A morally sober refutation of the 'progressive' libel against Liberalism, made all the more poignant by the recollection of your father's role in this story. I've always marvelled at how the Left sees all the errors of the post-war West as proceeding from Liberal ideology but regards the many wrongdoings committed in the name of Socialism/Communism as either personal failings of the leaders or unfortunate collateral casualties suffered for a higher purpose. Keep the 'French Reflections' coming!
On the mark. Today’s anti-liberals treat Cold-War liberal (even the Dissent left and the Public Interest) intellectuals as a simplistic monolith. I cut my intellectual teeth during the late 1950s/60s on the written arguments by what Harold Rosenberg called “a herd of independent minds” who loved nothing better than fighting with each other, despising Stalin, loathing Nixon, and debating—often defending—“Trilling’s “The Liberal Imagination.” Most were anti-Vietnam but also suspicious of the New Left’s romanticism.
I am assuming that the people you are talking about would fall into what I call New Deal liberals. That is liberals who support the economic policy that produced the postwar era that featured a shared prosperity in which people of all income quintiles saw similar percentage income gains.
Such liberals are different from the neoliberals of today who simply accept that the economy must necessarily operate in a way that income inequality rises over time. Those concerned about this inequality believe that only way to address it is through government redistribution programs.
Yes, they are included. Then, social justice meant political and economic equality of opportunity. But there was an interesting mix: Dwight Macdonald and Paul Goodman—hard to fit into that category.
I was young then, but social justice was separate from economic justice.
The social justice folks were concerned about civil rights, which operates in parallel with economic issues. Black folks made bigger economic gains in the 1940's through 1960's that they have in the past thirty years. But in terms of civil rights African Americans have made huge gains.
We *had* an economy that worked for everyone, which liberals abandoned in order to pursue a tax cut and war of choice ala George W Bush. The social left opposed the war, and they were right. The decision to run deficits to fight a war of choice destroyed the New Deal economy.
I suspect liberals did not know what they were throwing away, and when it collapsed in the 1970's, resigned themselves to the "neoliberal" solution imposed to solve the problems of the 1970's. And so economic liberalism withered on the vine.
But the social liberals, strengthened by their right calls on Vietnam, civil rights for women and for gay, have continued on strong as "the progressives, and have gradually moved into unfavorable terrain where they face serious resistance.
I sometimes ask anti-liberal friends of mine to give me a concrete picture of a society better than ours but without drawing on liberal principles. That isnt easy.
Thank you for remaining calm and cool enough - something I likely couldn’t manage- to expose the self-righteous/half-truthful intellectual Left in such a clear and succinct manner. I used to admire Chomsky for introducing me to more ‘critical of the West’ thought-but as I am aging, I am now seeing the flaws of manichean anti-Liberals.
Thank you for this timely discussion. I would like to complement that this kind of progressive view is still Western-centred, despite its decolonial claims. This is because in the Western sphere, the "liberal establishment" is usually connected to its injustices, and the imperialism of which is usually connected to tragedies in the "East" or "South". No matter how, the Western establishment is always at the centre, and the struggle of the East/South people they claim to care about is downplayed, if not ignored.
Contemporary Chinese intellectuals have noticed and analysed this paradox. Yao Lin (2024) used "Spectacularized Postcoloniality" to describe this. Ho-Fong Hung's new book, "The China Question" also criticised this tendency (maybe too harsh on figures like Noam Chomsky). Western progressive intellectuals, while despising liberal intellectuals, sometimes form a spiritual connection with authoritarian apologists, according to Lin. This is actually another face of the same coin of the problem you mentioned.
I would very much appreciate it if Western leftist and rival liberals could have honest discussions and debates with different voices from the rising power like China, which might be helpful to break this paradox and reveal more complexities of the history of the 20th/21st century.
Lin, Yao. "Brokered dependency, authoritarian malepistemization, and spectacularized postcoloniality: Reflections on Chinese academia." American Behavioral Scientist 68.3 (2024): 372-388.
