When I make these suggestions to my fellow liberals, I am met with venom. They say now is not the time for depolarization—which they’ve been saying for the last 10 years. It’s always the time. It’s always the time for nuance, even in the middle of a battlefield. It’s always the time for viewpoint diversity and debate and seeing complex situations from multiple angles. But we who believe so are in the minority.
Yup. They will remain filled with hate, most of them, for life.
I don't know what will happen in 2028 but it does seem clear that Gen Z, particularly the younger half of Gen Z, is pretty conservative. See The Liberal Patriot's breakdown:
Eventually the hate-filled millennial leftists will have to decide between being like the segregationists after Civil Rights (dying old and bitter and still complaining about how they were right), or admitting they were wrong and maybe letting some light back into their lives.
Even this article misrepresents the conservative take on ICE
- first, this is an armed and violent insurrection. The left doesn't get to decide which laws they'll follow.
- second, both Good and Pretti had lethal force. Good used it and Pretti began an altercation with law enforcement with a gun.
There is almost no scenario in which you can start a fight with law enforcement while armed and not end up dead. The left is focusing on the fact that he'd already been disarmed, but:
- he was reaching back towards his gun and he could have had a second
- cops are not NFL referees, expected to see in real time what slow motion reply reveals to viewers. If someone is actively fighting and has a gun, that's all police need for reasonable fear of being in mortal danger. My best take from the videos is that his Sig accidentally discharged after the ICE agent took it. But if he was fighting after the first person yelled "gun", then that's enough.
I had to take the NRA gun safety class to get my first handgun in a blue state, and one point they drilled in is that if you are carrying, when you get stopped by the police, you stay extremely calm and comply with everything they say, because you could easily end up dead.
There already was a good plan on immigration. Put forth during Clinton after careful study by the civil rights icon Barbara Jordan. It failed, the following is from Google.
"Barbara Jordan’s 1990s immigration reform proposals failed to pass Congress primarily due to intense, unified opposition from a "left-right coalition" comprising business groups seeking low-wage labor, ethnic advocacy groups, and libertarians"
Those are the same folks paying off both parties to this day. Bush loved illegal immigrant labor, Obama did well on his first term but got shanghaied by the leaders of ethnic advocacy groups whom we now know don't really represent those groups.
Maybe after we go back to levels that would have been under Jordan's plan we can revisit how many more than zero we should let in.
Bear in mind I'm a registered D, worked as an election judge, precinct coordinator as they now call it for many years, lots of work for the D Party.
Barbara Jordan feels like the last time we tried to treat immigration as a national strategy: policy that serves the national interest, with workable enforcement and a disciplined legal system. The irony is I suspect we’re going to spend the next 30 to 40 years gradually realizing we need orderly immigration because birth rates are falling. And the U.S. is one of the few countries with a real capacity to assimilate newcomers at scale if we do it competently. That’s why this moment is such a shame: we’re burning trust on chaos instead of building a durable bargain the country can unite around. I’d bet my grandkids will look back and ask why we couldn’t do the obvious, set a strategic policy, enforce it predictably, and bring people in legally and openly.
Especially considering the quality of many of the people wishing to immigrate. China has the best engineering schools in the world, yet many/most of their best students would like to immigrate here. The east Asians assimilate very well also.
I think this is an excellent approach to reaching the other side. But the calculation is missing at least one element. MAGA sees this issue as largely occurring in cities or states with blue government. The anti-ice movement is not broad across the country. It has specific flashpoints — all of them in blue, poorly governed cities.
People in red states are largely unaffected. So it reads more like a side show than a worrisome trend.
The uncomfortable truth is that, where ICE is allowed to operate with impunity and is supported (or at least unhindered) by local government and citizenry, they are accomplishing their task with little notice or fanfare.
This results in the narrative on the right that the lefts only goal is to hang on to votes and census numbers from illegal immigrants in their midst. This view is problematic but the fact that every flashpoint is a blue city lends it credence.
I would add one more thought to your comment. The key variable isn’t whether protests exist, it’s whether local authorities enforce the boundary between protest and obstruction early and consistently. Where that line is enforced, escalation is cut off and the risk of someone getting hurt drops dramatically. Where it isn’t, small confrontations compound into national flashpoints. That is what has happened in Minneapolis. There were several protests in red states like Texas where protestors crossed the line of obstruction and were shut down by local/ state police. This lowered the risks considerably of someone getting hurt.
From the article: "For instance, in contrast to the first two groups, a plurality of Mainline Republicans and a majority of the Reluctant Right agree with the statement, “The government should not deport anyone without a hearing before a judge so that people who have a genuine right to be in the US don’t get mistakenly deported.”
