The Decline: Liberalism on the Ropes

The slow death of liberalism is not something you can mark and point to on a calendar. No monuments will be built to commemorate its passing. There won’t be a funeral, no chorus of mourners gathered in the streets. There’s something far too theatrical about the notion of liberalism collapsing in a blaze of glory or being toppled by some grand, dramatic event. That’s not how things work anymore. Not here, not in the modern age. Ideologies don’t die with a bang; they die with a shrug, a sideways glance, a halfhearted “meh” from people who are just too tired to care anymore. Liberalism is fading, and it’s not being violently overthrown or heroically defended. It’s just being left out in the rain until it quietly rusts away.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when this started, or even what “this” is exactly. Maybe it was when liberalism stopped feeling like an ideology and started feeling like a brand. Like something you’d see slapped on a pair of shoes in a department store or advertised by a well-meaning but dead-eyed celebrity on Instagram. It became all about appearances, a sort of political lifestyle choice for people who wanted to feel progressive without having to think too hard about what that meant. It got boiled down to slogans and hashtags, a feel-good aesthetic that you could slap on a bumper sticker or a reusable water bottle. “Equality!” “Justice!” “Hope!” And sure, those words mean something — until they don’t. Until they become so vague, so toothless, that they could mean anything to anyone.

Liberalism was always a strange beast, promising freedom and progress while quietly relying on the structures of power it claimed to oppose. It sold itself as the ideology of reason and pragmatism, a middle path between the chaos of revolution and the suffocating rigidity of conservatism. But over time, it calcified into something just as rigid, just as unwilling to adapt or confront its own contradictions. It became complacent, coasting on the victories of the past while ignoring the growing cracks in its foundation. Sure, it gave us some nice things — civil rights, voting rights, the illusion that the system could be fixed from within — but at what point do those victories become relics of a bygone era? At what point does liberalism stop being a living, breathing ideology and start being a museum exhibit?

Look around and you’ll see the symptoms everywhere. Politicians who call themselves liberal but can’t seem to muster the energy to actually fight for anything. Institutions that claim to uphold liberal values but buckle under the slightest pressure. A public discourse so saturated with cynicism and disillusionment that even the most basic liberal principles — freedom of speech, equality under the law, the idea that maybe we shouldn’t let people starve to death in the streets — are now up for debate. It’s not that people are storming the gates and demanding the end of liberalism; it’s that they’re walking away, one by one, until there’s no one left to defend it.

And who can blame them? Liberalism’s promise of progress has always been just that — a promise. A vague assurance that things will get better someday, if only we keep tweaking the system and trusting the process. But what happens when that promise starts to ring hollow? What happens when people realize that “progress” usually means “incremental changes that barely make a dent in the status quo”? What happens when the system you’re supposed to trust keeps churning out the same old injustices, over and over again?

It’s not just that liberalism has failed to deliver on its promises — it’s that it doesn’t even seem to understand why people are angry. The liberal response to dissatisfaction is always the same: “Be patient. Be reasonable. Trust the process.” But patience is a luxury most people can’t afford, and reasonableness feels like a cruel joke when you’re staring down a system that is fundamentally unreasonable. The process? The process is a meat grinder, and everyone knows it. Telling people to trust the process is like telling a cow to trust the guy with the bolt gun.

Liberalism loves to position itself as the adult in the room, the voice of reason in a chaotic world. But lately, it feels more like the guy in the burning house who insists everything’s fine as long as we follow the proper evacuation procedures. It’s not that liberalism doesn’t see the problems — it sees them, all right. It just doesn’t have the guts to do anything about them. It wants to fix the system without breaking it, to challenge power without actually threatening it. But you can’t change a system that’s built to resist change, and you can’t challenge power without taking the risk that power might hit back.

So instead, liberalism has become a kind of performative wokeness, a surface-level commitment to progress that never goes beyond the symbolic. It’s the politician tweeting “thoughts and prayers” after every tragedy, the corporation slapping a rainbow flag on its logo during Pride Month while quietly funding anti-LGBTQ legislation, the endless parade of “diverse” movie casts that somehow don’t include any writers or directors of color. It’s the idea that we can change the world by shopping at the right stores and voting for the right candidates and using the right pronouns. And sure, those things aren’t bad — but they’re not enough. They’re never enough.

The truth is, liberalism isn’t equipped to deal with the crises of the modern world. Climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, the rise of authoritarianism — these aren’t problems you can solve with a clever policy proposal or a bipartisan compromise. They’re existential threats that require radical solutions, and radical solutions are the one thing liberalism can’t stomach. It’s too invested in the idea of gradual progress, of working within the system, of finding common ground with people who would gladly burn the whole world to the ground if it meant keeping their power intact.

And so, liberalism stagnates. It clings to the idea that it can save itself by being nicer, smarter, more reasonable than its opponents. It refuses to acknowledge that its opponents don’t care about niceness or reasonableness or the sanctity of the democratic process. It’s like watching someone try to play chess with a pigeon that’s just going to knock all the pieces over and crap on the board. The game is rigged, and liberalism is too polite to call it out.

