexibility can alienate centrist voters and drift away from core liberal principles.
However, I think that a 1990s era neoliberal centrist you reference would be unlikely to support Trump or the modern Republican Party. MAGA politics and Trumpism do not align with classical liberalism and proudly reject it. From my perspective, pushing back against that corrosive movement is the most urgent priority right now.
Doing so absolutely requires introspection, listening to people like you, stronger candidates, and WAY BETTER messaging from Democrats (which is generally downright pathetic), but it also depends on reasonable people being willing to speak up and call out what is happening in with the Orange Elephant in the room with us.
I think any political belief thrives on feedback, not just liberalism. I think the root is that somehow changing one's mind has, for many, become a sign of weakness. That "speak your truth" has evolved into "whatever you believe is right, don't back down!". I, every day, say to myself "what do I know?" and "I'm wrong about a number of things, how do I figure out where I'm wrong so that I can pivot". The end result is that life is way more fun.
No one party has all of the answers, in fact, often neither of them have answers. It is up to us to be rational and curious about the world. Accept new evidence and change minds when appropriate.
I get busy for a day and miss the interesting posts!
You can, of course, post whatever you like. It's still a free country (for now)!
However, you have to realize that if you are consistently critical of one side and never the other then a few things are true:
1. Failure to criticize one side (conservatives) is the same as tacit approval. You might have your own reasons but the audience has a short context window and that nuance is lost. What you see as focus they see as favoritism.
2. If your criticism are confrontational, they aren't inviting good dialogue and either alienating liberal voices OR attracting conservative ones.
You can claim that "conservatism is already criticized elsewhere" but that's not really more true than liberalism. Fox News is the biggest cable news channel and X has a proven conservative bias. In fact, I strongly doubt your audience is as biased as you claim as your posts attract the kind of conservatives who enjoy that kind of criticism.
I also agree with some of the comments you saw on LinkedIn, where you also need to consider this moment in the US. For example: You claim the liberal control education, but the conservatives do - and just demolished the Dept of Education. We have book bans in school libraries and attempts to federalize governing of private colleges. There is a difference between the US we had and the moment we find ourselves in, not a passing wind that will be forgotten with an election.
I just want to reiterate which might help - my post is not meant as a partisan balance critique, instead a liberalism-as-a-system critique.
Not arguing “conservatives are fine” or even that they don’t deserve criticism. It’s arguing that liberalism, as a governing ideology and institutional culture, is failing at one of its defining traits: self-correction.
On #1: I don’t accept that critique has to be evenly distributed to be legitimate. Liberalism has never worked that way. Mill’s whole point — which I opened with — is that ideas strengthen through pressure, not through quota systems. When an ideology dominates institutions, culture, education, and elite discourse, critique from within is really a kind of maintenance. If anything, refusing to critique the dominant ideology is what looks like approval.
On #2: I’m also not convinced the issue is confrontation so much as where the confrontation is aimed. The post is very explicit that my audience skews liberal and that liberal institutions are the ones shaping elite norms right now. Discomfort among liberals isn’t evidence of poor dialogue — it may simply be evidence that critique is landing where it’s least tolerated. That intolerance is the thing I’m pointing at. I've seen so many examples in my personal life at this point it's wild.
On education specifically: political control and intellectual culture aren’t the same. Yes, conservatives are exercising power in visible ways right now. That doesn’t negate the still-overwhelming ideological homogeneity of academia, which I think most people — including many professors — quietly acknowledge (there's tons of research on this). My argument isn’t “conservatives good, liberals bad.” It’s that imbalanced intellectual ecosystems produce brittle outcomes, regardless of who’s pushing the buttons at a given moment.
More broadly, the post is pushing back on the idea that motives matter more than claims. When criticism is reframed as “why are you saying this?” instead of “is this true?”, that’s already a sign something has gone wrong. A healthy liberal culture argues the substance and moves on.
If liberalism is still what it claims to be — pluralistic, confident, grounded in reason — then sustained internal critique shouldn’t feel threatening. It should feel like oxygen.
Critique doesn't need to be evenly distributed to be legitimate for a single critique. Ongoing series of critiques, if targeted at only one side, is bias. It's not about a single post, it's about a systemic approach to the entire topic.
You purposefully choose very combative stances in your critiques, which is what I'm referring to there. It's about the style, and whether that style invites dialogue or just drives away alternative voices. You can't claim to be promoting dialogue when you're constantly on the attack.
I find it ironic that you think unbalanced intellectual ecosystems produce brittle outcomes, because that's what you're doing here. If your criticisms are unbalanced you're creating a community of readers that is not healthy. That's exactly our point!
