What about the anti-liberal left?

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In their debate sponsored by Bari Weiss, Christopher Rufo argues that illiberalism on the right, as exemplified by the January 6 Capitol riot, is weak and marginal. But he sees illiberalism on the left as hegemonic, or nearly so.

David French disagrees. Instead, he sees illiberalism on both left and right as having roughly equal status. On this issue, it appears to me that French flails unconvincingly.

I see the left-right difference this way: On the right, those who are ideologically dedicated to illiberalism (Vermeule, for example) lack followers, and the large followings (Trump’s, for example) lack ideological cohesion; In contrast, the illiberal wing of the left has institutional presence, ideological dedication, and leader-follower alignment.

Jonathan Rauch (minute 36+) argues that liberals like himself did not see the illiberalism on the left coming. He thinks that liberals will start to get organized and fight back. I am looking forward to Rauch’s new book.

Some possible outcomes for the future:

1. The “good left” (Rauch and others) overpowers the illiberal Woke left. p = .05

2. The illiberal Woke left suffers a catastrophic electoral defeat at the hands of a non-populist right. p = .05

3. The illiberal Woke left and the populist right continue to dominate political dynamics, with today’s level of discomfort or more. p = .40

4. The U.S. experiences an era of Woke totalitarianism that lasts for a couple of decades, but which eventually collapses into something else (not necessarily good) p = .25

5. Academia, journalism, traditional media, and government become empty battlegrounds, as technological change results in very different forms of social organization (call this the Balaji scenario, if you will). p = .25

38 thoughts on “What about the anti-liberal left?”

  1. One could quibble with the p-values, but they seem the right order of magnitude in the grand scheme of things.

    And there is of course the possibility of the mix of them. For instance, we could experience say #4 in K-12 public education, #3 in some government policies (say, crime), and #5 in other aspects of our lives (work from home may allow more people to escape dysfunctional cities).

    I fear that #5 will rely on being upper income though. Per the last post, the rich can afford to send their kids to private school if public schools go down the toilet, but regular people can’t.

    And of course different people will experience this differently as some left wing illiberalism will seem like a benefit to them (say, a female minority receiving affirmative action).

    • The rich parents may need to establish their own private schools, as at least some of the existing ones have followed public education down the woke rabbit hole.

    • Are Catholic schools too expensive for regular people now? They weren’t when I was growing up, but things could have changed. I would also assume that wokeness will lead to large increases in Catholic school enrollment, unless they go woke as well. But it just doesn’t seem to me like the lower middle class lay Catholics who make up the base of the teachers who would be enthusiastic about wokeness.

      • “Are Catholic schools too expensive for regular people now?”

        There are many catholic schools (especially high schools) that are charging what state universities charge for tuition. Yes, private and catholic education are completely out of the reach of even some upper middle-class families when you consider the rising costs of everything, especially housing.

        • In real estate, the slogan is location, location, location.

          In education, the slogan should be transparency, transparency, transparency.

          Your hard earned dollars are being spent to educate your kids in either public or private schools. There should absolutely be accountability as to what your dollars are being used to help fund. Insist on nothing less.

      • This will vary based on COL, but let’s say going k-12 will cost at least $150k per kid. So $300k for two kids. If you want to be a good catholic and increase TFR, then even more.

        That seems beyond the reach of most people. To the extent it isn’t, remember that most people will need to work for Woke corporations to earn the money to pay that tuition, so it’s kind of circular.

        Moreover, if most people are getting indoctrinated in k-12, what kind of world will you kid graduate into when you are done shelling out 150k? Where will they go to work that isn’t woke? What place will they live that isn’t Woke?

        Exit has its place, but it also seems like a kind of “I just don’t want to fight” cop out. We can’t all be middleman minorities trying to carve out our little niche bubble and running at the first sign of trouble.

      • I am upper middle class. Catholic school is ~$9k per child per school year. That absolutely is prohibitively expensive for me. We have to pay at least $9k in property taxes that largely go to local education. To pay an additional $18k/year for 2 kids on top of all other bills is very much prohibitively expensive.

