Liberalism Isn’t What It Used to Be

Liberalism Isn’t What It Used to Be - WSJ

"When I worked for the Kennedy campaign, I identified as a Democrat and a liberal. The core beliefs that made me a liberal in 1968 put me at odds with many of the things “progressives” stand for today, 51 years later.

One of those core beliefs is that no one should be discriminated against because of his race. Martin Luther King Jr. ’s dream—that every person be judged by the quality of his character rather than the color of his skin—resonated with the experience of my own Jewish forefathers, who had come to this country seeking an equal opportunity to compete, to learn and to find work. At some point, however, the liberal ideal of equality of opportunity gave way to a progressive program to give certain historically disadvantaged groups overt preferences in education and employment. This is the opposite of judging people based on their character. Liberalism somehow made a U-turn when it morphed into contemporary progressivism.

Another core liberal belief of mine is that proper justice depends on due process—which includes a presumption of innocence. The archvillain of my youth was Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who sought to ruin the career of anyone he accused of being a Communist or fellow traveler. Many compared his efforts to the Salem witch trials, as a result of which 19 people were executed based solely on the “credible” accusations of a few young girls.

The due-process hero of my younger years was Atticus Finch, the fictional lawyer in Harper Lee ’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He defended Tom Robinson, a black sharecropper falsely accused of rape by a white woman, Mayella Ewell...

I had always thought it was only bigoted Jim Crow juries and redbaiters like Joe McCarthy who rode roughshod over due process. Yet in 2011 the Obama Education Department sent a “dear colleague” letter to colleges and universities, threatening to cut off federal funding unless the schools changed their procedures to make it easier to discipline students accused of sexual assault. As a result, many students were stripped of their rights to counsel, cross-examination of their accusers and discovery of the evidence against them. Those procedures were re-examined by the current secretary of education, a step that was bitterly criticized by progressives because it may make it more difficult to punish the accused—the price of all due-process protections.

My first reaction to the #MeToo movement was satisfaction that victims of sexual harassment could feel safer about speaking out. Then, during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, “women deserve to be heard” transformed into “women deserve to be believed.” A presumption of guilt replaced the presumption of innocence, and progressives seemed unconcerned. I can imagine a #MeToo version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with Mayella Ewell as the heroine, Atticus Finch condemned for “toxic masculinity” and the lynch mob cheered as an engine of popular justice.

Another tenet of American justice that inspired me to lean left was the idea that every defendant, however unpopular, is entitled to legal representation. Here my childhood heroes were lawyers like William Kunstler, who defended politically unpopular leftist clients, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which defended clients of every stripe when their constitutional rights were threatened.

This year, however, Ronald Sullivan, a Harvard Law School professor, became the object of student protests after joining disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein ’s defense team. The protests led Harvard to fire Mr. Sullivan and his wife as faculty deans at Winthrop House, a campus residential college. The right of an unpopular defendant to counsel, it seems, is no longer a progressive value.

Another of my core values is free speech. In the McCarthy era, one often heard of professors and screenwriters being forced out of their jobs for expressing far-left views. Today it’s conservative professors that are an endangered species on campus. Progressive students have become expert at forcing the dismissal or resignation of professors who allegedly display insufficient sensitivity about racial or gender issues. All too often, such students are able to keep anyone they disagree with from even speaking on campus. Once again, progressives have become the most visible enemies of a core “liberal” value...

Progressives today are riding roughshod over much of what liberalism once stood for. I hope that old 1960s liberals like me will stand firm, not be shamed into silence, and call out those who challenge our core values, whether from the left or the right."


"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea." - Robert Anton Wilson

This is an interesting examining of slippage - not the slippery slope but the utter reversal of principles

One liberal response is to take a very restrictive view of liberal values, e.g. they said since the Kavanaugh confirmation was a job interview, not a trial, due process didn't apply, and they strictly interpret censorship in the light of the First Amendment, ignoring the liberal tradition