Let me try to provide a really simple analogy to see where I'm coming from. Maybe an easy way to think how I do here is as a broader ecosystem or even simpler, a school of fish. And a bunch of the fish want to swim towards waters with predators that might kill them, and a few fish are saying "no wait let's not go that way". I can try saying it nicer - I don't think others should see it as combative, it's corrective. I actually think I'm quite kind, esp in the face of people who really aren't on a lot of this (not you, the political category more broadly). Anyway just my perspective I don't own the weight of this, people subscribe to 100s if not 1000s of voices online, what you really hope is they do in fact balance a bunch of people (I genuinely believe the smartest people do).
It's not that I don't understand your perspective, it's that I disagree and continue to do so.
And people don't subscribe to that many voices. But even if they did, the bias in those voices has a real impact and you cannot rely on everyone else to take up the other side for you.
Cool I think we do get each other - and I agree with you everyone has bias on opinion pieces of the world - I don't think we have to agree on everything precisely to move things fwd - in fact it would be weird if we all did 100%. The world would actually be really boring if that were the case
Spot on. As I wrote in a previous piece, “There’s a reason people like screens more than mirrors. In the former we see delusion, in the latter, reality.”
Put differently: it’s the phones, stupid! When the world is lined with funhouse mirrors, it’s no wonder we act like clowns.
Have a lot of thoughts on this that I'll need to mull over, but on an immediate pass, I think this whole post begs the question: Why are liberals held to such high standards and expectations while their conservative counterparts aren't?
For example, we like to pounce on liberals/progressivist activists for overeager advocacy and/or demands for immediate cultural changes without engaging and/or presenting those arguments to people who aren't obsessed with politics. Absolutely valid critique.
But that same critique is rarely applied in reverse.
For example, there was nearly zero reflection on the right on why renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War* is a significant and troublesome cultural change; Ditto for demolishing an entire wing of the White House; Ditto for why it's bad for the President of the United States to instruct its Department of Justice to sue/investigate political opponents; Ditto for that same president to sue his own IRS for $10 billion; Ditto for that same President to approve of its own DHS to ignore the need for judicial warrants to arrest undocumented immigrants within the United States (which, coincidentally results in American citizens getting arrested for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong accent and/or skin color); Ditto on calls to abolish abortion; Ditto on overturning Roe v Wade; Ditto on calls to overturn Obergefell (gay marriage) — the list goes on and on and on.
This lack of sustained internal critique also includes figures on the cultural right. For example, I cannot recall any conservative critiques of Joe Rogan for hosting Alex Jones — a man who has spread literal conspiracy theories about children being shot dead in their own classrooms — on his podcast. Nor can I recall any serious-minded critiques of our original constitutional order from the right.
For example, I can't think of a modern conservative** arguing that support for the second amendment goes too far in a modern context at the expense of the general welfare. And when those rare criticisms from the right do take place, the author is jettisoned out of the conservative community faster than you can say "cancel culture."
The Liberal Elite(tm) tend to at least try to engage with both sides of an argument. Conservatism rarely has these fissures. I'd say that's largely because conservatism's project isn't liberalism or even classical liberalism — just lame authoritarianism.
I also suspect a lot of these "why are liberals so out of touch?" posts are less about good faith, more about confirming priors, and, well, driving algorithmic engagement. Present company excluded, of course ;).
*Legally, it is still the "Department of Defense" since changing this department's name requires an act of Congress. However, nearly everyone accepted it, so here we are.
Lots of good thoughts here, thanks for sharing. The really short answer to the first part of this is I think we expect liberals to do better and so do hold them to really high standards.
Yeah, which spurs the question of: why is there such an extreme double standard? Most modern conservatism gets its rocks off on positioning itself as morally superior/righteous, yet all one has to do is point in the vague direction of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to point out its hypocrisy.
I think (at least my critique) is done because I think things can and should improve, and feedback is how we actually get there. I can't speak to anyone else on that but assume the motivation is similar
We classical liberals need to reclaim the term "liberalism" from the left. Twenty-first Century progressivism is increasingly illiberal, and that is now the orthodoxy of the left (and not even the most extreme faction of the left).
There are now three dominant factions in American politics: progressives, liberals, and populist nationalists. Of these, I worry that liberalism is on the defensive and fading fast in the face of authoritarian pressure from the left and right.
Another worrying factor: liberalism is primarily centered around ideas, while progressivism and populist nationalism are increasingly centered around constituencies. Ideas can be debated and exchanged. What does a free republic do with constituencies seeking power, patronage and extraction?
