I am a Liberal so I naturally was nodding along with what you wrote.
After, I tried to think of an argument for the Progressive POV that for some problems you have to resort to an absolutist ethic, i.e., by any means possible.
I thought of the Abolitionists, the radical progressives of their time. Without them, slavery might have lasted longer. In the judgement of history, the Abolitionists were on the right side of history.
So, yes, I'm a Liberal but one who understands that history might yet mock my beliefs.
The first thing that strikes me is that even given the limits intrinsic to summary, you are creating a strong binary distinction between positions that are in practice and theory more often mixed or hybrid. Part of that is precisely that you are describing liberals and progressives in both of those registers. Distinctions that may seem sharply drawn at the level of theory--say, between "violence is agentive and anomalous" and "violence is structural" tend to mix or erode quite quickly between liberals and progressives when applied to particular situations. I also think your breakdown has the typical problem that these kinds of binary listings tend towards, which is they're generally set up to favor the loyalties or affinities of the person doing the breakdown--they are often a rhetorical sideways into "self and other".
Invariably when you dip into a particular thinker's instantiation of views on these subjects, there's more subtlety and complexity. Take "The West". The position that the "West is a region like any other" is an argument that many progressives take up in some form or another--Dipesh Chakrabarty's call for "provincializing the West" calls for restoring the West to that status intellectually and normatively; Fredrick Cooper and Jane Burbank's Empires in World History works to put European empires in global perspective in order to be far more specific about what is particular to Europe after 1500; Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony wants to do the same. On the flip side, there is a very substantial number of liberals across the spectrum of liberal thought who hold to some version or another of European exceptionalism, often in a positive sense, but not always. The degree to which those "tricks of governance, technology, etc." enabled imperialism--or were enabled by it--is also a discussion where you find liberals, progressives, and radicals in a variety of positions rather than in a strictly binary opposition.
Just to stick on this point for a second, if you go to the opposition of "imperialism ended, so that takes care of that" versus "there is no possibility of reform, only transfer of power in its entirety", not only is there a messy, complicated spectrum between those positions, but for those who do take the latter position, it's not primarily a charge of "hypocrisy", it's about what *structure* is, and about the moments in historical time where some sort of agentive possibilities open up in structures--e.g., it is not a complaint about the seeming insincerity of actors promising reform, it is an assessment that they will be unable to effect reforms even if they wish to do so.
I think this is where all of the binaries you're setting up amount to a kind of straw-man reading of oppositions over the situation in Palestine and Israel. For example, liberals tend to in general take seriously the constraints that authoritarian rule and material conditions impose on the exercise of political agency. No liberal that I've ever encountered would hold people in refugee camps in the middle of the 1983-85 famine in Ethiopia responsible for their failure to overthrow Mengistu and the Derg and therefore complicit in Mengistu's attacks on civilian and on their own starvation. Meaning that the argument that Gazans have the same degree of political agency as Israeli citizens, if it's one that liberals actually harbor, is deeply distinct from the kinds of arguments they would make about states, power and political agency otherwise. Similarly, Palestinian rights attract far *more* ardent attention from some progressives than many other struggles that seem similarly urgent or intersectional, which requires some recognition. (Moreover, the entire issue divides progressives internally, and not just along the lines of Jewish progressives v. non-Jewish progressives). Moreover, the emphasis on agency is very precisely one of the things that produces intense contradictions across the spectrum of opinion both in historical analyses and in thinking about the present--who is credited and exempted from responsibility is not a consistent or persistent kind of claim within liberal or progressive thought. E.g., your view that this situation is (like most) sui generis in some fashion is one that I think you'd find most liberals or progressives (or none of the above) harboring in some way if you were patient enough with their thinking and didn't just stick to one-note sloganeers. The problem with that, in the end, is that the contradictions that people can harbor within complexity are themselves frustrating or enraging or unhelpful.