Zhang, Chenchen. "Postcolonial nationalism and the global right." Geoforum 144 (2023): 103824.
Judging by the policies they enact, most liberals don't support "universal health care, more egalitarian taxation, environmental protections, the defense of voting rights, fair treatment for immigrants and refugees, [and] expanding public transport".
By and large, leading liberals over the past quarter century have abetted or outright supported and expanded the concentration of executive power and erosion of legal protections that are now enabling Trump. ICE didn't spring into existence in February of 2025, and neither did extrajudicial murder or the usurpation of war powers by the executive (among many others).
Like it or not, there are substantive political differences at work here that don't have anything to do with Stalin or the USSR (but trust a liberal to use Red-baiting to make their point!)
Point still stands. Come on, make a real argument and refute what I wrote. You can do it; I'm just a z-list SF writer and you're a top tier Substack intellectual. 😉
The "argument" is simply that what you wrote (esp in first paragraph) is just flat out wrong. Its nonsense.
An ad hominem would be if I said you were wrong about what Democrats believe or do *because* you have an idiotic picture in your bio which illustrates your intellectual infantility
But im just saying your claim is factually false. Thats it. Theres no logical chain there because one is not needed so no room for any fallacies. Brush up on your logic guy
That's not what an ad hominem is. An ad hominem is a criticism directed against a person, rather than their argument. I'd say that calling someone "cretinous" and then doubling down with more insults without actually addressing their claims qualifies.
If what I said is factually false, prove it. Cite some examples, or even just one. A real argument isn’t just saying ‘nuh-uh’ and calling the other person stupid.
As to “intellectual infantility”, getting mad about someone’s bio picture, insulting them because they have different views than yours, and being laughably misinformed about how reasoned arguments work, again, qualifies. Do better.
And the fit for this comment has been…Alastor the Radio Demon.
And for decades before that they collaborated extensively with the business interests that have undermined American democracy and hollowed out the middle class. Liberals still refuse to own the mistakes of the past fifty years. They were happy to work with the right when it suited them, and even now that they've reaped the whirlwind in the form of Donald Trump they resort to hand-wringing and Red-baiting instead of facing the real threat. I think liberal fear of the left has become pathological and unhealthy, and that this more than anything else has undermined left-liberal collaboration against the populist right.
In fact the liberal left in the US has done a great job of bureaucratising capitalism. Business leaders now are mostly crony capitalists who depend upon government spending or legislation for their wealth. It is no accodent that some of the wealthiest areas in the country are Democrat voting areas around Washington DC. Once the liberals saw how to use the government to make money for themselves they tried to make up a new morality to cover their lack of virtue.
There is this weird belief that communist countries would be straight up utopias if not for liberal interference. In the case of the Soviet Union, it’s just a huge slap in the face to all of the dissidents who risked their lives to speak out against what was going on there.
These "leftists" are strongly committed to pretending that fascism and racism don't exist. They call themselves leftists, but have only the most superficial left analysis. They are locked into an argument that the personal moral failings of social-democrats/liberals are the engine of history as if the political efforts of far right billionaires, evangelical churches, corporate and foreign lobbies, the oligarch controlled mass media, the racism and sexism of the public, all of those are just side effects of liberals who don't elevate and take direction from leftist savants.
Joe Biden and many other liberals were prominent supporters of the Iraq war. Biden was also a fanatical zionist well to the right of the likes of HW Bush and backed to the hilt israel's mass murder campaign in gaza. That is a feature he shares in common with Trump
The most "corrupt, aggressive and authoritarian administration in American history"? That would be FDR's 12 years as President. The only good that loathsome dictator did was after he was dead: the 22nd Amendment.
You are cleared eyed. about the Soviet Union. However, although I'm a Trump hater, I think your view of the current Administration is overwrought. And as to who is doing more damage to the country (the far left, liberals, or the Trumpsters) I think a clear eyed view like the one you applied to the Soviets and the Cold War would assess a photo finish.