Meanwhile, the people who are most affected by the failures of liberalism — the poor, the marginalized, the ones who were promised freedom and equality and got empty slogans instead — are starting to look elsewhere for answers. Some turn to the far left, hoping for the kind of radical change that liberalism can’t provide. Others turn to the far right, seduced by the promise of simple solutions to complex problems. And then there are the ones who just give up entirely, retreating into apathy or despair or the comforting numbness of a Netflix binge.

None of this is to say that liberalism is inherently bad, or that it’s responsible for all the world’s problems. It’s just… tired. Played out. It’s an ideology that made sense in the 18th century, when the biggest threats to freedom were kings and aristocrats, but it feels increasingly out of place. Liberalism was built for a different world, and it hasn’t done a great job of adapting to the one we live in now.

Maybe this is just the way ideologies die — not with a bang, but with a whimper. Not with a dramatic collapse, but with a slow, quiet fading into the background. Maybe someday we’ll look back on liberalism the way we look back on feudalism or the divine right of kings: as something that made sense at the time but couldn’t survive the weight of its own contradictions. Or maybe it’ll just linger on in the background, like a ghost that doesn’t realize it’s dead, haunting the institutions it helped build but no longer has the power to control.

In the meantime, we’re left with the wreckage — the crumbling institutions, the broken promises, the vague sense that something has gone terribly wrong but no one knows quite what to do about it. And maybe that’s the scariest part: the realization that there’s no grand villain to blame, no cataclysmic event to point to, no easy answers or quick fixes. Just a slow, grinding decline, a quiet fade into irrelevance, and the uneasy feeling that we’re all just along for the ride.

This Was Liberalism

Liberalism is not a word that stirs the soul. It doesn’t march into the room waving a revolutionary banner or hammer its theses onto a Church door. It is quieter, subtler, almost banal in its connotations. Beneath that mildness lies an idea that once carried the weight of the world. Liberalism is a story, a set of principles, a promise. It is the belief that humans, left to their own devices, can build a better world. It is the faith that individuals, given liberty, can chart their own course, and that societies, if structured around reason and tolerance can thrive. For centuries, liberalism was the thread holding together democracy, human rights, free markets, and the slow march of progress. It was the gentle voice that whispered, “This can work.”

Liberalism itself emerged as a rebellion — a response to the suffocating grip of monarchy, feudalism, and theocracy. The premodern world was one of rigid hierarchies, where your station in life was fixed and ordained, where kings ruled by divine right, and the church told you where you stood in the grand celestial order. Your birth determined your future, and questions of liberty and individual choice were as alien as the concept of electricity. To exist in such a world was to be a cog in a machine whose purpose you could not question, let alone alter.

Then came the Enlightenment, and with it, the radical idea that human beings were not simply subjects of fate but agents of their own destiny. Liberalism’s roots are found in this intellectual upheaval, in the works of thinkers like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Immanuel Kant. Locke, in particular, was revolutionary in his assertion that individuals had natural rights — life, liberty, and property — that no king or priest could take away. His social contract theory turned the world on its head, suggesting that governments existed not to rule over people but to protect their freedoms. And if they failed in that task? The people had the right to dissolve them.

Kant added a philosophical backbone to these early stirrings, arguing for the inherent dignity of every individual. To him, the ability to reason was what made humans worthy of respect, and this reasoning capacity meant that people were ends in themselves, not means to an end. It was a rejection of authoritarianism in every form, a plea for autonomy and mutual respect. Mill took these ideas and ran with them, advocating for liberty not just as a moral good but as a practical necessity. He saw the freedom to think, speak, and act as the engine of human progress. Without liberty, there could be no innovation, no improvement, no growth.

These thinkers, and many like them, built the philosophical scaffolding of liberalism, but the ideas didn’t remain in books. They spilled out into the world, becoming movements, revolutions, and constitutions. The American Revolution drew directly from Locke’s theories, enshrining life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in its Declaration of Independence. The French Revolution, despite its chaotic violence and rabid Jacobonism, was animated by the cry of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” Liberalism promised freedom from tyranny and the chance to create societies based on reason, fairness, and opportunity. It was a call to break free from the chains of tradition and to reimagine the world on rational, secular lines.

Liberalism can broadly be defined by four key principles: individual liberty, tolerance, moderation, and progress. These ideas were its foundation, its guiding stars, and its selling points. They were also, as we’ll see, its deepest contradictions.

First, there is individual liberty; the idea that the individual — not the state, not the church, not society — must be the ultimate unit of moral and political concern. You are free to think what you want, say what you want, believe what you want, and do what you want, as long as it doesn’t harm others. It’s a radical idea, even today, because it demands a fundamental reordering of power. Individual liberty is what allows people to challenge authority, to question dogma, to chart their own course. It is the reason we have free speech, free markets, and the right to vote. Without it, liberalism would be unrecognizable.