What is one to do, for example, with Benny Morris doing detailed, responsible, thorough historical research and concluding that the state of Israel in fact has systematically tried to occlude the truth, which is that the Nakba happened more or less as many Palestinian intellectuals and advocates have claimed, and that Palestinians were in fact forced violently or coercively off of land with the deliberate intent of transferring it to Israeli ownership and then arguing that even though that's what happened and it needs to be admitted without flinching, he believes that it had to happen and should not be apologized for or undone. Indeed, at one time, Morris argued that this showed that future expulsions would have to occur, as a Jewish state could not exist with Muslims or Arabs within its borders. And yet Morris has also agreed that Israel's rule in the West Bank amounts to "apartheid" and even more recently, has conceded that barring some kind of peace that all sides accept, an exclusively Jewish state cannot possibly persist indefinitely, no matter how militarily powerful it is.
I think many intellectuals would exhibit similar complexity and contradiction when pressed for details, though many might not be as forthright or rigorous about it as Morris. I don't think those complexities would neatly align with your grid. I think many people in everyday contexts have similarly muddled or messy views of many things, and it ill-behooves any of us to sanctify our own positions by aligning them with the best part of a binary. Perhaps all of us should start where Morris started, which is just wanting to look at the way the world is and has been without trying to pre-empt realities that don't fit the grid. There are plenty of histories since 1960 where I don't think your sketch of what liberals believe about power, the West, progress, etc. conforms very well to the facts on the ground, or amounts to whistling past the graveyard. But there are also many histories where progressives, if and when they resemble your sketch, are doing the same. A more curious and self-reflecting way in might be to think that when people have come to some conclusion that seems liberal or progressive, they might be reasoning up from something real they've tried to grapple with--or have experienced--rather than reasoning down from abstractions.
βMy sense is that the current eruption of hostilities in Israel/Palestine may be the watershed moment in left-leaning discourse for β who knows? β a generation. It almost perfectly lays bare the liberal/progressive faultlines, which tended to be obscured in various points of common cause.β
Donβt worry Sam. Here comes Trump again to realign the left in common cause. Ironically he may have been the best President to deal with this single current situation. Declawing rather than empowering Iran, and firmly backing Israel with no required nod to the Progressives.
My daughter is a religion professor at the University of Chicago where she holds a distinguished chair as a Jewish historian, philosopher and professor of literature, and she says the campus has factions now. College campuses are getting scary over this war--when being in the middle, for Israel, for the Palestinian people, opposed to Hamas's rule, and in favor of the two-state solution that Hamas doesn't want, and opposed to Netanyahu's authoritarian moves has to be the answer if there ever is one. I am losing hope.
Thomas Friedman, who has covered Israel for the NYTimes for over thirty years says he has known every Israeli politician personally and that he does NOT know anyone in Netanyahu's cabinet because Netanyahu, like Trump, has brought on extremists. If Israel is to survive, moderation has to be the answer in their response to the inhumanity of Hamas.
I add only this: βAs a Jew, I need Israel. More precisely, I can live as a Jew outside Israel but not without Israel.β
βElie Wiesel (1928β2016), American author born in Romania, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps
This is insightful and useful. It clarifies the distinction between the Progressive and Liberal mindsets, makes sense of their affinities and frustrations, and helps me see that I am the one and not the other. Thank you!
Very spot on. I would only add that Progressives/Woke people/whatever one chooses to call them only pretend to be critical of power in general. In reality, they're critical of power they don't control or that is in the hands of people they hate, even if that power is used benevolently. To them, power, violence and the State are fantastic if they have it under their control; you see this most glaringly in the left's sudden support and admiration for the FBI, a stance that would have made you persona non grata in my far-left hometown back in the day. While Woke ideology is intentionally messy - a bit of Marcuse, a large dose of postmodernism, a Gramscian directive, a Marxist skeleton plus a hodgepodge of other intellectual cancers - they are steadfast disciples of Foucault in this respect. Not just in theory, but emotionally too.
I wish liberals were more proud of their Western heritage. After all, they wouldn't be liberals if not for Western ideas. We've really bitten the hand that fed us over the last century.