I live in Portland, Oregon. Twenty years ago we had a great city and mostly well run state and local governments. There's still some great things in Portland and Oregon. Trump's rhetoric about the city was over the top. However, there's been a serious and real degradation in both the city and the state. The city motto ."The City That Works," used to be an accurate description of the place. How it's a cruel joke. And it isn't Trumpsters that did it.
The liberals and the far left have enacted one bad policy after another over the last couple of decades. We have a part of the city called Old Town. It was sort of a standard ski tow in the '50's and early 60's. Then a local Japanese American businessman led development efforts that transformed the place. There were still some isolated skid row elements, but overall it became a vibrant and exiting area. One element of that was the construction of a Chinese cultural center covering a whole city block. It's still there and I was down there for events closing out Chinese New Year's celebration this past weekend. The inside of it is beautiful and great. However, now you have to enter thru a specially reinforced steel door manned by two security guards. The sidewalks immediately surrounding the center are clear, but beyond that most of Old Town is a stinking, dirty mess. People lie on the sidewalks half dressed with needles laying around them. Storefronts are empty and abandoned. Trash is everywhere.
My neighborhood is mostly free of those types of things. However, in the 30 plus years I've lived here I've never seen so many "For Sale" signs. The reasons: the unbelievable local taxes that have been imposed and the sharp decline of many areas of town, like Old Town, that people used to like to go to. The downtown—once one of the nicest in the country—is hollowed out in many parts with major buildings selling for a fraction of the prices paid for them just a few years ago.
For a variety of reasons, I'm in for duration. Others: not so much. The people left can rail against Trump, pride themselves on open abortion until the day of birth, throw things at the ICE buildiing, get their pronouns straight and wallow in regret about "stolen land," but maybe a lot of them aren't looking in the mirror to see their role in some very bad things.
While your essay correctly identifies a clear distortion in how progressive historians interpret Cold War liberalism, you stop short of confronting the deeper problem in the framework itself.
The issue is not simply that certain historians misread evidence or exaggerate the influence of intellectuals. The problem lies in the structure of the analysis. The category “Cold War liberalism” is treated as if it were a coherent ideological project when historically it was nothing of the sort. Classical liberalism during the Cold War functioned as a broad intellectual framework that existed across both major parties. Its development occurred in real time through responses to unfolding geopolitical events rather than through the deliberate implementation of a unified ideological program.
The interpretation you are responding to intentionally collapses distinct analytical layers into one. It merges philosophical liberalism, political identity, and policy outcomes into a single category that does not actually exist. Once these elements are fused together, it becomes easy to attribute the outcomes of Cold War policy directly to liberalism as an ideology. That conclusion depends entirely on the framing choice that created the category in the first place.
This framing requires the acceptance of retrospective omniscience. Historical actors are evaluated as if they possessed the same knowledge available to modern observers. Their decisions are then measured against an idealized theoretical baseline rooted in utopian assumptions about political behavior and altruism, as though they were implementing abstract political theory rather than navigating a complex and uncertain geopolitical environment. The result is a narrative in which deviations from theoretical ideals are interpreted as ideological failure, bad faith, or both.
The problem is not that historians examine the past through a particular lens. Interpretation is unavoidable. The problem arises when the lens itself is accepted as valid without scrutiny. By imposing conceptual coherence on what was historically a fluid and reactive political environment, the framework manufactures the ideological unity it later claims to analyze.
Until that underlying construction is challenged, critiques of the conclusions alone will not fully address the problem.
A morally sober refutation of the 'progressive' libel against Liberalism, made all the more poignant by the recollection of your father's role in this story. I've always marvelled at how the Left sees all the errors of the post-war West as proceeding from Liberal ideology but regards the many wrongdoings committed in the name of Socialism/Communism as either personal failings of the leaders or unfortunate collateral casualties suffered for a higher purpose. Keep the 'French Reflections' coming!
