Why Are Liberals So Hateable?

Liberalism on life support. Revealed: What a liberal even is. And the most jaw-dropping detail of Trump's split from the Federalist Society.

Portrait Painting by Simmie Knox

Conservatives hate liberals, as they should. MAGA does too, with its usual gusto. And the left! Who can forget those rabid Chapo snarls at Hillary Clinton?

And liberals themselves, forget about it. Liberal hate liberals the most, hate their very own souls, wouldn’t take their own side in an argument, etc.

But where the nature of the hatred of liberals is plain—seething, unashamed, near-universal—the object of the hatred is considerably more elusive. In other words: What is a “liberal”?

First, what we are not.

“Liberals,” as the word is now used, aren’t rank-and-file civic-minded Americans who support individual rights, universal enfranchisement, equality before the law, liberty, and the consent of the governed.

I’m guessing we liberals are also no longer as Judith Shklar memorably described us: “the people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do.”

Instead, “liberals” have met the fate of other conceptual sinkholes for contempt: “elites,” “hipsters,” “the bourgeoisie.”

Liberals: complicit, weak-willed, inauthentic. Anxious about status, real estate, saying the wrong thing.

Liberals like their public tears; they weep for George Floyd or, say, “Dr. King.” But they despise the uncute, the undomesticated, the dangerous demands of revolution. They’re losers of elections, above all—did I say that? And handmaidens to Trump even as they profess to hate the Cheeto and simulate solidarity with tattooed Venezuelans who privately terrify them.

Liberalism: Stream It or Skip It?