I totally see myself in this dichotomy on e liberal side. As such Iβm worried youβve drawn a straw man on the progressive side....but your depiction of progressives is definitely in line with what I perceive of the left. The pusillanimous responses by colleges has led me to where I shed the left label (which kills me as a left handed person) and Iβm on the verge of shedding the progressive label.
Iβve never been super deep into theory but I studied just enough Foucault to find his thoughts intriguing. There is much perception in how he analyzes power. Postmodern concepts certainly helped me understand and resolve the unease of growing up a minority in this nation. However Iβve been developing a sneaking suspicion over the past few years that in spite of its analytical prowess, such theory may not be productive systems for in guiding the use of power.
I sympathize with the Palestinian urge for a primal scream, but itβs blatantly obvious that Hamas is unfit for rule and must be destroyed. Iβve been disappointed in the apparent inability of the Progressive movement in holding this basic distinction. It makes me question whether the movement should be granted more access to power in this nation.
My congresswoman is exactly as old as President Biden. I can persuade her one vote to decline to approve Bidens request for 105 billion to support the military positions of Israel and Ukraine. Those of us in this country still have congess people who still need to approve this vote for punishment as versus the politics of natural disaster. In which we would accept that what we have witnessed on 10/07 was tribal thinkers of our tribal species going for broke. Going hell bent for leather. Let them have their leather sadisms, we have an easier apocalypse of idealistic 40 year old youths looking for a role to play. That was one early diagnosis abt the millenials that they wanted a role to play that would soak up all the dreams they had to share. Next one i meet i will tell them i can pay them 2 dollars an hour 5 days a week to be my Caliban . Meanwhile how can we stop this ammunition give away, the means and the methods are not even on line to deliver what President SOS has promised. To be sure the progressive caucus will believe we can progress to produce the ammunition deficit, but with the skeletons in our closet to add any more? Without Scotus pretending to be thoughtful independents, we and neither are the congress obligated to enact promises the executive makes from the memory of his heart. President Gerald Ford that is who I have got. Who i guess presided over our beautiful and chaotic exit in 75 from Nam. Well? My president has done it once. Let him show he has the Gerald Fords to decline to fight the biggest natural force in the bar. Long live the island nations England Usa and Japan. We seem not to be smart enough to protect our own interests in the long term maybe we can seduce Ireland and maybe Greenland into our orbit. We just are hamhanded dolts anyway you slice our history.
Loved this, Sam. So right on. What it all boils down to is: Classical Liberalism is realistic, pragmatic, and clearly our way out of the cultural and political quagmire we're enmeshed in now. Progressivism clearly at some point over the past decade or two lost the plot. Victimhood and identity obsession only pits groups against each other. And now we're seeing the fringe-left move into open Antisemitism territory, which is terrifying but, for those of us aware and paying attention, sadly not all that shocking. So-called "antiracism" itself has always been fundamentally racist by default. Contemporary progressivism is not about what it claims, social justice or equality: It's about power. We have a nutty fascistic Conservative party, and a radical fringe-left mob; together they will destroy us if we let them. We need the rational middle, which is most of us, including, by the way, most Asian, Hispanic and Black American voters. (Pew shows this clearly.)
Your summary simplifies the problem quite well and shows why the path forward is liberalism, not identity-obsessed extremism.
Some ad hominems here, and progressives are occasionally reduced to straw opponents, but here's one suggestion: "The only progress is social justice. The crimes of the past are so enormous that a concerted transfer of power and a dedicated period of catharsis and atonement are the only possible means of absolution."
I don't think anti-racists really believe in progress or absolution. I've searched for evidence that they do, but I don't find any. There is perpetual penance, but no progress. It's the equivalent of original sin, or a jeremiad with no actual call to grace.
This was a great idea, excellently done.
I am a Liberal so I naturally was nodding along with what you wrote.
After, I tried to think of an argument for the Progressive POV that for some problems you have to resort to an absolutist ethic, i.e., by any means possible.