Thank you!
On the mark. Today’s anti-liberals treat Cold-War liberal (even the Dissent left and the Public Interest) intellectuals as a simplistic monolith. I cut my intellectual teeth during the late 1950s/60s on the written arguments by what Harold Rosenberg called “a herd of independent minds” who loved nothing better than fighting with each other, despising Stalin, loathing Nixon, and debating—often defending—“Trilling’s “The Liberal Imagination.” Most were anti-Vietnam but also suspicious of the New Left’s romanticism.
I am assuming that the people you are talking about would fall into what I call New Deal liberals. That is liberals who support the economic policy that produced the postwar era that featured a shared prosperity in which people of all income quintiles saw similar percentage income gains.
Such liberals are different from the neoliberals of today who simply accept that the economy must necessarily operate in a way that income inequality rises over time. Those concerned about this inequality believe that only way to address it is through government redistribution programs.
Yes, they are included. Then, social justice meant political and economic equality of opportunity. But there was an interesting mix: Dwight Macdonald and Paul Goodman—hard to fit into that category.
I was young then, but social justice was separate from economic justice.
The social justice folks were concerned about civil rights, which operates in parallel with economic issues. Black folks made bigger economic gains in the 1940's through 1960's that they have in the past thirty years. But in terms of civil rights African Americans have made huge gains.
We *had* an economy that worked for everyone, which liberals abandoned in order to pursue a tax cut and war of choice ala George W Bush. The social left opposed the war, and they were right. The decision to run deficits to fight a war of choice destroyed the New Deal economy.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-deal-order-fell
I suspect liberals did not know what they were throwing away, and when it collapsed in the 1970's, resigned themselves to the "neoliberal" solution imposed to solve the problems of the 1970's. And so economic liberalism withered on the vine.
But the social liberals, strengthened by their right calls on Vietnam, civil rights for women and for gay, have continued on strong as "the progressives, and have gradually moved into unfavorable terrain where they face serious resistance.
Thank you!
I sometimes ask anti-liberal friends of mine to give me a concrete picture of a society better than ours but without drawing on liberal principles. That isnt easy.
Every day brings a reminder of how invaluable Stephen Holmes’s Anatomy of Antiliberalism is. Would love to see him do a new edition.
Thank you for remaining calm and cool enough - something I likely couldn’t manage- to expose the self-righteous/half-truthful intellectual Left in such a clear and succinct manner. I used to admire Chomsky for introducing me to more ‘critical of the West’ thought-but as I am aging, I am now seeing the flaws of manichean anti-Liberals.
Thank you for this timely discussion. I would like to complement that this kind of progressive view is still Western-centred, despite its decolonial claims. This is because in the Western sphere, the "liberal establishment" is usually connected to its injustices, and the imperialism of which is usually connected to tragedies in the "East" or "South". No matter how, the Western establishment is always at the centre, and the struggle of the East/South people they claim to care about is downplayed, if not ignored.
Contemporary Chinese intellectuals have noticed and analysed this paradox. Yao Lin (2024) used "Spectacularized Postcoloniality" to describe this. Ho-Fong Hung's new book, "The China Question" also criticised this tendency (maybe too harsh on figures like Noam Chomsky). Western progressive intellectuals, while despising liberal intellectuals, sometimes form a spiritual connection with authoritarian apologists, according to Lin. This is actually another face of the same coin of the problem you mentioned.
I would very much appreciate it if Western leftist and rival liberals could have honest discussions and debates with different voices from the rising power like China, which might be helpful to break this paradox and reveal more complexities of the history of the 20th/21st century.
Lin, Yao. "Brokered dependency, authoritarian malepistemization, and spectacularized postcoloniality: Reflections on Chinese academia." American Behavioral Scientist 68.3 (2024): 372-388.
Zhang, Chenchen. "Postcolonial nationalism and the global right." Geoforum 144 (2023): 103824.
