“Donald J. Trump is president of the United States. And his surprise victory has finally energized American liberals and progressives. They are busy organizing what they call a ‘resistance’ to everything he stands for.” This is an astute little volume of immeasurable value, which at a mere 141 pages, wide-margined and readable within a day, is likely to render books over 200 pages arduous by comparison. Given its length, it is all the more incredible that Mark Lilla’s volume is packed with such wit and wisdom. If more authors modeled the length of their work after this, and emulated their judgement after his, the prognosis for the future of liberalism - and of American politics as a whole - would be much brighter indeed.
Lilla focus is not the impeachment of president Trump, but the quest by some to secure the eradication of all forms of discrimination, in all its forms, and the rectification of injustices perpetrated against varying racial and gender groups. Lilla laments that while such efforts are noble and have deep roots in the history of America’s civil rights movement, they are ill-fated at best. Obnoxious, misguided and coercive (the list could go on) go a long way in describing the nature of identity politics. Leaders of these movements encourage social media mobs, rallies and “acting out”, publicly humiliating and threatening the livelihood of their opponents; it is well known that such “woke” warriors go out their way to make the lives of anyone with the gall to disagree with them - even their fellow progressives - a waking nightmare. Not only do they disdain engagement and persuasion, but they bear the unfortunate distinction of being wrong about the world around them, which they see as an arena of racial, gender and sexual-orientation contingents, each of which enlarges their status as victims through grievances no one but themselves can claim. They demand that society correct discrimination, whatever form it may take, to whatever extent they deem fit. To many Americans, Lilla included, identity movements appear quixotic or repulsive.
The closest historical analogue of identity movements, or identity politics (Lilla calls one concept by both names), is the civil rights movement. Lilla contrasts the aims and methods of identity politics with those MLK. Identity movements are notorious for their singleminded focus on features that only some Americans have, such as “transgendered”, “black”, or “gay”. This narrow focus is the primary cause of movement's increasing myopia and self-absorption. The civil rights movement appealed to a broad swathe of American, that is, to anyone who could see for themselves that black Americans were endowed with the all same capabilities as themselves. MLK’s movement succeeded because it “shamed America into action by consciously appealing to what we share, so that it became harder for white Americans to keep two sets of books…one for ‘Americans’ and one for ‘Negroes’.” In other words, MLK pointed to a universal ethic, shared by reasonable Americans, and in so doing, exposed the hypocrisy of those who argued otherwise.
Liberals got into the habit of treating every issue as one of inviolable right, leaving no room for negotiation, and inevitably cast opponents as immoral monsters, rather than simply as fellow citizens with different views.
For identity politics, the appeal - where indeed appeals to bystanders or opponents are actually made - is to the unique experiences of a particular racial, gender, or sexual identity group, a move which by its nature insulates any claims or demands of the identity from evaluation or criticism. The result is a contradiction: "When speaking about themselves, [identity liberals] want to assert their differences and react testily to any hint that their particular experience or needs are being erased. But when they call for political action to assist their group X, the demand it from people they have defined as not-X and whose experiences cannot, they say, be compared with their own."
Several other problems plague the identity movement. Identity is a double-edged sword, and framing issues exclusively in terms of identity is good for a group until its opponents do the same: “Those who play one race care should be prepared to be trumped by another, as we saw subtly and not so subtly in the 2016 presidential election.”
Furthermore, identity politics has adopted an all-or-nothing approach to engaging opponents. Lilla singles outs leaders, such as those of the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), who demand that white Americans agree with them on every case BLM says constitutes racial discrimination. This, of course, says Lilla, is to set the bar for agreement far too high.
Contemporary identity movements may not model the civil rights movements of the past, but according to Lilla, they do have their origins in an increasingly elitist Democratic party. This indictment sounds odd being launched at a movement purportedly so sensitive to the needs of the oppressed as is contemporary identity movements, but Lilla makes as strong as case as there is.
Following the Democratic convention of 1968, Democratic party rules were rewritten. The effect was to marginalize "blue-collar unions and public officials" who represented the party's foundation, and replace them with "educated activists". For reasons omitted from Lilla's account, the rules robbed the party of people fluent in engaging both "educated liberal elites and the Democrats' voting base", in other words, those people "keeping the elites informed about the political weather outside and suggesting when to take an umbrella."
The Democratic party narrowed its base even more with its decision to use courts to achieve political ends, rather than the legislative process. Passing legislation involves "the patient work of finding out where people stand, trying to persuade them, and building a social consensus". We could add compromise, negotiation and balancing relative goods. By contrast, pushing your agenda through court is different: "all you have to do is present your case as a matter of absolute legal right, and the only people you have to persuade are the judges assigned to your case." For Lilla, the inability of identity movements to compromise, their all-or-nothing approach, and make-your-opponent-your-enemy view of the world stem in part from the once effective, but now disastrous reliance on the courts. Once again, Lilla’s observation serves readers well: liberals got into "the habit of treating every issue as one of inviolable right, leaving no room for negotiation, and inevitably cast opponents as immoral monsters, rather than simply as fellow citizens with different views." The election of Donald Trump represents for Lilla the culmination of ill-considered Democratic policy.
The corrective to movement politics isn’t more rallies, protests or further disengagement from institutional politics. Winning elections, engagement, compromise and persuasion will secure the protections won for African-American, women and gays. Lilla declares the age of movements politics over and assures readers that, rather than more marchers, "we need more mayors. And governors, and state legislators, and members of Congress".
Comparisons of identity politics to religious fundamentalism are nothing new, so Lilla joins a large choir when he observes that identity politics stifles questions to its legitimacy and that its members employ coercion to squash dissent. Lilla's gift lies not so much in what he says so much as in how he says it. Identity politics has become characterized by “relentless speech surveillance, the protection of virgin ears, the inflation of venial sins into mortal ones, the banning of preachers of unclean ideas…”; these are oppressive elements that “have their precedents in American revivalist religion.” Such behavior indicates that "spiritual conversion, not political agreement, is the demand.”
Despite its obvious merits, the book warrants two words of criticism. Lilla’s complaint of “a shameless and massively influential right-wing media complex” sounds odd given that the same can be and is said of media on the left. Left-leaning media dominates cable news, and even if it performs worse than the Right on talk radio, left-leaning media remains the prevailing ideology on late-night comedy shows, of which there are more than a few. Given recent media scandals, it may be more fitting to direct opprobrium to shameless and massively influential media, period.
This isn’t Lilla’s only cheap shot. He correctly contends that Republican congresses stymied Clinton and Obama’s efforts to advance agendas. But, no kidding - what else would they do? It's generally what opposition does, whatever the party. No one would contend that a Democratic congress has proved any less obdurate in acquiescing to the legislative wishes of a Republican president; nor is anyone holding their breath that it will happen in the future.
These quibbles aren't with Lilla’s ideology as such but with his diverging from an otherwise well-reasoned and evenly presented argument. The remarks mentioned above struck me as flippant and naive. Thoughtful readers deserve thoughtful authors, and democratic politics both deserve and is in desperate need of the honesty and clear-headedness characteristic of Lilla’s book.
In sum, there is little in the book that those on the left should find disagreeable, even if The Once and Future Liberal counts as tough love. Centrists and readers on the right are certainly not off the hook. Both camps should recognize in Lilla’s criticisms of identity politics the rise of similar trends in their own back yards. The beauty of The Once and Future Liberal is that even though written by a liberal, for liberals, nearly everything in it applies to America as a whole.