But individual liberty is not without its tensions. If everyone is free to pursue their own interests, what happens when those interests collide? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? Liberalism has always struggled with these questions, caught between the promise of absolute freedom and the reality of human interdependence. The principle of liberty is inspiring, but it is also fragile, easily twisted into license or trammeled by authority.

Next up, there’s tolerance, the idea that a good society is one that embraces diversity — not grudgingly, but willingly. Liberalism demands that we tolerate different religions, cultures, ideologies, and ways of life. It is the antidote to tribalism and dogmatism, the belief that people should be free to live as they choose, even if we disagree with them. Tolerance is what makes pluralism possible, what allows societies to function despite their differences. It is not about agreement; it is about coexistence.

But tolerance has its limits, doesn’t it? Should a liberal society tolerate those who seek to destroy it? Should it extend its protections to ideologies that reject liberty and reason? Liberalism’s answer has always been uneasy, trapped in the paradox of being a system that defends freedom while depending on shared rules. Tolerance, when stretched too far, can look like weakness. When stretched too little, it can look like hypocrisy. The line between the two is a tightrope that liberal societies have never walked with perfect grace.

Then there’s moderation, the least glamorous but most practical of liberalism’s principles. Moderation is the belief in balance, in avoiding extremes, in finding compromise. It’s the idea that political change should be gradual, not revolutionary; that power should be distributed and checked; that no single ideology or faction should dominate. Moderation is why liberalism favors democracy over dictatorship, negotiation over violence, and reform over revolution. It is a principle that prizes stability and order, believing that progress is best achieved through reasoned debate and incremental change.

But moderation can feel like inertia, especially in times of crisis. It can look like cowardice when bold action is needed. To those who suffer under injustice, liberalism’s commitment to moderation can seem like complicity. After all, the abolition of slavery wasn’t moderate. Neither was women’s suffrage or civil rights. These were radical breaks, achieved through struggle and sacrifice. Liberalism likes to take credit for these victories, but it often resists them until it has no other choice.

Finally, and loosely, there’s progress, the belief that the arc of history bends toward improvement. Liberalism is built on the faith that human reason, when left free, will solve problems and overcome obstacles. This is why liberal societies value education, science, and innovation. Progress is the promise that tomorrow will be better than today, that knowledge will grow, that technology will advance, and that society will improve. It is an optimistic creed, one that assumes human potential is boundless.

But progress is not a straight line, and it is not inevitable. For every step forward, there are steps back. For every medical breakthrough, there is a new form of destruction. For every expansion of rights, there is a resurgence of reaction. Liberalism’s faith in progress can feel naive in the face of war, inequality, and ecological collapse. It can sound like a lullaby, soothing but false. And it can lead to complacency, the assumption that problems will solve themselves if we just wait long enough.

These principles — liberty, tolerance, moderation, progress — are what define liberalism. They are its promises, its aspirations, its moral and political core. But they are also its contradictions, its tensions, its Achilles’ heel. Liberalism promises liberty, but struggles to balance individual freedom with collective responsibility. It preaches tolerance, but falters when faced with intolerance. It values moderation, but often drags its feet on issues of justice. It celebrates progress, but cannot guarantee it. These tensions are not flaws to be fixed; they are the essence of liberalism, the reason it endures and the reason it falters.

Liberalism has failed in many ways, both historically and in the present. It has been complicit in colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism’s excesses. It has been used to justify inequality, exploitation, and environmental destruction. Its promises of freedom and opportunity have often rung hollow, especially for those excluded from its benefits. But for all its flaws, liberalism remains one of the most ambitious and humane ideas humanity has ever conceived. It is a bet on reason over force, persuasion over coercion, and hope over fear.

The story of liberalism is not a straight line. It is a project, and it has always been incomplete, always contested, always at risk of being undone. Its principles are fragile, its promises uncertain. To some, this is its greatest strength. Liberalism does not claim to have all the answers. It does not demand absolute loyalty or impose a single vision of the good. It is a framework, a foundation, a starting point. It is the belief that we can do better, that we must do better, and that the work of building a freer, fairer, more tolerant world is never done.

Maybe that’s why liberalism feels so unremarkable, so mundane. It doesn’t promise utopia or revolution. It doesn’t burn with the passion of ideology. It’s just there, quiet and persistent, whispering its simple, radical truth: This can work. Or maybe it can’t. But it’s worth trying.

The Erosion

Liberalism’s slow erosion didn’t come from an external assault. It wasn’t overthrown by fascism (not entirely) or obliterated by communism (no matter hard they tried.) Its undoing has been quieter, subtler, and more ironic: it has been betrayed by its own ideals. The contradictions at its heart — those tensions between liberty and equality, progress and moderation, tolerance and coherence — have metastasized in a way that makes liberalism increasingly unable to respond to the world it created. What’s left is a framework that, while still functioning in many parts of the world, feels more like a malfunctioning machine: creaking, sputtering, patched up where it’s broken, but far from inspiring or capable of rising to meet the moment.