Judging by the policies they enact, most liberals don't support "universal health care, more egalitarian taxation, environmental protections, the defense of voting rights, fair treatment for immigrants and refugees, [and] expanding public transport".
By and large, leading liberals over the past quarter century have abetted or outright supported and expanded the concentration of executive power and erosion of legal protections that are now enabling Trump. ICE didn't spring into existence in February of 2025, and neither did extrajudicial murder or the usurpation of war powers by the executive (among many others).
Like it or not, there are substantive political differences at work here that don't have anything to do with Stalin or the USSR (but trust a liberal to use Red-baiting to make their point!)
I’m sorry but your comment is downright cretinous
No substance ad hominem; you make my point for me.
Thats not an ad hominen, that's just an old fashioned insult. If you weren't a cretin you'd know the difference.
*ad hominem
Point still stands. Come on, make a real argument and refute what I wrote. You can do it; I'm just a z-list SF writer and you're a top tier Substack intellectual. 😉
The "argument" is simply that what you wrote (esp in first paragraph) is just flat out wrong. Its nonsense.
An ad hominem would be if I said you were wrong about what Democrats believe or do *because* you have an idiotic picture in your bio which illustrates your intellectual infantility
But im just saying your claim is factually false. Thats it. Theres no logical chain there because one is not needed so no room for any fallacies. Brush up on your logic guy
That's not what an ad hominem is. An ad hominem is a criticism directed against a person, rather than their argument. I'd say that calling someone "cretinous" and then doubling down with more insults without actually addressing their claims qualifies.
If what I said is factually false, prove it. Cite some examples, or even just one. A real argument isn’t just saying ‘nuh-uh’ and calling the other person stupid.
As to “intellectual infantility”, getting mad about someone’s bio picture, insulting them because they have different views than yours, and being laughably misinformed about how reasoned arguments work, again, qualifies. Do better.
And the fit for this comment has been…Alastor the Radio Demon.
And for decades before that they collaborated extensively with the business interests that have undermined American democracy and hollowed out the middle class. Liberals still refuse to own the mistakes of the past fifty years. They were happy to work with the right when it suited them, and even now that they've reaped the whirlwind in the form of Donald Trump they resort to hand-wringing and Red-baiting instead of facing the real threat. I think liberal fear of the left has become pathological and unhealthy, and that this more than anything else has undermined left-liberal collaboration against the populist right.
In fact the liberal left in the US has done a great job of bureaucratising capitalism. Business leaders now are mostly crony capitalists who depend upon government spending or legislation for their wealth. It is no accodent that some of the wealthiest areas in the country are Democrat voting areas around Washington DC. Once the liberals saw how to use the government to make money for themselves they tried to make up a new morality to cover their lack of virtue.
There is this weird belief that communist countries would be straight up utopias if not for liberal interference. In the case of the Soviet Union, it’s just a huge slap in the face to all of the dissidents who risked their lives to speak out against what was going on there.
These "leftists" are strongly committed to pretending that fascism and racism don't exist. They call themselves leftists, but have only the most superficial left analysis. They are locked into an argument that the personal moral failings of social-democrats/liberals are the engine of history as if the political efforts of far right billionaires, evangelical churches, corporate and foreign lobbies, the oligarch controlled mass media, the racism and sexism of the public, all of those are just side effects of liberals who don't elevate and take direction from leftist savants.
Joe Biden and many other liberals were prominent supporters of the Iraq war. Biden was also a fanatical zionist well to the right of the likes of HW Bush and backed to the hilt israel's mass murder campaign in gaza. That is a feature he shares in common with Trump
This is what will win the day for center liberals - more incessant whining about how unfairly they are treated. It's worked great so far!
You deserve the criticism
??
The most "corrupt, aggressive and authoritarian administration in American history"? That would be FDR's 12 years as President. The only good that loathsome dictator did was after he was dead: the 22nd Amendment.
