I think liberals need a reality check. Most of us still believe liberalism and democracy are the same thing. The terms used to be synonymous. From the 1960s to the 2010s, you could use them interchangeably. After the last election, it’s pretty clear they’re not the same anymore.
Something else should be clear. Democracy is now running against the grain of liberalism and everything that term means to liberals. It is running against freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, due process, equity and inclusion, competitive markets, etc. We prefer to say authoritarianism is the cause. That’s right, but only partly right. Authoritarianism is always rooted in democracy, and here we are.
If we do not admit to ourselves that liberalism and democracy are now divorced from each other, we risk hurting the cause of liberty and bankrupting morality by blindly championing democracy. Remember: Donald Trump said he’d save democracy, too – democracy for white people. That’s the point of maga, “liberating” the “real America” from the rest of America, and making the government whites-only again.
The evidence that liberals still believe liberalism and democracy are the same can be found in our articles of faith. For instance: “History is on our side.” That’s the idea that an ever-expanding circle of freedom is foreordained. When all is said and done, we tell ourselves, history will show that we were on the side of right against the side of might.
This belief in the inevitability of progress harms progress. It encourages us to think we can stand by and watch history roll by and do what it’s “supposed to do.” If individual rights and liberties are inevitable, there’s no need to fight those who would take them away.
Worse, it encourages cynicism. If no one has to do anything — because history keeps rolling by – no one has to actually believe what they say. Conclusion: The parties are the same. Their candidates are the same. Everything is as good or bad as everything else and nothing matters.
Some 90 million people didn’t vote last year. A percentage voted for someone other than Trump and Kamala Harris. History isn’t on anyone’s side, but belief in that almost certainly contributed to the fact that the worst aspects of the American character are popular again. Before the 1960s, sadism was socially accepted, to use Richard Rorty’s phrasing. It was taboo until the 2010s. Now it’s again socially accepted.
But I think the strongest evidence that we still believe liberalism and democracy are the same is our faith in public opinion. Liberals look to polling as if it were an anchor amid Donald Trump’s chaos. We could look to ourselves and our own values for stability, but instead, we’re constantly checking right-and-wrong against what other people think.
We do this even when other people’s thinking is backwards. The Financial Timesreported a new poll that found that a vast majority, 80 percent, believe that America “would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing.” But when asked if they themselves would be better off, a vast majority of respondents, 73 percent, said no thanks.
The point of such polls is getting a sense of what people think of the regime’s tariff policy and its goal of bringing back manufacturing (a goal that Joe Biden had already started achieving). But the poll can be interpreted another way: as evidence that the national consensus that once bound liberalism and democracy together has totally unraveled.
Between the 1960s and the 2010s (maybe earlier, if you wish, after World War II ended in 1945), there was a serious majority feeling that the government should serve all the people, not just some of the people, and “the American people” meant all of them, not just the white ones. That’s gone. This poll reflects that. In fact, it dramatically suggests a new consensus – that public policy is for thee, not for me.
Liberals might say polls still have value and point to those showing disapproval of Trump’s first 100 days. That’s Chuck Schumer’s position. The Senate minority leader said last week that “public opinion is everything. And the public is turning against what Trump is doing.”
I think such polls are deceptive. Trump’s approval is in the gutter right now, but it was also in the gutter at this time during his last term. Even so, a majority of white people, who are still the majority of all Americans, put him back in charge. The takeaway should be that job performance doesn’t matter to them as much as who’s on the job.
What’s popular isn’t about what Trump does or doesn’t do.
What’s popular is about who he is and isn’t.
That’s because liberalism and democracy are no longer the same thing. If liberals do not recognize and accept this new reality, we will end up forfeiting our principles for the sake of what’s popular, when what’s popular is running headlong into what’s important to the republic.
If liberals of the last century had waited for public opinion to turn, the 1964 Civil Rights Act wouldn’t have happened. Same for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Same for all the rights movements. None of it was foreordained. All of it was planned and prosecuted. Freedom wasn’t claimed because of democracy. It was claimed in spite of democracy.