The most glaring contradiction in liberalism is that it presumes a rational world while existing in an irrational one. From its Enlightenment origins, liberalism has operated on the assumption that human beings, given freedom and access to reason, will make choices that benefit both themselves and the broader society. It places its faith in open debate, evidence, and the idea that truth will win out in the marketplace of ideas.

But we now live in a world where information overload and technological and emotional manipulation have made reason feel like a relic. People aren’t sifting through data and arriving at rational conclusions; they’re drowning in algorithmically-curated misinformation that preys on their emotions and biases. The marketplace of ideas has been hijacked by clickbait, outrage, and conspiracies. Liberalism’s foundational premise, that truth will naturally prevail in the light of reason, now feels quaint, if not naïve.

And liberalism doesn’t know how to address it. Liberalism wants to maintain neutrality, to be the referee that enforces the rules without dictating the outcome. But what happens when neutrality enables bad actors to exploit the very freedoms liberalism protects? This is the paradox we now see play out daily on social media platforms. Liberal societies value free speech, but how do you square that with the amplification of lies and hate at unprecedented scales? Platforms like Twitter and Facebook — products of liberal ideals in their rhetoric — have become battlegrounds where truth and reason rarely emerge victorious. 

Liberalism demands rules, but it despises arbiters. 

And so, the result is paralysis.

This same paralysis infects liberalism’s approach to power. Liberalism has always been suspicious of concentrated power, and for good reason — its birth was a direct response to the authoritarianism of kings and priests. It distributed power horizontally through democratic institutions, checks and balances, and the rule of law. But this aversion to power leaves it weak when confronted with movements or ideologies that operate ruthlessly and without restraint. Liberalism, by its nature, avoids zealotry, but zealotry doesn’t play by the rules. It dominates, it polarizes, it overwhelms. Whether it’s populist authoritarianism, far-right extremism, or illiberal ideologies on the left, these movements are adept at exploiting the very freedoms and structures that liberalism offers. Liberal societies, in contrast, seem incapable of mounting a decisive response. They hesitate, debate, and compromise, offering procedural solutions to existential crises.

This failure to respond decisively is clearest in liberalism’s handling of climate change — a challenge so vast that it demands the kind of coordinated, transformative action that liberal societies are almost structurally incapable of delivering. Liberalism’s faith in gradual progress, market solutions, and the rationality of individual choice has run aground in the face of an ecological crisis that doesn’t wait for quarterly reports or political cycles. Carbon emissions don’t negotiate. Rising seas don’t respect the pace of legislative reform. And yet, liberalism seems stuck in its own logic: market incentives, moderate policy shifts, and vague appeals to future innovation. The climate crisis exposes liberalism’s most fundamental flaw: its inability to act boldly in the face of collapse. It is, as critics often say, too slow for the times we live in.

What makes this erosion so insidious is that liberalism isn’t failing completely. The machinery still runs, albeit in fits and starts. Liberal democracies still function, in the sense that elections happen and laws are passed. Free markets still create wealth, though increasingly for the few rather than the many. Liberal societies still protect freedoms, though those protections often feel perfunctory rather than inspiring. Liberalism isn’t crumbling into chaos; it’s stagnating into irrelevance. Its institutions still exist, but their legitimacy is waning. Its ideals are still invoked, but more often as platitudes than as rallying cries. It’s as if liberalism is running on autopilot, moving out of inertia rather than conviction.

Part of this inertia comes from liberalism’s success in the 20th century. After the defeat of fascism in World War II and the collapse of Soviet communism in the late 20th century, liberalism emerged as the undisputed victor of history. For a time, it seemed unstoppable. Francis Fukuyama famously declared the “end of history,” suggesting that liberal democracy was the final stage of human political evolution. But in retrospect, this triumph planted the seeds of complacency. The Cold War gave liberalism a clear enemy, a reason to define itself and fight for its ideals. When that enemy disappeared, liberalism lost its narrative urgency. It no longer had to justify itself; it could simply exist. And in that vacuum, it began to rot.

The 21st century has been unforgiving to liberalism’s complacency. The rise of authoritarian populism across the globe has exposed its fragility. Leaders like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Jair Bolsonaro have shown how easily liberal institutions can be undermined from within. They use the tools of liberal democracy — elections, free speech, and legal systems — to erode the very foundations of those systems. Liberalism, with its reliance on rules and norms, struggles to counteract those who see rules as obstacles to be bypassed and norms as weaknesses to be exploited.

At the same time, liberalism faces a challenge from the left. The radical critique — rooted in postcolonial theory, intersectionality, and critiques of capitalism — argues that liberalism’s promises were always hollow, that it has merely served to mask power imbalances while perpetuating systems of exploitation and oppression. For these critics, liberalism’s claims of universality are a sham; its principles of liberty and equality are selectively applied. This critique isn’t new, but in the age of identity politics and heightened awareness of systemic injustice, it has gained significant traction. Liberalism’s insistence on incremental change and procedural fairness feels inadequate to those demanding the dismantling of entire systems of power. To many, liberalism doesn’t feel like a solution — it feels like the problem.