I thought of the Abolitionists, the radical progressives of their time. Without them, slavery might have lasted longer. In the judgement of history, the Abolitionists were on the right side of history.
So, yes, I'm a Liberal but one who understands that history might yet mock my beliefs.
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
The first thing that strikes me is that even given the limits intrinsic to summary, you are creating a strong binary distinction between positions that are in practice and theory more often mixed or hybrid. Part of that is precisely that you are describing liberals and progressives in both of those registers. Distinctions that may seem sharply drawn at the level of theory--say, between "violence is agentive and anomalous" and "violence is structural" tend to mix or erode quite quickly between liberals and progressives when applied to particular situations. I also think your breakdown has the typical problem that these kinds of binary listings tend towards, which is they're generally set up to favor the loyalties or affinities of the person doing the breakdown--they are often a rhetorical sideways into "self and other".
Invariably when you dip into a particular thinker's instantiation of views on these subjects, there's more subtlety and complexity. Take "The West". The position that the "West is a region like any other" is an argument that many progressives take up in some form or another--Dipesh Chakrabarty's call for "provincializing the West" calls for restoring the West to that status intellectually and normatively; Fredrick Cooper and Jane Burbank's Empires in World History works to put European empires in global perspective in order to be far more specific about what is particular to Europe after 1500; Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony wants to do the same. On the flip side, there is a very substantial number of liberals across the spectrum of liberal thought who hold to some version or another of European exceptionalism, often in a positive sense, but not always. The degree to which those "tricks of governance, technology, etc." enabled imperialism--or were enabled by it--is also a discussion where you find liberals, progressives, and radicals in a variety of positions rather than in a strictly binary opposition.
Just to stick on this point for a second, if you go to the opposition of "imperialism ended, so that takes care of that" versus "there is no possibility of reform, only transfer of power in its entirety", not only is there a messy, complicated spectrum between those positions, but for those who do take the latter position, it's not primarily a charge of "hypocrisy", it's about what *structure* is, and about the moments in historical time where some sort of agentive possibilities open up in structures--e.g., it is not a complaint about the seeming insincerity of actors promising reform, it is an assessment that they will be unable to effect reforms even if they wish to do so.
I think this is where all of the binaries you're setting up amount to a kind of straw-man reading of oppositions over the situation in Palestine and Israel. For example, liberals tend to in general take seriously the constraints that authoritarian rule and material conditions impose on the exercise of political agency. No liberal that I've ever encountered would hold people in refugee camps in the middle of the 1983-85 famine in Ethiopia responsible for their failure to overthrow Mengistu and the Derg and therefore complicit in Mengistu's attacks on civilian and on their own starvation. Meaning that the argument that Gazans have the same degree of political agency as Israeli citizens, if it's one that liberals actually harbor, is deeply distinct from the kinds of arguments they would make about states, power and political agency otherwise. Similarly, Palestinian rights attract far *more* ardent attention from some progressives than many other struggles that seem similarly urgent or intersectional, which requires some recognition. (Moreover, the entire issue divides progressives internally, and not just along the lines of Jewish progressives v. non-Jewish progressives). Moreover, the emphasis on agency is very precisely one of the things that produces intense contradictions across the spectrum of opinion both in historical analyses and in thinking about the present--who is credited and exempted from responsibility is not a consistent or persistent kind of claim within liberal or progressive thought. E.g., your view that this situation is (like most) sui generis in some fashion is one that I think you'd find most liberals or progressives (or none of the above) harboring in some way if you were patient enough with their thinking and didn't just stick to one-note sloganeers. The problem with that, in the end, is that the contradictions that people can harbor within complexity are themselves frustrating or enraging or unhelpful.
