When all of the Civil War Confederate generals walked free instead of standing trial and being executed for treason. When the era of Reconstruction was allowed to be ripped away and ground into nothing. When minorities were openly lynched and the perpetrators went unpunished. When, and when, and when....
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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I think the simplest way to explain it is the way I see it liberalism has been operating at least for as long I have been alive on a sort of dead reckoning because it has no functioning moral compass.
Maybe it never did, I don't know we can have a lot of debates over that and one up one another with how cynical we are about it but the point is that it is indisputable that for the last several decades liberalism has been operating on a sort of dead reckoning where whether something is acceptable or not purely has to do with how normalized it has been by the pre-existing power structure and status quo. All navigation is dependent upon an established record and each further advancement is charted only within the context of previous movements.
Conservatives shot the compass a long time ago and believe compasses are too woke to use by the way in case anyone gets confused about what side I am on here.
The difference I see with "progressives" and what I would call a genuine leftist is at least the attempt to construct a somewhat consistent moral compass and build coalitions based on a shared sense of a moral compass that is RATIONALLY connected to reality through science, healthcare and history.
Someone like Joe Biden spent his whole entire career sticking his finger into the wind and attempting to chart the center of balance in public opinion, a chameleon by design to the trends and fervors of the day whether that be draconian drug policy draconian housing policy draconian crime policy....
On the other hand Bernie Sanders has been saying the same damn thing his whole career, his politics have always been an extension of his moral compass even when they weren't considered popular by mainstream political media.
This isn't to say Bernie Sanders is perfect or some shining example but there is an undeniably fundamental difference in political ideology between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden even though they come from roughly similar political eras and are both irrevocably products of the system that brought us to this breaking point. They come from different genetic lineages of political ideology, and in my opinion Joe Biden's one can't die off quick enough.
Another way to frame it... Liberals see the behavior of Conservatives as unacceptable because they have no regard for decorum and established norms, whereas Progressives and Leftists see the behavior of Conservatives as unacceptable because it is hateful, exclusionary and morally rephrensible but take no issue with the idea of transgressing social norms.
If one single thing can be have said to have destroyed liberalism's moral compass (or at least doomed it to a slow death) it is The Paradox Of Tolerance which liberalism utterly fails to grapple meaningfully with on a philosophical level and on a practical policy level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
When you bring up the Paradox Of Tolerance to a liberal they tend to go "oh, interesting I hadn't heard of that". When you bring up the Paradox Of Tolerance to a leftist or progressive they tend to go "YUP".
In so many ways 'Donald Trump' is a victory of liberalism. Arrogance and incompetence flourish in societies where the beneficiaries of great wealth and power are two or three generations removed from the people who were clever enough to steal it in the first place.
And America has been such a place of abundance for the highborn for so long. Their blatant criminality is tolerated and normal. Is it any wonder that people who've never faced meaningful consequences have trouble with making big decisions?
I think it's interesting to contrast Germany's fall into Fascism coming from humiliating loss and economic ruin, to America's slide from a position of global dominance and unimaginable wealth. Maybe second time as farce?
That's the thing. Liberals didn't go wrong. Liberals won in the marketplace of ideas and achieved mainstream dominance. It's just that, liberals won so hard that the only way the wrong could win is by lying and cheating, because they're objectively wrong. So, naturally vicious people naturally backlash viciously.
This is what I've seen in action since Reagan in 1980..
Liberalism is internally contradictory. Liberals didn't so much "go wrong" as much as Liberalism successfully solved a contradiction (feudal society facing rapid economic growth) with another contradiction (universal human rights constrained by private property).
Liberalism was doomed to this fate from the beginning. Honestly the failure of liberals is that they didn't abandon liberalism and adopt communism sooner.
I think you're using a different kind of Liberal here.
You sound like econonic liberal, while OP sounds like social liberal.
That's not a real thing. Liberalism is a political philosophy. It has a meaning. What Americans call liberals are just liberals. And what Americans call conservatives are also liberals.
Conservatism is also a political philosophy. It's a philosophy that supports the maintenance of the monarchy and aristocracy.
Since there's no monarchical movement in the US, there are no Conservatives. There are only liberals.
One camp of American liberals think that making Liberal values more inclusive is worth sacrificing some other liberal values and particularly truncating the liberal power structure of private property ever so slightly.
The other camp of American liberals think that protecting the values of individualism and private property are more important than expanding the number of people included in those values.
They are both Liberals. They both reject monarchy. They both support the government-enforced regime of private property. They both believe that idealized values are as important or more important than actual outcomes. They're both anti-communist.
You say that's not a thing; That there's only one liberal.
Then you break down two different camps of liberals?
You see how that might be confused, right?
It's almost like different people use liberal to mean different things, which can lead them to talk past each other.
Yes, absolutely. Liberalism is a political philosophy and it is inherently contradictory. Liberals, therefore, as people have to cope with this contradiction and the evidence we have is that liberals cope with it by leaning heavily into one side of the contradiction and psychologically downplaying the other. Hence we get two camps.
However, the naming scheme we have today is deliberately confusing. It obfuscates instead of clarifies.
To say one set of liberals are liberals and the other set of liberals are conservatives is a corruption of language so severe that it reduces the language to utter nonsense.
For example, the liberals who we call liberals have zero idea that private property is the seat power in liberalism, while simultaneously being anti-communist in large part because it abolishes private property. But if you tell a liberal that they have no idea what you're talking about and instead talk about "democracy".
The liberals who we call conservatives are abundantly clear about the role of private property and they're position on it. They openly state the private property is how liberty is achieved. But tell them that private property as a regime is a minoritarian dictatorship that flies in the face of the values of liberty and justice and they have no idea what you're talking about and instead talk about the moral failings of the poor and how only the potential for liberty and justice matter and that we can't use authoritarian government to ensure liberty and justice when it means limits on private property owners.
Not a single one of these people believe in the return to aristocracy under a monarchy. They both understand that private property and markets are the foundations of their society and that these things are in opposition to the tyranny of kings and nobles.
But they refuse to acknowledge that they have this common ground. That's why Ds and Rs in Congress and in the Whitehouse have like 80% overlap in actual actions and yet the voters think the two parties are living in different universes. When GWB's government identified a bunch of countries to invade, and then those invasions get carried out by GWB and by Obama and by DJT no one talks about the continuity. They are totally lost in their ability to analyze because they don't see the 80% overlap, they only see the 20% difference and think "we are fundamentally different, you and I".
That's why we're in the mess we're in. Because liberalism is the only social form from which fascism has ever emerged. And communism is the only social form that has ever defeated and sought to fully destroy fascism. It was the USSR that marched all the way into and out of Berlin and purged every Nazi they could find during their administration of East Germany. It was the US and the Vatican that helped 10k Nazis escape justice and planted them all over the Americas. It was the US that insisted on putting Nazi officers in charge of NATO. It was West Germany under the administration of the Allies that allowed former Nazis to hold office mere weeks after the war.
Liberals are confused, because Liberalism is contradictory and those contradictions are now overwhelming the social system.
People cope with that by making up artificial categories and reusing the language to make it fit. It's like a No True Scotsman fallacy. Socially liberal, economically liberal, classically liberal. It's all an attempt to cope with the fact that Liberalism says "universal liberty" and at the same time "private property defended by all potential forms of violence, both from the government and from the owning class".
They didn’t vote.