Caught between authoritarianism on the right and radical critique on the left, liberalism finds itself in a deeply uncomfortable position. Its ideals are being attacked from both sides, and its defenses feel increasingly flimsy. The very principles that once defined it — liberty, tolerance, moderation, progress — now seem like millstones around its neck. Each of them carries within it a contradiction that liberalism cannot resolve, and the weight of those contradictions is pulling it down.

For all its flaws, liberalism is hard to abandon. Its principles, however tarnished, still resonate. People still want freedom, fairness, and progress, even if they’re increasingly unsure of how to achieve them. Liberalism’s decline isn’t just the death of an ideology; it’s the unraveling of a framework that has shaped the modern world. And as we sit in this moment of disillusionment, as we watch liberalism falter, the question becomes: What comes next? Will we salvage its principles and adapt them to the challenges of the 21st century, or will we abandon them altogether and turn to something new, something unknown?

The future remains uncertain. Liberalism’s erosion has gone unmarked, but its absence will not. Something will fill the void it leaves behind — whether it’s authoritarianism, tribalism, or a new vision of human coexistence. For now, though, we are stuck in the middle of its slow unraveling, watching as the contradictions that were always there finally bring it to its knees. Liberalism hasn’t failed spectacularly. It has simply stopped working. And maybe, in the end, that’s an even sadder fate.

The Crisis

Liberalism’s decline isn’t just a political crisis — it’s an existential one. As its grip loosens, it feels as though we’re standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable, staring into a chasm where the world’s dominant story used to be. For centuries, liberalism promised us a kind of equilibrium. It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t always deliver on its promises, but it held the line between competing extremes. It offered a vision of a world where freedom and order, tradition and innovation, individual rights and collective good could coexist without destroying one another. Now, that vision is dimming. And as it fades, the shadows creeping in from both sides of the ideological spectrum grow darker and more menacing.

When liberalism falters, it doesn’t just leave an intellectual vacuum — it leaves an emotional one, a psychic void where meaning used to live. That’s the part people often miss. Liberalism wasn’t just a political system or an economic framework; it was a way of seeing the world, a kind of moral baseline that told us what mattered. It told us that liberty, dignity, and reason were worth pursuing; that progress was possible, even if slow and uneven; that different people with different beliefs could live together in mutual respect. It was never flawless, and it was never fully realized, but its moral foundations gave us something to strive toward. Without that, what’s left?

The terrifying answer is: anything. When one story falls apart, others rush to take its place — not because they’re better, but because people need a story, even if it’s a bad one. They need meaning, purpose, and a sense of direction, even if it’s destructive. This is why the stakes of liberalism’s decline are so high. Its failure isn’t just a political crisis; it’s a spiritual one. The vacuum it leaves is already being filled, and the forces rushing in are not interested in compromise, coexistence, or balance. They are interested in dominance, in purging ambiguity, in silencing dissent.

What makes this moment especially dangerous is how thoroughly disillusionment has permeated every layer of society. It’s not just the activists and intellectuals who are rejecting liberalism; it’s ordinary people, tired of systems that seem rigged against them. They look at the political class and see incompetence. They look at markets and see inequality. They look at the endless debates about free speech, equity, or climate policy and see nothing but paralysis. Liberalism, for all its talk of progress and problem-solving, now feels inert — a system designed to manage decline rather than inspire hope. And when people lose hope, they don’t just give up; they go looking for something else.

On one end of the spectrum, they find authoritarianism. There’s a reason strongmen rise in times of uncertainty: they promise to make the world simple again. They promise order, stability, and a return to some imagined past when things were better, stronger, more certain. Their appeal isn’t just political; it’s deeply emotional. They tell people, “You’ve been ignored, humiliated, and betrayed, but I’ll fix it. I’ll take care of you.” Liberalism, with its messy compromises and incrementalism, can’t compete with that kind of clarity. It doesn’t do well in a world where people want certainty, not nuance.

But authoritarianism isn’t the only force taking advantage of liberalism’s collapse. On the other end of the spectrum, you have ideologies that reject liberalism’s core principles entirely — particularly its commitment to universality. For many, liberalism’s claim to fairness and neutrality has always rung hollow, a facade that conceals systemic inequalities and power imbalances. The critique is valid: liberalism has often failed to address structural injustices, from colonialism to economic exploitation. But the solutions that emerge from this critique can sometimes become just as rigid and exclusionary as the systems they seek to replace. Universal rights and shared humanity are replaced with rigid hierarchies of grievance, where identities are weaponized and dissent is treated as betrayal.

The danger isn’t just that these extremes exist — it’s that they are feeding off one another. The authoritarian right and the illiberal left aren’t operating in isolation; they’re locked in a vicious cycle of escalation. Each uses the other as justification for its own excesses. The far-right points to the perceived chaos of identity politics and says, “Look what happens when liberalism gives too much ground: chaos, decadence, moral anarchy.” The illiberal left points to the rise of authoritarianism and says, “This is what happens when you refuse to dismantle the systems of oppression that liberalism props up.” In this feedback loop, both sides grow stronger, more entrenched, and less willing to compromise. Liberalism, caught in the middle, appears weak and indecisive by comparison.