This is a great comment
As someone who identifies as a classical liberal, I largely agree. Liberalism should be self correcting, and in several important areas it has not been for quite some time. It would benefit Democrats to be less ideologically rigid and more genuinely open to feedback (particularly on issues like immigration and certain aspects of trans policy), where inflexibility can alienate centrist voters and drift away from core liberal principles.
However, I think that a 1990s era neoliberal centrist you reference would be unlikely to support Trump or the modern Republican Party. MAGA politics and Trumpism do not align with classical liberalism and proudly reject it. From my perspective, pushing back against that corrosive movement is the most urgent priority right now.
Doing so absolutely requires introspection, listening to people like you, stronger candidates, and WAY BETTER messaging from Democrats (which is generally downright pathetic), but it also depends on reasonable people being willing to speak up and call out what is happening in with the Orange Elephant in the room with us.
Looking forward to next week. Cheers.
I think any political belief thrives on feedback, not just liberalism. I think the root is that somehow changing one's mind has, for many, become a sign of weakness. That "speak your truth" has evolved into "whatever you believe is right, don't back down!". I, every day, say to myself "what do I know?" and "I'm wrong about a number of things, how do I figure out where I'm wrong so that I can pivot". The end result is that life is way more fun.
Yes I mentioned that in the post, it's absolutely bi-partisan
No one party has all of the answers, in fact, often neither of them have answers. It is up to us to be rational and curious about the world. Accept new evidence and change minds when appropriate.
I get busy for a day and miss the interesting posts!
You can, of course, post whatever you like. It's still a free country (for now)!
However, you have to realize that if you are consistently critical of one side and never the other then a few things are true:
1. Failure to criticize one side (conservatives) is the same as tacit approval. You might have your own reasons but the audience has a short context window and that nuance is lost. What you see as focus they see as favoritism.
2. If your criticism are confrontational, they aren't inviting good dialogue and either alienating liberal voices OR attracting conservative ones.
You can claim that "conservatism is already criticized elsewhere" but that's not really more true than liberalism. Fox News is the biggest cable news channel and X has a proven conservative bias. In fact, I strongly doubt your audience is as biased as you claim as your posts attract the kind of conservatives who enjoy that kind of criticism.
I also agree with some of the comments you saw on LinkedIn, where you also need to consider this moment in the US. For example: You claim the liberal control education, but the conservatives do - and just demolished the Dept of Education. We have book bans in school libraries and attempts to federalize governing of private colleges. There is a difference between the US we had and the moment we find ourselves in, not a passing wind that will be forgotten with an election.
Hell yeah glad you think interesting.
I just want to reiterate which might help - my post is not meant as a partisan balance critique, instead a liberalism-as-a-system critique.
Not arguing “conservatives are fine” or even that they don’t deserve criticism. It’s arguing that liberalism, as a governing ideology and institutional culture, is failing at one of its defining traits: self-correction.
On #1: I don’t accept that critique has to be evenly distributed to be legitimate. Liberalism has never worked that way. Mill’s whole point — which I opened with — is that ideas strengthen through pressure, not through quota systems. When an ideology dominates institutions, culture, education, and elite discourse, critique from within is really a kind of maintenance. If anything, refusing to critique the dominant ideology is what looks like approval.
On #2: I’m also not convinced the issue is confrontation so much as where the confrontation is aimed. The post is very explicit that my audience skews liberal and that liberal institutions are the ones shaping elite norms right now. Discomfort among liberals isn’t evidence of poor dialogue — it may simply be evidence that critique is landing where it’s least tolerated. That intolerance is the thing I’m pointing at. I've seen so many examples in my personal life at this point it's wild.
On education specifically: political control and intellectual culture aren’t the same. Yes, conservatives are exercising power in visible ways right now. That doesn’t negate the still-overwhelming ideological homogeneity of academia, which I think most people — including many professors — quietly acknowledge (there's tons of research on this). My argument isn’t “conservatives good, liberals bad.” It’s that imbalanced intellectual ecosystems produce brittle outcomes, regardless of who’s pushing the buttons at a given moment.
More broadly, the post is pushing back on the idea that motives matter more than claims. When criticism is reframed as “why are you saying this?” instead of “is this true?”, that’s already a sign something has gone wrong. A healthy liberal culture argues the substance and moves on.
If liberalism is still what it claims to be — pluralistic, confident, grounded in reason — then sustained internal critique shouldn’t feel threatening. It should feel like oxygen.