Liberals betrayed liberalism.
You are cleared eyed. about the Soviet Union. However, although I'm a Trump hater, I think your view of the current Administration is overwrought. And as to who is doing more damage to the country (the far left, liberals, or the Trumpsters) I think a clear eyed view like the one you applied to the Soviets and the Cold War would assess a photo finish.
I live in Portland, Oregon. Twenty years ago we had a great city and mostly well run state and local governments. There's still some great things in Portland and Oregon. Trump's rhetoric about the city was over the top. However, there's been a serious and real degradation in both the city and the state. The city motto ."The City That Works," used to be an accurate description of the place. How it's a cruel joke. And it isn't Trumpsters that did it.
The liberals and the far left have enacted one bad policy after another over the last couple of decades. We have a part of the city called Old Town. It was sort of a standard ski tow in the '50's and early 60's. Then a local Japanese American businessman led development efforts that transformed the place. There were still some isolated skid row elements, but overall it became a vibrant and exiting area. One element of that was the construction of a Chinese cultural center covering a whole city block. It's still there and I was down there for events closing out Chinese New Year's celebration this past weekend. The inside of it is beautiful and great. However, now you have to enter thru a specially reinforced steel door manned by two security guards. The sidewalks immediately surrounding the center are clear, but beyond that most of Old Town is a stinking, dirty mess. People lie on the sidewalks half dressed with needles laying around them. Storefronts are empty and abandoned. Trash is everywhere.
My neighborhood is mostly free of those types of things. However, in the 30 plus years I've lived here I've never seen so many "For Sale" signs. The reasons: the unbelievable local taxes that have been imposed and the sharp decline of many areas of town, like Old Town, that people used to like to go to. The downtown—once one of the nicest in the country—is hollowed out in many parts with major buildings selling for a fraction of the prices paid for them just a few years ago.
For a variety of reasons, I'm in for duration. Others: not so much. The people left can rail against Trump, pride themselves on open abortion until the day of birth, throw things at the ICE buildiing, get their pronouns straight and wallow in regret about "stolen land," but maybe a lot of them aren't looking in the mirror to see their role in some very bad things.
Own it liberals and the far left!
While your essay correctly identifies a clear distortion in how progressive historians interpret Cold War liberalism, you stop short of confronting the deeper problem in the framework itself.
The issue is not simply that certain historians misread evidence or exaggerate the influence of intellectuals. The problem lies in the structure of the analysis. The category “Cold War liberalism” is treated as if it were a coherent ideological project when historically it was nothing of the sort. Classical liberalism during the Cold War functioned as a broad intellectual framework that existed across both major parties. Its development occurred in real time through responses to unfolding geopolitical events rather than through the deliberate implementation of a unified ideological program.
The interpretation you are responding to intentionally collapses distinct analytical layers into one. It merges philosophical liberalism, political identity, and policy outcomes into a single category that does not actually exist. Once these elements are fused together, it becomes easy to attribute the outcomes of Cold War policy directly to liberalism as an ideology. That conclusion depends entirely on the framing choice that created the category in the first place.
This framing requires the acceptance of retrospective omniscience. Historical actors are evaluated as if they possessed the same knowledge available to modern observers. Their decisions are then measured against an idealized theoretical baseline rooted in utopian assumptions about political behavior and altruism, as though they were implementing abstract political theory rather than navigating a complex and uncertain geopolitical environment. The result is a narrative in which deviations from theoretical ideals are interpreted as ideological failure, bad faith, or both.
The problem is not that historians examine the past through a particular lens. Interpretation is unavoidable. The problem arises when the lens itself is accepted as valid without scrutiny. By imposing conceptual coherence on what was historically a fluid and reactive political environment, the framework manufactures the ideological unity it later claims to analyze.
Until that underlying construction is challenged, critiques of the conclusions alone will not fully address the problem.
Thank you for this comment, which I very largely agree with