        • Where I live, your house would need to be valued at around a million dollars to generate a property tax bill that high. Where do you live? I am guessing that you have very good reasons for living there, as those kinds of taxes are absurdly high and most upper middle class people in the US can move to Texas, the Southwest, or the Southeast and find employment in their industry, much more affordable housing, and much lower taxes.

          • Adding up county and local taxes around here, 1.3%-1.4% of assessed value is normal for a low tax suburb. So maybe 650-700k home. That would get you a nice place in the exurbs, but honesty a townhome at best even slightly closer to the city. If I didn’t work from home, commuting into the city center every day would be prohibitive.

            And our taxes are a lot less burdensome than most areas in the northeast. According to Google, where I grew up, which is a suburb and not a city center, has a 2.2% county tax alone.

            There is a reason SALT is such a big deal to these people.

            Moving states, especially across the country, is a bigger burden than you guys make it out to be. People have friends and family. Jobs aren’t all fungible.

            For instance, my wife could get another job somewhere else. But she wouldn’t be a partner and she wouldn’t be able to work from home (she still needs to be close enough to see clients in person, she can’t move to the other side of the country).

            And for what? Won’t all these Southern states just turn blue over the next generation anyway due to demographics? Are the cities you would not doubt be moving to for the jobs not as blue as anywhere else.

            More power to you but “move to Texas” is less of a solution than people make it out to be. We found a red town in a slightly less blue state and tried to maximize how much time we can spend with our kids.

          • Where I live, my property tax is ~$7.5k based on <$300k of valuation.

            The rate probably depends to some degree on property values. If there are tons of houses in the $750k+ context, the percentage rate of tax can be lower, but of course some places (probably where I live) have more government services and waste than others.

            I second asdf – moving for tax reasons is challenging because your family, friends, and job usually don't come with you. Saving ~$4k on property tax doesn't do a whole lot especially since I'll likely spend some of those savings flying back to see friends and especially family.

    • Parents need to demand transparency as to what is being taught to their kids in schools.

      I literally mean that the curriculum should be posted online to for all to see.

      In addition, you should be discussing with your kids each day what they learned at school. And, engage directly with their teachers to understand more.

      Zoom virtual teaching is complete doom for the woke agenda. The more people see, the less they want it. Transparency is everything.

      • An interesting possibility there would be the school equivalent of police body cams, just a camera in the back of the room recording class every day. Let parents pop in and see what is happening in their kids’ classes periodically, and keep everything documented somewhere. Plus, kids who are home sick could use that to keep track of the lessons!

        I wonder what the teachers’ unions would say about that.

          • Um…every single one of our child’s preschool classes had cameras. Not that complicated or controversial.

            That said, I much prefer to review the curriculum vs. viewing videos.

          • @Yancey Ward

            Yes, we could absolutely view live video remotely for the various pre-schools that our daughter attended (with the correct login/password, of course). My wife was addicted to it, me much less do. I’d much prefer to review the curriculum offline.

  2. I’m very pessimistic about either scenarios 1 or 2.

    Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but from what I can see, non-woke left voices are more embraced by the political right than anyone from the woke left.

    As for the second option, I don’t see how a 1988-2012 style GOP candidate is going to deliver a catastrophic defeat to the Democrats. Since 1988, the GOP Presidential candidate has only won the popular vote a single time, and not a few of the voters which gave W a popular vote win in 2004 have since passed on, and have been replaced by a more diverse, ‘educated’, and secular generation.

  3. I think #4 and #5 is the only one that is consistent with Martin Gurri’s observations. Which probably means that #3 is weighted far too high.

  4. I’d say to some extent #5 will happen but not as extreme as completely empty battle grounds. Academia, journalism, traditional media will be far weaker in ten years with traditional media essentially gone but government isn’t clear.

  5. The difference between left and right illiberalism to me can be summed up in one point. If Trump were dead I’d not be scared of the republican illiberalism at all. Would republicans elect Trump to congress, make him speaker, and impeach their way to making him president. Yes, Yes they would. Would that work for any other republican, no. The right is scary, but is one Stroke or BigMac away from it being over.

    The woke are institutionalized and will only stop unless the institutions die, or they cause too much pain too quickly.

