Who are the Extremists? Contemporary 'Liberals'

Steven F. Hayward:

But the sound and fury against the Tea Party is a sideshow.  The second aspect of the current partisan divide reveals the real extremism in politics today, and it isn’t to be found among Tea Partiers.  The complaint against the supposed “extremism” of the Tea Party is nowadays followed by a much more risible lament: that the very design of our government is to blame for “gridlock” and the increasing conflict between the two parties in Washington.  Supposedly serious people have written in the last couple weeks that Tea Partiers should be arrested and charged with treason or sedition for causing the government shutdown.  More frequent are the calls for abolishing the Senate because of its equal representation of small states and out of frustration with the filibuster.  A couple of liberal pundits, like the usually more sober-minded Jacob Heilbrunn at the National Interest, have suggested abolishing Congress altogether.  And New York Times columnist Thomas “China-Is-Awesome” Friedman periodically recycles his fantasy that we could be “China for a day” so that his favorite authoritarian wish list could be imposed without our democratic consent.

This is not a brand new phenomenon.  Starting with Woodrow Wilson, “progressives” (to use a name more accurate than “liberal”) have complained that our various mechanisms of “checks and balances” prevent government from being more “effective.”  This is just code for the liberal desire that its opposition should simply shut up, surrender, and submit to their rule unquestioned.  It is a liberalism that has grown too lazy to argue with—or even tolerate—opposition, which is what happens when you come to believe that you embody “the side of history.”  This display of contempt for the institutions of democratic deliberation reveals today’s progressives to be highly undemocratic—and illiberal, too.  With their will to power checked as intended by our founders, the Left is letting out a primal scream.

Related articles

Extremists

I Too Was Once a Democrat!