Why have liberals become so intolerant? They think nothing of denying someone as prominent as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from speaking on a college campus. They embrace activists who shut down speakers. They publicly shame people for the slightest deviation from liberal orthodoxy.
Their mindset is the very definition of closed-mindedness.
For them everything from science to the law is “settled” once they get into power. Progress is a one-way street. Their mindset is the very definition of closed-mindedness.
The easy answer would be “they are all bad people.” But frankly that’s a cop-out. Not all liberals are bad people, any more than all conservatives are angels. No doubt among the fevered minions of liberal activists there are people with, shall we say, psychological issues, but that doesn’t explain why so many otherwise reasonable people are so beholden to liberalism as an ideology.
The short answer is that it pays. A lot of people in and out of government benefit. Liberalism also makes people feel good. Whether you are politician dispensing government benefits or the citizen receiving them, liberalism hides the self-interest and sometimes even greed that motivate people.
But the devolution of liberalism into something now openly illiberal has causes far more complex than these familiar explanations provide.
For one thing, liberalism is no longer mainly about ideas. It is about power—as in who has it and who doesn’t. Believing they already know the answers to all questions, liberals view politics and governing as mopping up operations.
Academic research is about proving a point rather than discovering the truth. Science is treated as the private preserve of a certain ideology, not to mention a political weapon to justify preferred policy outcomes. Mistaking as they do their ideology for morality, they see no reason to shun the most cynical of political tactics to get their way. For them, the end justifies the means.
Second, liberalism today is not the liberalism of yesteryear. It’s not Franklin Roosevelt’s or John Kennedy’s liberalism. It’s not even the liberalism of Bill Clinton. It has become something much more radical. Bill Clinton talked about the “era of big government” being over.
Today, there is virtually no government program that liberals won’t embrace. Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment when he repudiated extremism in his party. Today liberals can’t get close enough to the “black lives matter” movement.
Third, liberals have surrendered to (some would say created) the nasty culture of intolerance that infuses our popular culture. To this extent, they are not at all different from some self-proclaimed right-wing people who do the same. But the difference is—or at least is supposed to be—that liberals profess to be the party of the open mind. They have become anything but.
Now that they control so many of our institutions—our universities, high-tech corporate board rooms, the entertainment industry, and increasingly even mainstream churches—they are closing the door behind them, making sure that no one, especially conservatives, will sneak in the back door.
Finally, liberalism has become hostile to open inquiry. Liberal intellectuals used to love open-ended debates because they thought they could win people over with their intelligence and wit. No more. Today’s liberal intellectuals are much more interested in stifling debates than having them. After all, who needs debates when all the big questions have been answered by their ideology? Liberals are no longer the scruffy radicals of Washington Square, but a tenured Mandarin class hotly competing for government research grants.
As I argue in my forthcoming book, “The Closing of the Liberal Mind,” to this Mandarin class:
Knowledge, like human progress, must be created and managed by state policy, bureaucratized and forced on all people equally despite the infinite differences that exist between individual human beings. It is a sad state of affairs, especially for intellectuals who are expected to know better.
There’s an old saying, he who controls knowledge controls power. Liberals get this adage instinctively. They treat truth not as wisdom—as something to be discovered—but as a will to power to be imposed by law and governmental fiat.
In this quest for power, they have become masters at controlling not only knowledge, but popular culture. For example, when Americans watch entertainers like Jon Stewart, they don’t see an ideologue channeling liberal clichés. They see just a really funny guy. The ideology is completely buried. Young people respond in lockstep not because they were indoctrinated by some boring Maoist, but because they think the whole thing is great fun.
What we have here is nothing less than a new and highly attractive form of illiberalism—an illiberal liberalism, if you will. Intolerance is championed in the name of tolerance, closed-mindedness in the name of open-mindedness, and hatred in the name of compassion. It’s classic double-think, and the deception is precisely the danger. Americans don’t expect liberals to be authoritarian wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are not prepared to be on guard all the time because liberals are supposed to be the good guys—the guardians of freedom of speech and the like.