  6. Jonathan Rauch (minute 36+) argues that liberals like himself did not see the illiberalism on the left coming. He thinks that liberals will start to get organized and fight back.

    Pfffft. What exactly are they waiting for? I like Rauch, but I have absolutely no confidence that anyone on the left, of any stripe, will mount any successful resistance to the CRT left. None. The group dynamics of the left, with so many disparate and competing interest groups, require that to be successful, nobody scrutinize any other groups’ grafts…sorry, goals, too closely, otherwise the coalition fractures and can’t accomplish anything.

  7. #5 depends a lot on the regulatory environment and therefore who controls government. Not just with old institutions like schools, but even new ones like media. Just as social media seems poised to replace ‘old media,’ the major social media companies have started to embrace overt political censorship. If a new alternative is just as afraid of regulation (or law suits under civil rights law) as the old one, then it’ll tow the line just the same. The government can also tilt things in its favor by subsidizing its favorites without seeming heavy handed. If institutions that are ‘woke’ can sell their services at artificially reduced prices or even for free because of subsidization, then even the best alternative faces an uphill battle to compete.

    • I visited the the Florida Panhandlle, aka the Redneck Riviera. I’ve never seen so many Trump flags. And I’ve driven through rural Texas where they are everywhere, but Florida took it to a whole other level. Way to go Florida!

    • Ultimately, I think this “in your face fuck your bullshit” attitude is what turns off the David French’s of the world. It doesn’t matter how right you are, you have a duty to politely lose because its what Jesus would want or some other bullshit.

      • I’m sorry, but pardon my ignorance. Who is David French and why am I supposed to care what he thinks?

        DeSantis is certainly much more qualified and much less offensive than Trump. Trump always was and always will be an imbecile (even though I voted for him in 2020).

        • He’s a Bush era neocon that went whole hog on that brand evangelicalism and volunteered for Iraq (sort of but not really) and adopted some African kid. His schtick now is being a Nevertrump Evangelicuck.

        • Most shouldn’t care what these pundits think; they definitely don’t care about what you think. But French is an influential pundit in this circle. And this blog is focused on politics and punditry.

          One complaint about French: he claims to be about neutral principle, but he’s the opposite. Most of his punditry is about framing recent news events to bash or boost the groups he wants to bash or boost accordingly.

      • Which is ironic, since Jesus called all sorts of people names. He was not one to mince words.

  9. There is a sixth option. Perhaps it’s an unlikely one, but it’s certainly an attractive one. It’s a variation on #5, but with a big twist. People, except for a small but loud minority, will simply quit caring about ideology and just get on with living their lives and engaging personally with people who matter to them. This turn of events won’t be obvious at first, but it will begin to show in such ways as the declining use of social media. Astute politicians who have been too quick to embrace “wokeness” will sense the turning tide and begin to moderate their positions in the hope of appealing to a broader electoral base. As things go in politics, this new moderation will catch on. The illiberal left won’t shrink in numbers or volume, but the moderate (i.e., more liberal) left will grow in influence. And there will be much more common ground for the empowered moderate left to share with the sane liberal right (i.e., actual conservatives as opposed to attitudinal zealots). A new center will form around deeply shared values (defense of life, liberty, and property) as opposed to fatuous slogans (defund the police, all whites are racist, etc.). The media, in turn, will embrace this new zeitgeist and quit antagonizing viewers with daily injections of wokeness. And so it will go, until something line the zeitgeist of the 1950s has been restored.

  11. How exactly does the capital riot exemplify illiberalism? Those people wrongly thought they were protesting a stolen election. As far as I can tell, the Trump coalition is perfectly accepting of anyone of any race or creed that just happens to like Trump. It’s a cult of personality, and maybe it makes sense to fear it, but not on grounds of “illiberalism”. The idea that Trump represented some bizarre authoritarian nightmare never has made a bit of sense to me

  12. “Jonathan Rauch (minute 36+) argues that liberals like himself did not see the illiberalism on the left coming.”

    I don’t think that’s quite right. They thought that they could string them along like they have black voters and activists, throwing them a bone now and then to keep them on the bus. What they did not expect was for the illiberal left to take control of the wheel.

    Probably the same kind of thing happened with the populist right.

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