Critique doesn't need to be evenly distributed to be legitimate for a single critique. Ongoing series of critiques, if targeted at only one side, is bias. It's not about a single post, it's about a systemic approach to the entire topic.
You purposefully choose very combative stances in your critiques, which is what I'm referring to there. It's about the style, and whether that style invites dialogue or just drives away alternative voices. You can't claim to be promoting dialogue when you're constantly on the attack.
I find it ironic that you think unbalanced intellectual ecosystems produce brittle outcomes, because that's what you're doing here. If your criticisms are unbalanced you're creating a community of readers that is not healthy. That's exactly our point!
Let me try to provide a really simple analogy to see where I'm coming from. Maybe an easy way to think how I do here is as a broader ecosystem or even simpler, a school of fish. And a bunch of the fish want to swim towards waters with predators that might kill them, and a few fish are saying "no wait let's not go that way". I can try saying it nicer - I don't think others should see it as combative, it's corrective. I actually think I'm quite kind, esp in the face of people who really aren't on a lot of this (not you, the political category more broadly). Anyway just my perspective I don't own the weight of this, people subscribe to 100s if not 1000s of voices online, what you really hope is they do in fact balance a bunch of people (I genuinely believe the smartest people do).
It's not that I don't understand your perspective, it's that I disagree and continue to do so.
And people don't subscribe to that many voices. But even if they did, the bias in those voices has a real impact and you cannot rely on everyone else to take up the other side for you.
Cool I think we do get each other - and I agree with you everyone has bias on opinion pieces of the world - I don't think we have to agree on everything precisely to move things fwd - in fact it would be weird if we all did 100%. The world would actually be really boring if that were the case
Spot on. As I wrote in a previous piece, “There’s a reason people like screens more than mirrors. In the former we see delusion, in the latter, reality.”
Put differently: it’s the phones, stupid! When the world is lined with funhouse mirrors, it’s no wonder we act like clowns.
Have a lot of thoughts on this that I'll need to mull over, but on an immediate pass, I think this whole post begs the question: Why are liberals held to such high standards and expectations while their conservative counterparts aren't?
For example, we like to pounce on liberals/progressivist activists for overeager advocacy and/or demands for immediate cultural changes without engaging and/or presenting those arguments to people who aren't obsessed with politics. Absolutely valid critique.
But that same critique is rarely applied in reverse.
For example, there was nearly zero reflection on the right on why renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War* is a significant and troublesome cultural change; Ditto for demolishing an entire wing of the White House; Ditto for why it's bad for the President of the United States to instruct its Department of Justice to sue/investigate political opponents; Ditto for that same president to sue his own IRS for $10 billion; Ditto for that same President to approve of its own DHS to ignore the need for judicial warrants to arrest undocumented immigrants within the United States (which, coincidentally results in American citizens getting arrested for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong accent and/or skin color); Ditto on calls to abolish abortion; Ditto on overturning Roe v Wade; Ditto on calls to overturn Obergefell (gay marriage) — the list goes on and on and on.
This lack of sustained internal critique also includes figures on the cultural right. For example, I cannot recall any conservative critiques of Joe Rogan for hosting Alex Jones — a man who has spread literal conspiracy theories about children being shot dead in their own classrooms — on his podcast. Nor can I recall any serious-minded critiques of our original constitutional order from the right.
For example, I can't think of a modern conservative** arguing that support for the second amendment goes too far in a modern context at the expense of the general welfare. And when those rare criticisms from the right do take place, the author is jettisoned out of the conservative community faster than you can say "cancel culture."
The Liberal Elite(tm) tend to at least try to engage with both sides of an argument. Conservatism rarely has these fissures. I'd say that's largely because conservatism's project isn't liberalism or even classical liberalism — just lame authoritarianism.
I also suspect a lot of these "why are liberals so out of touch?" posts are less about good faith, more about confirming priors, and, well, driving algorithmic engagement. Present company excluded, of course ;).
*Legally, it is still the "Department of Defense" since changing this department's name requires an act of Congress. However, nearly everyone accepted it, so here we are.
**I use the term "conservative" very loosely.
Lots of good thoughts here, thanks for sharing. The really short answer to the first part of this is I think we expect liberals to do better and so do hold them to really high standards.
Yeah, which spurs the question of: why is there such an extreme double standard? Most modern conservatism gets its rocks off on positioning itself as morally superior/righteous, yet all one has to do is point in the vague direction of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to point out its hypocrisy.
I think (at least my critique) is done because I think things can and should improve, and feedback is how we actually get there. I can't speak to anyone else on that but assume the motivation is similar
Cool Popper shoutout! Great piece!
always impressed with your writing.