Compounding this is the technological landscape, which has made these extremes not only more visible but more unavoidable. In the digital age, algorithms don’t reward moderation; they reward outrage. The most extreme voices, the most polarizing arguments, are the ones that rise to the top. Social media doesn’t just reflect polarization — it amplifies it, creating a distorted reality where every disagreement feels like a life-or-death struggle. This dynamic erodes the very idea of a “center,” the space where liberalism once thrived. It becomes harder and harder to imagine compromise when every issue is framed as a zero-sum game, and every opponent is cast as an existential threat.

What’s particularly tragic is that liberalism, for all its flaws, is uniquely suited to navigating complexity. It was built to handle disagreement, to balance competing values, to find a way for diverse people to coexist without resorting to violence or domination. Its principles of tolerance, deliberation, and procedural fairness are designed for precisely the kind of pluralistic, interconnected world we live in now. But those principles require patience, trust, and a willingness to engage with ambiguity — and those are precisely the qualities that are disappearing. The very conditions that liberalism depends on are being undermined by the forces it unleashed: the fragmentation of the public sphere, the commodification of truth, the alienation bred by unfettered markets.

This is why understanding liberalism’s decline is so critical. It’s not just diagnosing what went wrong; it’s recognizing the stakes of what comes next. If we allow liberalism to fade without a fight, without at least grappling with its contradictions and failures, we risk sliding into a world where the extremes define the rules. We risk trading the messy, imperfect promise of liberalism for systems that offer clarity at the expense of freedom, justice, or humanity itself. The extremes don’t just want to replace liberalism — they want to erase it, to delegitimize the very ideas of liberty, equality, and tolerance. That’s the void we’re staring into. And it’s one we can’t afford to ignore.

Humiliated by the Right

It started, as these things always do, with a story. The right, in its current incarnation, is less a political movement than a narrative construction machine. Over the past several decades, it has built a sprawling, elaborate tale of cultural grievance and righteous anger, a story so compelling, so primal, that it has swallowed whole swaths of the population and left the defenders of liberal values fumbling with charts, graphs, and appeals to logic that no one wants to hear. The plot of the story is simple: something has been taken from you. Your way of life, your traditions, your freedom — stolen by elites, bureaucrats, “woke mobs,” and godless coastal elites sipping oat milk and laughing at you behind closed doors. The villains are everywhere, the stakes are existential, and the only way to reclaim what’s been lost is to burn the system to the ground.

Liberalism, with its appeals to reason, compromise, and slow progress, was never going to stand a chance against the visceral, emotional power of identitarianism. The right’s weaponization of cultural grievance is a story of how anger and fear became tools of mass mobilization, how populist rage was channeled to delegitimize liberal values, and how a movement that claims to hate the elites became the most effective champion of elite power in modern history.

Cultural grievance is the foundation of the modern right’s narrative machine. The brilliance of this approach lies in its simplicity. The grievances don’t have to be real; they just have to feel real. It doesn’t matter if the coal mines were already closing before the environmentalists showed up, or if that factory outsourced jobs because of corporate greed rather than government regulation. It doesn’t matter if immigrants statistically commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, or if transgender athletes are an issue in only the smallest fraction of sports competitions. What matters is that these things feel like threats, that they can be framed as part of a broader assault on your way of life.

Liberalism, meanwhile, is stuck playing defense. It tries to counter these stories with facts, with statistics, with long-winded explanations about global economic trends and systemic inequality. But none of that matters, because grievance isn’t rational. It’s not about facts. The right understands this in a way that liberalism doesn’t, or won’t. Liberalism still believes in the power of reason, in the idea that people can be persuaded by evidence, that truth will prevail. The right, on the other hand, knows that what people want isn’t truth. It’s a story that makes them feel seen, that gives shape to their anger and despair, that offers them a scapegoat to blame for their pain.

The right’s weaponization of grievance works because it taps into a deep well of populist anger. This anger isn’t entirely unjustified. Over the past several decades, millions of people have seen their lives upended by forces beyond their control: deindustrialization, economic inequality, technological change, the hollowing out of communities. Liberalism, in many cases, has been complicit in these transformations, offering platitudes about free markets and globalization while people watched their towns die and their futures slip away. The right didn’t create this anger, but it recognized it for what it was: an opportunity.

Rather than addressing the actual causes of this anger — stagnant wages, skyrocketing healthcare costs, predatory corporations — the right redirected it. It pointed the finger not at the billionaires or the political class but at the usual suspects: immigrants, minorities, feminists, LGBTQ+ people, anyone who could be framed as “other.” It took the anger of people who had been abandoned by the system and turned it into a weapon to protect that very system. And it worked. It worked because scapegoating is easy, and solidarity is hard. It’s easier to believe that your struggles are the fault of “illegals” or “woke Hollywood” than to confront the fact that the system is rigged and the people rigging it look an awful lot like the ones stoking your anger.

