1/ I have respect and affection for the old-school liberals. They're people of integrity. And there were things they were right about, like civil rights and political free speech. In the 50s & 60s, their record on those issues was much better than the record of the conservatives.
2/ Today old-school liberals (Bill Maher's a good example) are in shock about Woke ideology's influence in the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. They see the illiberalism of the contemporary left as a betrayal of what they stood for. They're deeply distressed by it.
3/ There is truth in the idea that Woke ideology is betrayal of liberal values. But it's not the whole story. The whole story will require old-school liberals to engage in some serious self-critical reflection. There are respects in which they themselves bear responsibility.
4/ There are respects in which old-school liberals planted--even nurtured--the seeds of the plant whose manifest toxicity rightly distresses them today. Old-school liberals, in the 60s, bought into the worldview that the late Robert Bellah labeled "expressive individualism."
5/ Among their primary motivations for embracing expressive individualism was the affirmation of aspects of the sexual revolution. That was a conscious and deliberate choice that liberals made. They didn't have to make it.
6/ Some liberals--Irving Kristol, Richard John Neuhaus, Mary Ann Glendon--bolted from the movement or were excommunicated from it precisely because they rejected expressive individualism as incompatible with sound philosophical anthropology and the flourishing of human brings.
7/ Most liberals, however, chose to embrace some version of expressive individualism. It seemed to them to pave the way to "enlightened" policies and cultural changes. They failed to heed the parable of Chesterton's Fence. Thus was ushered in what I call the Age of Feeling.
8/ Faith and reason as the arbiters of truth and goodness were abandoned (though lip-service was paid to "reason" and, in mainline churches, even to "faith"). Feeling became the standard of judgment.
9/ "If it feels good, do it" was the perfect, if imbecilic, slogan of the aptly described "me generation." Some reflection will reveal how short the step is from expressive individualism to Woke identitarianism and illiberalism. Precisely that reflection is needed now.
10/ The examination of conscience I'm urging won't be easy. Facing up never is. When things go wrong, all of us--not just old-school liberals--want to believe that "we were right; our values were sound; it's just that we were betrayed and our movement was hijacked!"
11/ I'll end by returning to where I began. The old-school liberals are honest people. What's more, some of the things they stood & stand for are right. Those like myself on the conservative side need to acknowledge & honor that. (We have our own self-critical reflection to do.)
12/ The old-school liberals' sense that their values have been betrayed and their movement hijacked is not baseless or completely wrong. But it's only part of the story--the part that's easy to accept. It's the part that's not so easy to accept that now needs to be confronted.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