Headline News: "...over 500,000 noncitizens did not show up for their scheduled removal hearings, while the Department of Homeland Security dismissed or closed an additional 700,000 pending immigration cases, according to the findings of Andrew R. Arthur, the Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies." Golly, who would have thought that a million foreigners who flouted our immigration laws would flout our immigration laws?
This is an excellent analysis of the existential risk to our society’s civil cohesion. The failure to acknowledge those with a contrary opinion or view about contentious issues have legitimate reasons for their positions has become a sickness that infects both sides of the political divide between so-called liberals and conservatives. Another way to think about this critical problem is the failure to apply strategic empathy when analyzing any issue or event. Instead of demonizing the “other side,” we should listen without anger or emotion, engage in non-confrontational discourse, and respond with logic rather than ad hominem arguments.
Another important point made here is that patience is necessary when trying to create the environment for changing mindsets and policies. Incremental change is the best way to move a society towards a new way of thinking. Gay marriage is a perfect example, as is the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.
We are living now in a time of impatience and information silos that feed a one sided narrative to people stuck in a mindset that does not tolerate dissent.
The truth is there is no one truth. The issues of the day should be seen through a lens that sees grey, not black and white.
This is full of excellent observations. Perhaps when societies begin with the "c" word, "cult", it is all downhill from there. The term has always perplexed me, because Obama appeared to enjoy far more unquestioning universal admiration from Dems, than Trump ever did, from Reps.
As a moderate Conservative who spent nearly a quarter century in an overwhelmingly bright Blue upper middle class enclave, can I vote for "morally and intellectually superior" being a main issue, along with hypocrisy?
I have no idea if many Coastal Dems always loathed Flyover residents and Trump just gave them permission to finally release their snark, or if the vitriol is new. Either way, if the middle section of the US ever heard many Coastal Dems describe them, we would have permanent single Party rule, but not in a way Dems would enjoy.
Vicious is the only word that often does the diatribes justice, except perhaps, clueless. "Racist rubes, misogynistic, homophobic, ill educated and fat" were often Rep descriptions. Hilary's "Basket of Deplorables" was her normal speech.
The superior intellects were always amusing since many "Elites" seem to truly believe, food magically appears in Whole Foods, electricity is an energy source, rather than a delivery system and the world would be just fine, powered exclusively by wind and solar.
The lack of common sense if often surpassed only by blatant hypocrisy. School choice is White Supremacy when offered to poor children, but not when utilized by wealthy Dem families. Then, it is just good parenting.
SUVs that deliver children safely to and from school are killing the planet, but private jet travel is a life sustaining necessity, for those of certain lineage.
Millions of migrants in Texas is a compassionate necessity, but 2 dozen in Martha's Vineyard is a demographic emergency, requiring military assistance.
Dems believe in diverse neighborhoods, but are often, oddly, ensconced in neighborhoods entirely devoid of certain ethnicities. They evidently reside there against their will.
Homelessness is not a Coastal problem, because everyone knows the homeless are all relocated Red State residents.
After 25 years, I could write a book, but surely a pattern is forming. However bad Reps might imagine, the outright distain is far worse.
Am sure many Reps also have entrenched inaccurate beliefs about Dems, but in my experience there is absolutely no balance in loathing the politically different.
> "Dems believe in diverse neighborhoods, but are often, oddly, ensconced in neighborhoods entirely devoid of certain ethnicities. They evidently reside there against their will."
"Leftism for thee, but not for me."
Democrats intentionally choose to live in expensive neighborhoods that firewall them against the harmful consequences of leftist policies. We see this in both defunding the police and open borders immigration.
David Brooks is a liberal but he had the insight to see that liberals misunderestimate their conservative opponents. "Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values voters surged to the polls to put George W. Bush over the top. The same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are." David Brooks, 11/5/2004
The left got SCOTUS to keep the National Guard out of their jurisdiction. The National Guard is the trained crowd control for the Feds. The local law enforcement is also trained for crowd control, and the Dems kept them back. What did the think would happen with no trained crowd control law enforcement to keep the sides apart?
So the question is, are the Dems just that dense they couldn’t see the future of those actions? Or was it planned to cause chaos.
Best I can figure, Trump called Walz. Important point to know.
If the Dems in the Senate really want the deportations to work, instead of taking money from ICE, add what it takes to train them for the results they specify. How tough is that one?