Populism, in this context, isn’t fighting the powerful. It’s creating the illusion of a fight while leaving the real sources of power untouched. The right rails against elites, but only a very specific kind of elite — the “cultural elite,” the professors and journalists and tech executives who can be painted as arrogant, out-of-touch liberals. Meanwhile, the actual elites — the oil executives, hedge fund managers, and corporate titans — are quietly funding the whole operation. The right’s populism is a scam, a sleight of hand that redirects anger away from the powerful and toward the vulnerable. And yet, it feels real, because it gives people an enemy they can see, a target for their rage, a way of making sense of a world that feels increasingly hostile and unfamiliar.

In the process, liberal values have become collateral damage. The right’s weaponization of grievance isn’t just about blaming immigrants or demonizing transgender people — it’s delegitimizing the very principles that underpin liberal democracy. Freedom of speech becomes a punchline when “cancel culture” becomes the boogeyman. Equality under the law becomes a joke when “woke ideology” is framed as a form of tyranny. Even basic facts are up for grabs, because the right’s narrative thrives on distrust — of institutions, of experts, of the idea that objective truth even exists. Liberalism’s reliance on reason and facts, its belief in institutions and process, becomes a liability in a world where nothing can be trusted and everything is a culture war.

The most insidious part of this strategy is how it forces liberalism to fight on the right’s terms. Liberalism is slow, cautious, and process-oriented. It wants to deliberate, to weigh evidence, to build consensus. The right, on the other hand, moves fast and breaks things. It doesn’t care about facts or consistency or even coherence. It’s not trying to govern; it’s trying to win. And so, while liberalism is busy fact-checking and issuing statements, the right is already onto the next outrage, the next fabricated crisis, the next moral panic. It’s an asymmetrical fight, and liberalism is hopelessly outmatched.

You can see this dynamic play out in almost every corner of the culture war. Take the debate over critical race theory, for example. The right turned Critical Race Theory — a relatively niche academic framework — into a national boogeyman practically overnight. It didn’t matter that most people had no idea what CRT actually was, or that it wasn’t being taught in public schools. What mattered was that it could be framed as an attack on “traditional values,” as evidence that liberal elites were indoctrinating children with anti-American ideas. Liberalism’s response was predictable: a flood of op-eds and think pieces explaining what CRT actually is, why the controversy was overblown, why teaching history honestly isn’t the same as hating America. But none of that mattered, because the fight wasn’t about CRT. It was about creating a narrative, about stoking fear and resentment, about galvanizing a base that feels besieged by change.

The same thing is happening with LGBTQ+ rights. The right has weaponized cultural grievance to turn trans people into the latest scapegoat, framing their existence as a threat to children, to families, to society itself. The specifics of the argument don’t matter — whether it’s bathroom bills, sports teams, or drag shows, the goal is the same: to paint liberal values as dangerous, alien, and immoral. Liberalism, once again, is left scrambling to defend itself, to explain that trans people are just people, that rights aren’t a zero-sum game, that inclusivity isn’t a threat. But those explanations rarely land, because they’re rational arguments in a fight that isn’t rational. The right isn’t debating — it’s storytelling. And its stories are designed to inflame, not inform.

What makes this all so effective is that it operates on multiple levels. On the surface, it’s about specific issues — immigration, education, LGBTQ+ rights. But underneath, it’s about something much bigger: the idea that liberalism itself is illegitimate. That it’s not just wrong, but dangerous. That its values — equality, diversity, freedom of expression — are corrosive, un-American, a threat to the very fabric of society. By framing every cultural issue as an existential battle, the right has turned liberalism’s principles into liabilities. Compassion becomes weakness. Tolerance becomes moral relativism. Justice becomes “wokeism.” And liberalism, in its desperation to prove its reasonableness, plays right into this framing, bending over backward to accommodate critics who will never be satisfied.

The result is a realpolitik where liberal values are on the defensive, perpetually under siege. The right’s weaponization of cultural grievance has turned populist anger into a hammer, and liberalism is the nail. But the greatest tragedy is that this anger, this populism, could have been something else. It could have been a force for real change, a movement that challenged the systems of power that have left so many people behind. Instead, it’s been co-opted, redirected, turned into a weapon against the very values that might have offered a way out of this mess.

The truth is that outrage is no longer a tactic — it’s the whole game. It fuels campaigns, defines discourse, and dominates every waking second of the 24-hour news cycle. More than anything else, outrage has become the defining feature of conservative politics, a self-sustaining bonfire of cultural grievance and righteous anger that turns every issue into a battlefield. Conservatives have reinvented themselves as cultural warriors, the self-appointed defenders of “traditional values” locked in an endless fight against what they see as a creeping liberal tyranny. And they’re good at it. They’ve turned outrage into an art form, into a renewable resource, into the single most effective way to galvanize their base and bulldoze their opponents.