Alas, they are not. Just ask Condi Rice or anyone else who has been denied the opportunity to speak on an American campus.
Kim R. Holmes, a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation, oversaw the think tank’s defense and foreign policy team for more than two decades. He’s the author of the upcoming book, “The Closing of the Liberal Mind.” Read his research.
Most Professing liberals are not liberals .If you dig a little deeper you will find they are some type of progressive socialist. Usually Marxist of kind.Especially the ones in government.
Liberal tolerance is a tactic much like mohammedans lying to infidels. They are for tolerance when they are to weak to impose their will. They never have been tolerant they have always been authoritarians in waiting. Their strategy is to put us in a gulag like that historic liberal Joe Stalin.
“One of the paradoxes of our age is the fact that the intellectuals, the politicians, and all the sundry voices that choke like asthma the throat of our communications media, have never gasped and stuttered so loudly about their devotion to the public good, and about the people’s will as the supreme criterion of value – and never have they been so grossly indifferent to the people.”
The reason that the arguments of liberals sound like recordings in an echo chamber is because they are humanoid parrots with empty skulls. Zombie voters too.
Liberals…the reason I believe in the 2nd amendment . Liberals—the reason I have a lot of ammo !
Liberalism is a mental disorder….thanks Michael S .
In crushing the Tea Party Shummer,Cummings,Frank enlisted Lois Lernner,CIA,FBI, ATF NSA.They threatened,harassed not only Tea Party members but their families.This was an abuse of power and these senators and all involved should have resigned and then been prosecuted.They are now embolden.
Hence the saying, “It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine”
Certainly it takes a certain lack of self knowledge and intellectual honesty, perhaps not realized, to be this type of liberal, that it is imperative to shut off discussion as it would be painful to look in the mirror of others’ opinions.
You could edit this story by replacing Liberal with Conservative and it would retain it’s truth.
If that is true west lasted then we are headed to a war again.
Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? There is only one way to deal with these vermin: Exterminate them. Get ready.
Greetings,
Here is the fastest way to get a Liberal to STFU. Pay attention.
1. Talk about the wonderful liberal bastion that is San Francisco. It is and has been the most liberal city in the USA. Democrats, Peace, Love, Equality, Freedom, Rainbows – that is San Francisco. The Red Guard Maoists want nothing more than the entire nation to be just like good ole San Fran.
2. After the libtard agrees with you, gently point out the fact that 56% of those incarcerated in jail there are black men yet they make up only 3% of the population.
Questions:
How is it possible for the most liberal place ever to be so racist? After all, it is the firmly entrenched Democratic leadership that runs the police and courts.
If these self described progressives cant run the workers paradise that is San Francisco which, I should remind you, they’ve had decades to figure out, then how can they tell anybody else what to do or think? It would, on the surface, appear to me that these are racists of the worst kind because, as Red Guard Maoists, they should know better.
Carry on, no need to thank me.
The intolerance of liberals actually statists (when was the last time liberals liberated or conservatives conserved?), should come as no surprise considering that, by and large, they’ve had their way for what? at least 50 years when LBJ with a complicit congress instituted the guns AND butter tomfoolery. Eventually the adults must say NFW to the spoiled children who must understand (feel) there are limits. As to their motives, I can’t read minds, but I reckon it’s some pernicious combination of evil, ignorance, insanity & stupidity.
I am trying to find a way to write about our time without being influenced by it. An almost impossible task. The reason we fail to fully grasp why these things are happening is that we have a set belief about humanity that is fully developed by our own perspective and it runs counter to reality (that which is).
Humans are not special. They are but one species among millions. Their behavior is encoded into their genetics and it operates on the level of the individual as well as the collective. The primary function of all living things is to 1) replicate and 2) stay alive long enough to 1).
Everything you see human beings do is controlled by those two directives. Liberalism (or whatever we want to call it) is simply a manifestation of our biological imperative. Once you get that, the only part we need to fully grasp is which strategy is the most effective at any given time under any particular set of circumstances and make the best use of the tools and information available to stay alive long enough to reproduce..