What is one to do, for example, with Benny Morris doing detailed, responsible, thorough historical research and concluding that the state of Israel in fact has systematically tried to occlude the truth, which is that the Nakba happened more or less as many Palestinian intellectuals and advocates have claimed, and that Palestinians were in fact forced violently or coercively off of land with the deliberate intent of transferring it to Israeli ownership and then arguing that even though that's what happened and it needs to be admitted without flinching, he believes that it had to happen and should not be apologized for or undone. Indeed, at one time, Morris argued that this showed that future expulsions would have to occur, as a Jewish state could not exist with Muslims or Arabs within its borders. And yet Morris has also agreed that Israel's rule in the West Bank amounts to "apartheid" and even more recently, has conceded that barring some kind of peace that all sides accept, an exclusively Jewish state cannot possibly persist indefinitely, no matter how militarily powerful it is.
I think many intellectuals would exhibit similar complexity and contradiction when pressed for details, though many might not be as forthright or rigorous about it as Morris. I don't think those complexities would neatly align with your grid. I think many people in everyday contexts have similarly muddled or messy views of many things, and it ill-behooves any of us to sanctify our own positions by aligning them with the best part of a binary. Perhaps all of us should start where Morris started, which is just wanting to look at the way the world is and has been without trying to pre-empt realities that don't fit the grid. There are plenty of histories since 1960 where I don't think your sketch of what liberals believe about power, the West, progress, etc. conforms very well to the facts on the ground, or amounts to whistling past the graveyard. But there are also many histories where progressives, if and when they resemble your sketch, are doing the same. A more curious and self-reflecting way in might be to think that when people have come to some conclusion that seems liberal or progressive, they might be reasoning up from something real they've tried to grapple with--or have experienced--rather than reasoning down from abstractions.
Good piece. What has been shocking is the latent antisemitism that has showed its face, the numbers
increasing like Myrmidons and just as dangerous.
A good analysis imho from the Atlantic, which people have mocked, but I think he gets it right and takes apart the progressive left's narrative of 'decolonization' : https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/
βMy sense is that the current eruption of hostilities in Israel/Palestine may be the watershed moment in left-leaning discourse for β who knows? β a generation. It almost perfectly lays bare the liberal/progressive faultlines, which tended to be obscured in various points of common cause.β
Donβt worry Sam. Here comes Trump again to realign the left in common cause. Ironically he may have been the best President to deal with this single current situation. Declawing rather than empowering Iran, and firmly backing Israel with no required nod to the Progressives.
My daughter is a religion professor at the University of Chicago where she holds a distinguished chair as a Jewish historian, philosopher and professor of literature, and she says the campus has factions now. College campuses are getting scary over this war--when being in the middle, for Israel, for the Palestinian people, opposed to Hamas's rule, and in favor of the two-state solution that Hamas doesn't want, and opposed to Netanyahu's authoritarian moves has to be the answer if there ever is one. I am losing hope.
Thomas Friedman, who has covered Israel for the NYTimes for over thirty years says he has known every Israeli politician personally and that he does NOT know anyone in Netanyahu's cabinet because Netanyahu, like Trump, has brought on extremists. If Israel is to survive, moderation has to be the answer in their response to the inhumanity of Hamas.
I add only this: βAs a Jew, I need Israel. More precisely, I can live as a Jew outside Israel but not without Israel.β
βElie Wiesel (1928β2016), American author born in Romania, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps
This is insightful and useful. It clarifies the distinction between the Progressive and Liberal mindsets, makes sense of their affinities and frustrations, and helps me see that I am the one and not the other. Thank you!
Very spot on. I would only add that Progressives/Woke people/whatever one chooses to call them only pretend to be critical of power in general. In reality, they're critical of power they don't control or that is in the hands of people they hate, even if that power is used benevolently. To them, power, violence and the State are fantastic if they have it under their control; you see this most glaringly in the left's sudden support and admiration for the FBI, a stance that would have made you persona non grata in my far-left hometown back in the day. While Woke ideology is intentionally messy - a bit of Marcuse, a large dose of postmodernism, a Gramscian directive, a Marxist skeleton plus a hodgepodge of other intellectual cancers - they are steadfast disciples of Foucault in this respect. Not just in theory, but emotionally too.