Most Americans support deporting illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes. And, I think, most Americans support deporting non-citizen Radical Islamists and their supporters (even if they came in legally). So, we kind of have a consensus on policy. Re others in the US illegally, there appears to be a consensus to require them to return to their country of origin, however, utilize administrative and financial incentives to accomplish this. But no rough tactics or ICE for the last group. And possibly allow legitimate asylum claims, with quick adjudication.
Iron Law: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single thing. They think they are better and smarter and everyone else. They talk at everyone else, but only listen to each other."
I agree with your goals, but your ideas for attaining them have proven at best ineffective and at worst destructive. I think this because I see the results of your ideas in action in every major city in the country. It’s time we attach accountability for results to programs. Good intentions are not enough.
This is the fundamental premise of conservatives that liberals can never accept. Liberals prefer to believe we are all just racist bigots exhibiting every kind of “phobia” they can dream up.
Liberal goes back to Enlightenment principles, whereas Leftist is an essentially post-Enlightenment movement.* The Enlightenment championed science, reason, and individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Leftism championed nature, emotion, and group rights.
- DEI: leftism champions group rights via affirmative action, liberalism champions impartiality/meritocracy.
- Welfare: Liberalism can champion some government programs like Social Security and healthcare on social contract grounds, but leftism can more broadly champion income redistribution.
- (trans)gender ideology: liberalism is fact-based so women don't have penises. Leftism is emotion-based so if you want to be a woman, you are a woman! Feelings don't care about your facts.
- Borders: Liberalism is based on social contracts and upholds national Sovereignty. Leftism is more flexible, and ever since the communists, has rejected a right to national Sovereignty. Leftists would prefer to abolish borders and replace national governments with something like the UN.
* Leftism was invented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lived during the Enlightenment. But his philosophy foreshadowed the subsequent Romantic age by prioritizing nature over science, emotion over reason, and group rights (the general will) over individual rights to life, liberty, and property.
When I make these suggestions to my fellow liberals, I am met with venom. They say now is not the time for depolarization—which they’ve been saying for the last 10 years. It’s always the time. It’s always the time for nuance, even in the middle of a battlefield. It’s always the time for viewpoint diversity and debate and seeing complex situations from multiple angles. But we who believe so are in the minority.
Yup. They will remain filled with hate, most of them, for life.
I don't know what will happen in 2028 but it does seem clear that Gen Z, particularly the younger half of Gen Z, is pretty conservative. See The Liberal Patriot's breakdown:
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/a-final-comprehensive-look-at-how
Eventually the hate-filled millennial leftists will have to decide between being like the segregationists after Civil Rights (dying old and bitter and still complaining about how they were right), or admitting they were wrong and maybe letting some light back into their lives.
Even this article misrepresents the conservative take on ICE
- first, this is an armed and violent insurrection. The left doesn't get to decide which laws they'll follow.
- second, both Good and Pretti had lethal force. Good used it and Pretti began an altercation with law enforcement with a gun.
There is almost no scenario in which you can start a fight with law enforcement while armed and not end up dead. The left is focusing on the fact that he'd already been disarmed, but:
- he was reaching back towards his gun and he could have had a second
- cops are not NFL referees, expected to see in real time what slow motion reply reveals to viewers. If someone is actively fighting and has a gun, that's all police need for reasonable fear of being in mortal danger. My best take from the videos is that his Sig accidentally discharged after the ICE agent took it. But if he was fighting after the first person yelled "gun", then that's enough.
I had to take the NRA gun safety class to get my first handgun in a blue state, and one point they drilled in is that if you are carrying, when you get stopped by the police, you stay extremely calm and comply with everything they say, because you could easily end up dead.
There already was a good plan on immigration. Put forth during Clinton after careful study by the civil rights icon Barbara Jordan. It failed, the following is from Google.
"Barbara Jordan’s 1990s immigration reform proposals failed to pass Congress primarily due to intense, unified opposition from a "left-right coalition" comprising business groups seeking low-wage labor, ethnic advocacy groups, and libertarians"
Those are the same folks paying off both parties to this day. Bush loved illegal immigrant labor, Obama did well on his first term but got shanghaied by the leaders of ethnic advocacy groups whom we now know don't really represent those groups.
Maybe after we go back to levels that would have been under Jordan's plan we can revisit how many more than zero we should let in.
Bear in mind I'm a registered D, worked as an election judge, precinct coordinator as they now call it for many years, lots of work for the D Party.
Barbara Jordan feels like the last time we tried to treat immigration as a national strategy: policy that serves the national interest, with workable enforcement and a disciplined legal system. The irony is I suspect we’re going to spend the next 30 to 40 years gradually realizing we need orderly immigration because birth rates are falling. And the U.S. is one of the few countries with a real capacity to assimilate newcomers at scale if we do it competently. That’s why this moment is such a shame: we’re burning trust on chaos instead of building a durable bargain the country can unite around. I’d bet my grandkids will look back and ask why we couldn’t do the obvious, set a strategic policy, enforce it predictably, and bring people in legally and openly.
