The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 2: Why Nothing Makes Sense

Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good

It’s hard to stand for something if you’re not even sure what that something is. And many liberals have become unsure what liberalism is.

For a long time, few of us had to think much about it. Liberalism was just default political reality.

It was like water is for the young fish in David Foster Wallace’s famous parable: They can’t see the water, because it’s everywhere.

Let’s remember that the word “liberalism” doesn’t only refer to beliefs on the left. It’s also the name of the philosophy of freedom on which the United States and every other liberal democracy were founded. When Thomas Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” he was referring to the principles of this kind of liberalism.

But now we liberals are being forced to think about our default reality, because it’s being disrupted by two radical challenges from outside: one from the MAGA right and another from what’s commonly called the woke left — although the word “woke” needs some clarifying, which I’ll get to a little later.

The trouble is, it can be hard for liberals even to see these challenges for what they are. They don’t fit within our default reality.

More at substack.com/@spencercritchley.