The Lie of Liberalism
“It’s tragic that George Floyd was killed, but that doesn’t mean they have to burn down the city”.
We’ve all heard this sentiment over the past week, and we will continue to hear it for months to come. It succinctly expresses the liberal attitude to politics. Change can only be made through the contestation of ideas and rational debate.
This is the lie of liberalism.
Do you want change? Tell us about your change. Tell us what it means to you. Convince us it’s a change worth making. We’re listening.
The beauty of liberalism is that you can pretend to engage with opinions other than your own, but the onus is on them to persuade you. “There’s nothing wrong with having opinions”, says the liberal, “we just don’t agree”. At the end of the day, it’s just politics, none of it really matters. In a liberal society ideas and reality are separate; politics is just a conversation.
“Change is possible!” says the liberal, “look at how different politics is today to how it was just fifty years ago.” The catch is that change is only possible when it is comfortable. The only possible change in the liberal system is gradual change that is affected by making people listen. If you can’t change the world, it’s not because the world doesn’t want to change, it’s because you’re unconvincing.
George Floyd was murdered because liberalism was listening. It just so happened that those it was listening to weren’t convincing enough.
When we pretend that rational debate filters out all bad ideas, we breed complacency. Rationality is not an abstract principle; it is not a tool with which to determine what is good and right. It serves only the status quo. It serves only the people who extolled the virtues of rationality in the first place.
It just happens that their ideas — not the ideas of those who have consistently said that the system excludes and oppresses them — are the “best”.
Is it any surprise that the political, legal, and social systems built on liberalism and its commitment to rationality prioritise and reinforce the ideas of the people who built those systems?
Right here in Australia, when Indigenous political ideas were pitted against western political ideas in the arena of rational debate, is it any surprise that western ideas came out on top?
When African Americans tell liberalism that they are being murdered by police, what does liberalism say? It says, “tell me more. Convince me that we need change”.
And when liberalism inevitably says no, it’s not going to change, whose fault is it that African Americans continue to be murdered? Certainly not liberalism’s! Liberalism listened.
When the polity’s only response to injustice is: “Express your opinion! Get out there and vote!”, then the polity cannot be surprised if — when voting and expressing opinions doesn’t get anything done — people get angry.
When the polity consistently fails the same groups of people over and over again because it listened instead of acted, it is disingenuous to feign surprise at the result.
Maybe you think that burning down buildings doesn’t get anything done. Maybe you think it’s actually going to be worse, that it will actively turn people against the movement. After all, in the world of liberalism and rationality how can people take political ideas seriously if they’re only expressed through violence and anger!
The alternative is waiting. Waiting for the slow progress of what is deemed acceptable. Waiting for someone to convince everyone else, finally, that change is worth pursuing, that change is rational and reasonable.
If this alternative was worth anything, if it achieved anything, maybe I could say it was viable. But when one of the major candidates for Democratic president is the District Attorney who let off Derek Chauvin in 2006, I think it’s hard to expect anyone to take you seriously when you say, “affect change at the ballot box!”.
Left with no other option, the pure expression of anger seems the remaining course of action.
Liberalism is not the free marketplace of ideas it claims to be, and it never has been. Behind a façade of rationality, reason, and free speech, lies a stern commitment to the status quo. This is a façade which excludes that which the system doesn’t want so it can label it extremist or irrational; it is nothing more than a means by which to reject sorely needed change.
The lie of liberalism is that expressing your ideas through argumentation and reason will change the opinions of those who don’t care. The lie of liberalism is that people who are comfortable are listening to those who are not. The lie of liberalism is that the system is listening to you and that the system represents you.
If liberalism was listening, it would have heard the cry for change the first time. It shouldn’t need that cry to be translated into a calm and collected proposal for new policy and reform.
At the end of the day, nothing I’m saying is new or unique. People have been saying exactly this for a while. What I want to stress is that no one can claim superiority for having a more rational approach to politics. That liberalism clings to rational debate as a justification and platform for its politics of inertia doesn’t justify moralising to those who, justifiably, no longer see the point in participating.
Rationality is not a platform from which to express your discontent with the way that people — whose lives are at stake — are expressing themselves.
If liberalism is listening, if it truly wants to hear what its constituents have to say, it doesn’t have to look very far. Instead of asserting that protests and riots are the wrong way of expressing a political opinion, listen to the rage behind them. It won’t take long to figure out what needs changing, and it shouldn’t have to be said the right way in order for that change to occur.