Especially considering the quality of many of the people wishing to immigrate. China has the best engineering schools in the world, yet many/most of their best students would like to immigrate here. The east Asians assimilate very well also.
I think this is an excellent approach to reaching the other side. But the calculation is missing at least one element. MAGA sees this issue as largely occurring in cities or states with blue government. The anti-ice movement is not broad across the country. It has specific flashpoints — all of them in blue, poorly governed cities.
People in red states are largely unaffected. So it reads more like a side show than a worrisome trend.
The uncomfortable truth is that, where ICE is allowed to operate with impunity and is supported (or at least unhindered) by local government and citizenry, they are accomplishing their task with little notice or fanfare.
This results in the narrative on the right that the lefts only goal is to hang on to votes and census numbers from illegal immigrants in their midst. This view is problematic but the fact that every flashpoint is a blue city lends it credence.
I would add one more thought to your comment. The key variable isn’t whether protests exist, it’s whether local authorities enforce the boundary between protest and obstruction early and consistently. Where that line is enforced, escalation is cut off and the risk of someone getting hurt drops dramatically. Where it isn’t, small confrontations compound into national flashpoints. That is what has happened in Minneapolis. There were several protests in red states like Texas where protestors crossed the line of obstruction and were shut down by local/ state police. This lowered the risks considerably of someone getting hurt.
Any form of amnesty for illegal aliens will simply encourage more illegal immigrants waiting for the next amnesty.
True, however now that the border is really closed, per Trump Administration, it may be a good time to at least discuss.
If they were to win, they’d be like the dog that caught the car.
No idea how to actually govern, too focused on their hatred of the leader of the opposition party who won’t be running next election.
They need some adults in charge to be credible.
From the article: "For instance, in contrast to the first two groups, a plurality of Mainline Republicans and a majority of the Reluctant Right agree with the statement, “The government should not deport anyone without a hearing before a judge so that people who have a genuine right to be in the US don’t get mistakenly deported.”
Headline News: "...over 500,000 noncitizens did not show up for their scheduled removal hearings, while the Department of Homeland Security dismissed or closed an additional 700,000 pending immigration cases, according to the findings of Andrew R. Arthur, the Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies." Golly, who would have thought that a million foreigners who flouted our immigration laws would flout our immigration laws?
This is an excellent analysis of the existential risk to our society’s civil cohesion. The failure to acknowledge those with a contrary opinion or view about contentious issues have legitimate reasons for their positions has become a sickness that infects both sides of the political divide between so-called liberals and conservatives. Another way to think about this critical problem is the failure to apply strategic empathy when analyzing any issue or event. Instead of demonizing the “other side,” we should listen without anger or emotion, engage in non-confrontational discourse, and respond with logic rather than ad hominem arguments.
Another important point made here is that patience is necessary when trying to create the environment for changing mindsets and policies. Incremental change is the best way to move a society towards a new way of thinking. Gay marriage is a perfect example, as is the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.
We are living now in a time of impatience and information silos that feed a one sided narrative to people stuck in a mindset that does not tolerate dissent.
The truth is there is no one truth. The issues of the day should be seen through a lens that sees grey, not black and white.
Thank you for this important perspective.
This is full of excellent observations. Perhaps when societies begin with the "c" word, "cult", it is all downhill from there. The term has always perplexed me, because Obama appeared to enjoy far more unquestioning universal admiration from Dems, than Trump ever did, from Reps.
As a moderate Conservative who spent nearly a quarter century in an overwhelmingly bright Blue upper middle class enclave, can I vote for "morally and intellectually superior" being a main issue, along with hypocrisy?
I have no idea if many Coastal Dems always loathed Flyover residents and Trump just gave them permission to finally release their snark, or if the vitriol is new. Either way, if the middle section of the US ever heard many Coastal Dems describe them, we would have permanent single Party rule, but not in a way Dems would enjoy.
Vicious is the only word that often does the diatribes justice, except perhaps, clueless. "Racist rubes, misogynistic, homophobic, ill educated and fat" were often Rep descriptions. Hilary's "Basket of Deplorables" was her normal speech.
The superior intellects were always amusing since many "Elites" seem to truly believe, food magically appears in Whole Foods, electricity is an energy source, rather than a delivery system and the world would be just fine, powered exclusively by wind and solar.
