Thompson at Large

To say I grew up fascinated with politics and current events is an understatement. It was closer to fervor. I tracked causes and candidates as most junior high aged boys in my Ohio hometown tracked batting averages and NFL trades. Raced my dad for the new issue of Time, seldom missed the Sunday TV news shows, wrote outspoken letters to the editor. The more I joined the fray — ideas in action — the more I wanted to.

It was a time — mid-1970s — when liberalism still encompassed Robert F. Kennedy’s conviction that “the individual … the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups and states exist for that person's benefit.” Civil rights and women’s rights stood for equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or gender. I was proud to call myself that kind of liberal. Then the strangest thing happened: both movements turned against their core principles.

The civil rights movement betrayed Dr. King’s commitment to color-blind public policy when it embraced a form of reverse discrimination called affirmative action. Likewise, feminists violated their movement’s early commitment to gender equity by demanding special preferences for women and waging war against males. Amazingly, both camps encouraged followers to start thinking of themselves as dependent “victims.” Americans who valued initiative, self-reliance, and independence were to be scorned.

Still more surreal: this novel movement called itself “progressive.” Equal opportunity? So yesterday! These fierce utopians demanded nothing less than uniform economic and social outcomes, regardless of personal motivation, training or skill.

I wasn’t alone in hoping this regressive detour from mainstream American values would be short-lived. Sadly, liberalism in the 1980s-90s descended further into resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. Derrick Bell of Harvard Law School actually declared Clarence Thomas ineligible for the Supreme Court because he “doesn’t think like a black.” He meant: a black man who thinks for himself equals dangerous diversity.

But it was September 11, 2001 — specifically the response of leading left-wing intellectuals to the day’s horrific events — that made clear liberalism’s detour had become a lemming stampede off the cliff of common sense.

Remember Susan Sontag clearing her throat for the "courage" of the suicide pilots? Norman Mailer snidely comparing the dead of 9/11 to "automobile statistics”? Gore Vidal insinuating that Bush and Cheney had advance knowledge and allowed the attack to happen? Noam Chomsky insisting that al Qaeda at its most atrocious is no worse than the United States on an average day?

Appalling, yet frankly not surprising. Out of the corner of my eye I had been tracking the left’s mounting incoherence. I had rolled my eyes and smiled at the howling rage of liberals when President Ronald Reagan dared to describe the Soviet gulag state as “evil.” Many also mocked Reagan’s straightforward Cold War strategy: “We win, they lose.” I was willing to bet John F. Kennedy would have stood with Reagan, given that both men had traveled to the Berlin Wall to champion freedom for the imprisoned people of East Germany.

It took me a while to accept that contemporary liberalism had broken with the classical liberalism of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. My book Leaving the Left describes how, blinders removed, I recognized America as a place individuals can be trusted to make the primary decisions that shape their lives and the lives of their children. Hats off to Reagan for nailing it: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”