Two posts below (here) I discussed an excellent column by Michael Barone on “our covert enemies,” by which he meant not domestic terrorists but “our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and … transnationalism.” Now comes E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post with a thoughtful, perceptive column on what he regards as the “wrong turn” of American liberalism.
Dionne’s wrong turn is not the same as Barone’s, but it is equally interesting. He laments the fact that liberalism has “become associated with elitism, arrogance and disdain for the values of average Americans,” a phenomenon he traces, in part, to the writings of Richard Hofstadter, one of the most influential (and best) American historians of the 20th century. In Hofstadter’s analysis of social movements, “[p]sychological disorientation and social displacement became more important than ideas or interests.” Dionne regards this tendency to psychologize as unfortunate, echoing the late Christopher Lasch’s criticism of Hofstadter (his mentor): “Instead of arguing with opponents,” Lasch wrote of those enamored of Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” analysis, “they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds.”
Long-time readers of this blog (or at least those of you with good memories) will recall that on a number of occasions I have criticized the offensive, self-congratulatory condescension of so many liberals who believe, as I put it here, “that people who agree with me are good and people who disagree are bad or stupid (or in need of professional treatment by empathetic caregivers).” (See also here, here, and here.)
I have also had occasion myself to note several other “wrong turns” of American liberalism in the 20th century, especially the discussion here. Each one of these wrong turns produced a number of former liberals, people who jumped (or were thrown) off the liberal train as it made a sharp turn and took off in a new direction. Reading over all these posts now (especially the last one of mine cited above), I believe that a good case can be made for viewing most of the twists and turns of recent liberalism as revolving around an ongoing tension between two strong strains of liberal thought, pragmatism and rights-based principle. From this perspective, each of the wrong turns I discussed in the post just cited — liberals changing their position on strong governmental regulation, on colorblind racial equality, and on the absoluteness of free speech protections — can be viewed through the prism of the ongoing struggle between pragmatism and principle, with liberalism as a whole becoming more pragmatic over time as those liberals committed to principles their (former) colleagues thought outmoded became former liberals.
Indeed, when Dionne writes
At its best, liberalism is about the defense of the underdog, of minority rights, of social justice, of active but restrained government, of civil liberties, of openness and tolerance[,]
he is implicitly celebrating the principled strain of American liberalism, the strain embodied in the principle that everyone has a right to be treated without regard to race and in the Hugo Black/Alexander Meiklejohn/et. al. dedication to the absoluteness of the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment. But there is an equally strong if not stronger pragmatic strain, going back to the anti-formalists of the late 19th century, to John Dewey, and to the hard pragmatism of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the liberals of the Americans for Democratic Action after World War II.
The tension between these two strains was often creative, one keeping the other in check, but in the recent past the “pragmatic” strain has become dominant, flowering (or, if you prefer, mutating) into the post-modernism, the “moral relativism” criticized by Barone, and the full-throated rejection of principle altogether articlulated by Stanley Fish (as discussed most recently here, citing earlier discussions).
In our time race has been at the center of this transition. Liberals abandoned the “without regard” principle of colorblind equality in order to promote the (worthy) goal of, first, integration and, now, “diversity.” They abandoned their absolutism on the First Amendment to proscribe “hate speech” or “hurtful” speech or speech that created an unwelcoming work environment and they even support restrictions on political speech, i.e., campaign fincance reform. My point here is not that each one of these changes was bad (though I do think that), but that they were in fact changes from earlier liberal positions, and that it is instructive to look at the arguments about them through the prism of the ongoing tension between pragmatism and principle.