The lack of common sense if often surpassed only by blatant hypocrisy. School choice is White Supremacy when offered to poor children, but not when utilized by wealthy Dem families. Then, it is just good parenting.
SUVs that deliver children safely to and from school are killing the planet, but private jet travel is a life sustaining necessity, for those of certain lineage.
Millions of migrants in Texas is a compassionate necessity, but 2 dozen in Martha's Vineyard is a demographic emergency, requiring military assistance.
Dems believe in diverse neighborhoods, but are often, oddly, ensconced in neighborhoods entirely devoid of certain ethnicities. They evidently reside there against their will.
Homelessness is not a Coastal problem, because everyone knows the homeless are all relocated Red State residents.
After 25 years, I could write a book, but surely a pattern is forming. However bad Reps might imagine, the outright distain is far worse.
Am sure many Reps also have entrenched inaccurate beliefs about Dems, but in my experience there is absolutely no balance in loathing the politically different.
> "Dems believe in diverse neighborhoods, but are often, oddly, ensconced in neighborhoods entirely devoid of certain ethnicities. They evidently reside there against their will."
"Leftism for thee, but not for me."
Democrats intentionally choose to live in expensive neighborhoods that firewall them against the harmful consequences of leftist policies. We see this in both defunding the police and open borders immigration.
Not calling the other party adversaries and opponents would be a good start.
John Edwards gave a speech in 2008--Building One America--that has a different framing.
https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/media/_media/pdf/pathways/winter_2008/Edwards.pdf
I liked him better than the rest, unfortunate about his personal issues which look tame compared to the current occupant.
Yes he was. And the personal issues were blown up in ways that would be dismissed today. Saw him at the postal workers union hall in Tampa.
David Brooks is a liberal but he had the insight to see that liberals misunderestimate their conservative opponents. "Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values voters surged to the polls to put George W. Bush over the top. The same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are." David Brooks, 11/5/2004
The left got SCOTUS to keep the National Guard out of their jurisdiction. The National Guard is the trained crowd control for the Feds. The local law enforcement is also trained for crowd control, and the Dems kept them back. What did the think would happen with no trained crowd control law enforcement to keep the sides apart?
So the question is, are the Dems just that dense they couldn’t see the future of those actions? Or was it planned to cause chaos.
Best I can figure, Trump called Walz. Important point to know.
If the Dems in the Senate really want the deportations to work, instead of taking money from ICE, add what it takes to train them for the results they specify. How tough is that one?
Most Americans support deporting illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes. And, I think, most Americans support deporting non-citizen Radical Islamists and their supporters (even if they came in legally). So, we kind of have a consensus on policy. Re others in the US illegally, there appears to be a consensus to require them to return to their country of origin, however, utilize administrative and financial incentives to accomplish this. But no rough tactics or ICE for the last group. And possibly allow legitimate asylum claims, with quick adjudication.
Iron Law: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single thing. They think they are better and smarter and everyone else. They talk at everyone else, but only listen to each other."
I agree with your goals, but your ideas for attaining them have proven at best ineffective and at worst destructive. I think this because I see the results of your ideas in action in every major city in the country. It’s time we attach accountability for results to programs. Good intentions are not enough.
This is the fundamental premise of conservatives that liberals can never accept. Liberals prefer to believe we are all just racist bigots exhibiting every kind of “phobia” they can dream up.
How do you define liberal?
Liberal goes back to Enlightenment principles, whereas Leftist is an essentially post-Enlightenment movement.* The Enlightenment championed science, reason, and individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Leftism championed nature, emotion, and group rights.
- DEI: leftism champions group rights via affirmative action, liberalism champions impartiality/meritocracy.
- Welfare: Liberalism can champion some government programs like Social Security and healthcare on social contract grounds, but leftism can more broadly champion income redistribution.
- (trans)gender ideology: liberalism is fact-based so women don't have penises. Leftism is emotion-based so if you want to be a woman, you are a woman! Feelings don't care about your facts.
- Borders: Liberalism is based on social contracts and upholds national Sovereignty. Leftism is more flexible, and ever since the communists, has rejected a right to national Sovereignty. Leftists would prefer to abolish borders and replace national governments with something like the UN.
* Leftism was invented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lived during the Enlightenment. But his philosophy foreshadowed the subsequent Romantic age by prioritizing nature over science, emotion over reason, and group rights (the general will) over individual rights to life, liberty, and property.
Thanks. Nice work. But how does that relate to this essay?
You asked for the definition of a liberal. I gave it. Why are you unsatisfied?
I was asking the author. I don't think he was using the definition you gave. yours is more like mine would be.