Reader Nicholas Frankovich made an important clarification of my general observation that American liberal intellectuals have not come to terms with their moral mistakes. He points out that Susan Sontag spoke up against the self-complimenting anti-anti-communism of the Left. Excellent observation. And the controversy was a sign of just how heretical her moral clarity was in liberal circles.
Obviously, some American liberal intellectuals are quite clear-minded about the failures of liberalism. But as a whole, I’ve found that elite liberal culture is terribly provincial and not inclined toward self-criticism. Conservative intellectuals, on the other hand, tend to be well-informed about alternative views.
The universities are partly to blame, because they have allowed themselves to become so ideologically homogeneous that the sorts of searching debates that ought to occur simply don’t. Things today are not different from my college years thirty years ago. The extremists on the Left provide critical friction to the minds of mainstream liberals, not conservatism. It is a plain and painful fact that a person who holds moral and cultural views roughly akin to those of George Bush will be blackballed in academia. By contrast, no position on the Left is censured. End result: an echo chamber on the Left.
But perhaps the ideological complexion of modern politics provides a deeper explanation. I would like to think that a conservative does not invest politics with ultimate significance. This can lead to an unattractive complacency on the Right. By contrast, liberalism tends to ascribe moral urgency to questions of public policy—the war against poverty, and so forth. The result is often political messianism, a fevered commitment that cannot countenance criticism.
This explanation is probably too pat. But I’m fairly sure that there is a critical deficit on the Left, a refusal to come to terms with the failures of modern liberalism that invites us to wonder why.