I wish liberals were more proud of their Western heritage. After all, they wouldn't be liberals if not for Western ideas. We've really bitten the hand that fed us over the last century.
I totally see myself in this dichotomy on e liberal side. As such Iβm worried youβve drawn a straw man on the progressive side....but your depiction of progressives is definitely in line with what I perceive of the left. The pusillanimous responses by colleges has led me to where I shed the left label (which kills me as a left handed person) and Iβm on the verge of shedding the progressive label.
Iβve never been super deep into theory but I studied just enough Foucault to find his thoughts intriguing. There is much perception in how he analyzes power. Postmodern concepts certainly helped me understand and resolve the unease of growing up a minority in this nation. However Iβve been developing a sneaking suspicion over the past few years that in spite of its analytical prowess, such theory may not be productive systems for in guiding the use of power.
I sympathize with the Palestinian urge for a primal scream, but itβs blatantly obvious that Hamas is unfit for rule and must be destroyed. Iβve been disappointed in the apparent inability of the Progressive movement in holding this basic distinction. It makes me question whether the movement should be granted more access to power in this nation.
My congresswoman is exactly as old as President Biden. I can persuade her one vote to decline to approve Bidens request for 105 billion to support the military positions of Israel and Ukraine. Those of us in this country still have congess people who still need to approve this vote for punishment as versus the politics of natural disaster. In which we would accept that what we have witnessed on 10/07 was tribal thinkers of our tribal species going for broke. Going hell bent for leather. Let them have their leather sadisms, we have an easier apocalypse of idealistic 40 year old youths looking for a role to play. That was one early diagnosis abt the millenials that they wanted a role to play that would soak up all the dreams they had to share. Next one i meet i will tell them i can pay them 2 dollars an hour 5 days a week to be my Caliban . Meanwhile how can we stop this ammunition give away, the means and the methods are not even on line to deliver what President SOS has promised. To be sure the progressive caucus will believe we can progress to produce the ammunition deficit, but with the skeletons in our closet to add any more? Without Scotus pretending to be thoughtful independents, we and neither are the congress obligated to enact promises the executive makes from the memory of his heart. President Gerald Ford that is who I have got. Who i guess presided over our beautiful and chaotic exit in 75 from Nam. Well? My president has done it once. Let him show he has the Gerald Fords to decline to fight the biggest natural force in the bar. Long live the island nations England Usa and Japan. We seem not to be smart enough to protect our own interests in the long term maybe we can seduce Ireland and maybe Greenland into our orbit. We just are hamhanded dolts anyway you slice our history.
Loved this, Sam. So right on. What it all boils down to is: Classical Liberalism is realistic, pragmatic, and clearly our way out of the cultural and political quagmire we're enmeshed in now. Progressivism clearly at some point over the past decade or two lost the plot. Victimhood and identity obsession only pits groups against each other. And now we're seeing the fringe-left move into open Antisemitism territory, which is terrifying but, for those of us aware and paying attention, sadly not all that shocking. So-called "antiracism" itself has always been fundamentally racist by default. Contemporary progressivism is not about what it claims, social justice or equality: It's about power. We have a nutty fascistic Conservative party, and a radical fringe-left mob; together they will destroy us if we let them. We need the rational middle, which is most of us, including, by the way, most Asian, Hispanic and Black American voters. (Pew shows this clearly.)
Your summary simplifies the problem quite well and shows why the path forward is liberalism, not identity-obsessed extremism.
Michael Mohr
"Sincere American Writing"
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Some ad hominems here, and progressives are occasionally reduced to straw opponents, but here's one suggestion: "The only progress is social justice. The crimes of the past are so enormous that a concerted transfer of power and a dedicated period of catharsis and atonement are the only possible means of absolution."
I don't think anti-racists really believe in progress or absolution. I've searched for evidence that they do, but I don't find any. There is perpetual penance, but no progress. It's the equivalent of original sin, or a jeremiad with no actual call to grace.
Sam, I curse you for being one of the few people whose writing is smart and sensible enough to make me feel guilty for skimming.