I have observed that the biggest critics and strongest criticisms of liberalism isn’t from the right, but by those very liberals themselves. I first noticed this in 2019-2020, what I have dubbed the so-called ‘smart left‘ or the ‘reactionary-left‘, which describes a growing trend among highly-educated liberals who are increasingly willing to hold the left accountable for its own failures, not merely assign blame to the right.
Recently, this is exemplified by Aurelien’s viral door-stopper-sized indictment of liberalism, “Alone With Our Thoughts. Lost in the supermarket of opinions,” which takes aim at the ‘liberal project’ head on, writing: “Problems like climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the effects of Long Covid, or the progressive economic and social collapse of western states are not exactly hiding from us, but our societies and those responsible for taking decisions seem intellectually paralysed before them.”
The left’s valorization of individualism and the elevation of identity politics has come at the cost of intellectual inquiry, social cohesion, and are a distraction from solving pressing social problems. Individualism and deconstruction leads to anomie and confusion. Continuing, “The assault on even the attempt to find some kind of usable accepted truth, the deconstruction of everything until deconstruction ate itself, and most of all the obsessive creation and sustenance of the alienated individual, with no past, no history, no culture and no society, indeed no function but consumption, has produced a society where we are abandoned in the name of freedom.”
With trust in institutions at record lows, this has led to much needed introspection and reflection. As seen in higher ed, the left have become the conformists they once deplored. Finally, such conformity is being challenged, or at the very least acknowledged. In a recent article from the NYTs “‘We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed,” educators reflect on how universities have ‘lost the plot’ by prizing ‘diversity of identity’ over diversity of ideas, and wrongly placing advocacy or politics above education:
Beilock: Oh, you definitely name-called. Instead of doing that, I think our responsibility as presidents should be to look at what we’re doing and how we can do it better, certainly in concert with the federal government, and be clear and defend our rights and values, whether that’s free expression, academic freedom, and understand that’s our responsibility to the American people, where trust in higher education is low.
As leaders, we lost our mission a bit about what higher education was about. We’re educational organizations. We’re not political organizations, like the R.N.C. or D.N.C. We’re not even social advocacy organizations.
It’s not necessarily about partisan politics either. Such dissatisfaction is seen on either side of aisle, not just hidebound conservatives or reactionaries, only that some of the targets are different. For ‘the left’, it’s academics blaming AI for cheating, or shortened attention spans. For ‘the right’, it’s about cultural change, (e.g. immigration). Either way, there is the proverbial whipping boy that is liberal democracy, which can’t catch break on either side of the aisle. Every month it seems there is a new article about the “crisis of liberal democracy:”
Whether it’s the loss of social trust, shortened attention spans, or lowered academic standards, what hasn’t yet been blamed on liberalism?
A common theme is a shared nostalgia for past that held the virtues that today’s society is lacking. Contrast the optimism about technology that characterized the Chicago World’s Fair of the 1930s, the Cold War-era Space Race, and the Information Age of the ’90s, to the pessimism that dominates discourse today. There has been a 180 degree change in sentiment from technology being a savior or the solution, to now at the root of every problem–whether it’s mental health problems, unemployment due to AI, or even conspiring to kill us (AI risk).
Such dissatisfaction with modernity is also seen in the stories that go viral. The Atlantic has undergone a big pivot over the past five or so years in critiquing society, particularly what it perceives as ‘ills of modernity’, than only attacking ‘the right’, although it does have the obligatory anti-Trump articles, as many subscribers still expect to be fed their daily dose of ‘Trump is bad’. But if you ignore those, The Atlantic does have its finger on the pulse of society and trends quite well. Many of the themes of these articles both sides can relate to, like the rise of overprotective/helicopter parenting, the dangers of too much screen time (even for adults), or how AI makes people helpless, and, of course, the so-called ‘loneliness epidemic’.
Articles about the surge of excessive college disability accommodations, followed equally viral articles about the post-Covid epidemic of remedial math. The fact these stories went so viral reflects the shared, bipartisan complaint that the ‘state of higher ed’ is broken. And what little learning there is has been outsourced to AI. Students graduate unprepared for a job market where those same AI tools now work against them. Or how smartphones and social media have obliterated what little remains of attention spans. Or how complicated issues are distilled to sound bites, and how social media platforms seek to maximize engagement (e.g. clickbait or AI slop) at the cost of the mental health of their users.
Liberals and conservatives alike can agree that overprotective parenting and the ‘coddling of society’ has gone too far. For example, the article “CPS investigated her 4 times because she let her kids play outside,” went viral on Hacker News, with many comments in agreement that ‘Child Protective Services’ has too much power. As the user “rokkamokka” writes, “Pure insanity. A world where children cannot be independent is a world where they never learn to be independent.”
Today, it goes without saying people are less trusting of each other, but at the same time, such caution is not without justification, as videos also go viral on Twitter of public disorderliness. A day does not go by without a viral video of an altercation between customers or employees at a store or between citizens and law enforcement. The viral subway fight has become a quotidian part of 21st-century American life:
@eth8n_____ Help me find Karen – 77th and lex train stop #karen #fyp #viral #assault #subway ♬ original sound – eth8n_____
So there is a sort of contradiction in this sense: If society is becoming less safe, the rational response is caution. For liberal democracy to work requires a high trust society, yet this is undermined by ‘softness on crime’ or too much tolerance, creating a situation in which liberal democracy also enables its own destruction.
Even the Democrats can no longer summon the enthusiasm to defend their leaders. When Nancy Pelosi in 2025 retired as House Democratic leader, it was met with a collective sigh of relief that her alleged insider trading would no longer be a distraction and easy fodder. Rather than defending Biden against accusations of senility, the DNC quickly mobilized a new candidate, who crashed and burned so badly the Democrats, for a change, couldn’t blame Trump their failure. Similarly, no has come to the defense of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over an alleged $4 million fraud scheme under his watch.
Shame is no longer an effective deterrent either. The biggest reveal from the Epstein files wasn’t about Trump, but how it came to light Larry Summers had solicited advice from Epstein, as if the public’s opinion about higher ed couldn’t be any lower. Additional photos of Clinton were met with indifference; the public had long since written him off as lacking any moral standing. In the past, this would have been met with collective gasps of disbelief or outrage, to now just “meh”.
Either way, there’s the widespread perception or agreement that that the people who have been entrusted with power or to provide moral guidance, have abdicated those roles for personal gain over principles. To say that there is a crisis of leadership rests on the assumption that our leaders had any intention to lead in the first place. The do-nothing Congress continues to dither as Americans struggle with rising living expenses, and no relief in sight. Trump pardoning a fraudster (which one?) was met not only with anger online by his very supporters, but again reaffirms that the elite are a protected class.
In conclusion, whatever you want to call it or how you diagnose it–whether it’s ‘vibecession’, disillusionment, or discontent–something is greatly wrong with society. Criticisms of perfidious, short-sighted leadership cross ideological lines. Liberal democracy has clearly not lived up to the high expectations placed on it, and technology cannot be be relied upon to fix it. But second, institutions are made up of people, and along with it greed, short-sightedness and other familiar weaknesses of human nature.