Rethinking American Liberalism

When I launched Liberal Confessions in December 2021, we were still in the shadow of Covid. Wokeism was running hot. Whatever cabal was actually in charge of the Biden Administration was solidly in power. Trump had been badly discredited by J6. At the time, it seemed he’d never find a way back. And the Democrats appeared poised to hold onto power indefinitely.

In that context, my primary motivation for writing this Substack was that I felt a pressing need to break the suffocating silence that had enveloped my Blue State community. In my view, it was painfully obvious that progressives were advocating a whole raft of illiberal, and often even authoritarian ideas and practices — around Covid policy, gender ideology, Biden’s competency, woke HR diktats, anti-”disinformation” campaigns, and more.

A new post-liberal progressive (aka woke) orthodoxy had taken hold of my world. And there was an intense social prohibition against recognizing, let alone questioning it. Breaking out of that repressive ideological box felt necessary — particularly as I, unlike so many others, was fortunate enough to be in a position to do so without risking my livelihood. Plus, I had past scholarly and writing experience to build on, as well as sufficient free time in the present. All this added up to wanting to speak out publicly about the madness that had engulfed my native habitat of Blue State America.

Now, however, the reigning political and cultural configuration is extremely different. Trump is back in power. And this time, he’s exercising it much more aggressively. The New Right as a whole is much more robust, vocal, prominent, confident, and ambitious. Meanwhile, the only Democrat who’s managed to gain any significant political traction is a charismatic 33-year old socialist who’s clearly attempting the same sort of hostile takeover that Trump successfully did to the GOP. Except for the leftist energy provided by its rising DSA and embattled but determined woke fringe, the Democratic Party appears hollowed out, discredited, directionless, clueless, and uninspiring.

In this context, my former impetus for writing Liberal Confessions is gone. There’s no longer the same sense of suffocating Blue State silence to break when the Trump Administration is relentlessly slamming progressive sensibilities to the wall every hour, every day. These changed circumstances have caused me to question where (if anywhere) I want to go next with this project. Reflecting on this accounts for my lack of posting over the past several months.

Long story short, I’ve decided that the time is ripe to move on to what I’d always hoped that the longer-run goal of the “Liberal Confessions” project might be: That is, to write a book that develops my take on why the progressive liberal culture that I grew up with during the 1960s-70s seemed to so suddenly collapse during the mid-to-late 2010s — as well as what, if anything, the future of American liberalism might ideally look like. I’ve started working on it, with the tentative title of Liberal Confessions: An American Political Memoir.

This means that the content here at Liberal Confessions will change. I envision this happening in several ways:

• First, more history. Answering the question of what happened to post-World War II progressive liberalism requires understanding the prior context of New Deal liberalism, as well as the later neoliberal turn. In revisiting this history, I want to contrast the narrative I was socialized to believe in regarding the past, present, and future of American liberalism against a new analysis that I now believe to be more accurate. While historical hindsight can never truly be 20/20, it’s certainly possible to identify blind spots and failed fables by means of such critical reassessment.

• A second change I envision is more political theory. I can’t write intelligently about American liberalism without tackling some big underlying questions — such as what, precisely, do I mean by “liberalism”? The goal here is to explore such abstract issues in-depth, yet in ways easily accessible to a general audience.

• Finally, I’ve been running a “Liberalism in Crisis” study group to discuss such historical and theoretical questions with others on the Unspeakeasy platform, and enjoying it a lot. Therefore, I want to see if I can pull a small group together through Substack to run another session in the fall. (Update: This mini-course has reached its 10-person limit, so enrollment is now closed. If you might be interested in something similar in the future, though, please let me know. I will also be posting the syllabus in a subsequent post for those interested.)

Launching a new book project is daunting. However, I have written a book about American liberalism before — in that case, though, for an academic audience. The goal here is to revisit many of the themes I worked with previously, but this time in a creative non-fiction format that blends personal reflection with historical analysis and political theory. My hope is that readers here on Substack can help me make this a better book by offering feedback and suggestions on draft material along the way.