Liberals, meanwhile, don’t seem to know what to do about any of this. They show up to the battlefield armed with fact-checks, appeals to civility, and the grim conviction that being “right” will win the day. But in the face of a political strategy designed to thrive on emotion, their approach comes across as flat, scolding, and painfully ineffective. Conservatives rage; liberals lecture. Conservatives mobilize; liberals fact-check. Conservatives set the terms of the debate, leaving liberals scrambling to respond, like an exasperated teacher trying to discipline a classroom full of chaos agents. And this dynamic — outrage against scolding, fire against damp resignation — is the engine driving the rise of outrage politics, a force that has shifted the balance of power and turned liberalism into a hapless punching bag for a conservative movement that thrives on perpetual grievance.

It’s no accident that outrage has become the right’s most potent weapon. Rage is easy to generate, easy to amplify, and impossible to ignore. It’s a powerful tool for political mobilization because it taps into something primal — fear, resentment, the deep-seated feeling that something has been taken from you. And it’s contagious. One viral clip of a conservative pundit screaming about drag queens or CRT or mask mandates is enough to set off a chain reaction, a tidal wave of anger that spills across social media, into living rooms, onto Fox News, and back again. The outrage grows, snowballs, feeds itself. And with each new cycle, the outrage becomes the story — not the actual issue, not the policy, but the sheer volume of the anger itself.

Conservatives have mastered this dynamic. They understand that outrage politics isn’t winning arguments; it’s creating enemies, and painting a picture of a world under siege — traditional values being mauled by “woke mobs,” free speech crushed by “cancel culture,” children brainwashed by “Marxist indoctrination” in schools. The targets don’t have to make sense. One day, it’s immigrants; the next, it’s transgender athletes; the next, it’s books in libraries or Bud Light. The specifics don’t matter. What matters is keeping the fire burning, stoking the sense that “real Americans” are under threat, that their culture is being stolen, that the fight must go on.

Liberals are stuck playing the role of the scold, the hall monitor of democracy, constantly insisting that everyone follow the rules even as the entire building burns down around them. Outrage politics thrives on spectacle, and liberals, trapped in their obsession with reason and decorum, refuse to meet it on its own terms. They shake their heads, wag their fingers, and deliver long-winded explanations about why the outrage is misplaced, why the facts don’t support it, why everyone should calm down. It’s an approach that might work in a seminar room or a polite dinner party, but in the chaos of the modern media ecosystem, it’s hopelessly outmatched.

For liberals, the problem isn’t just that they’re bad at generating outrage — though they are. It’s that they don’t even seem to understand the rules of the game. Outrage politics has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with policy, or governance, or solving problems. It’s creating a feeling, a vibe, a sense of who’s winning and who’s losing. Conservatives understand this instinctively. That’s why their culture wars so focus on symbolic issues — flags, pronouns, Dr. Seuss books — rather than material ones. These are battles that can’t be “won” or “lost” in any definitive sense, but that’s the point. The fight itself is the victory. It creates a clear distinction between “us” and “them,” between the defenders of tradition and the supposed architects of societal collapse. And it keeps the base angry, engaged, and ready to vote.

Liberals get bogged down in the specifics, trying to rebut every false claim and debunk every misleading argument, as if the truth alone will be enough to defuse the anger. But the truth doesn’t matter to outrage politics. You can debunk a claim a thousand times, but the outrage will persist, because the claim isn’t the point. The outrage is the point. The accusation of “wokeness” isn’t an argument; it’s a vibe, a catch-all shorthand for anything that conservatives don’t like. Liberals trying to rebut it with logic look hopelessly out of touch, like they don’t understand what’s happening around them.

This dynamic is why conservatives always seem to be setting the terms of the debate. They’re the ones who decide what the latest outrage will be, the ones who dominate the conversation, the ones who make liberals react. Liberals are always on the back foot, scrambling to explain why teaching kids about racism isn’t indoctrination, why gender-affirming care isn’t child abuse, why drag shows aren’t destroying the fabric of society. Even when they’re right — especially when they’re right — their responses feel weak, defensive, and reactive. They’re always fighting the last battle, always playing the role of the responsible adult in a room full of shouting children. But outrage politics isn’t a debate to be won. It’s a spectacle to be survived.

Liberals, in their attempts to counter conservative outrage, end up feeding it. By taking every attack seriously, by treating every manufactured crisis as a real one, they amplify the very stories they’re trying to debunk. Conservatives scream about “CRT in schools,” and suddenly, it’s all anyone is talking about — even though CRT isn’t actually being taught in K-12 classrooms. The more liberals try to correct the record, the more oxygen they give to the outrage, the more attention they draw to the fight. It’s a vicious cycle, one that conservatives have mastered and liberals have yet to escape.

The most damaging effect of outrage politics is the way it delegitimizes liberal values. The conservative outrage machine doesn’t just attack specific policies or people — it attacks the very principles that underpin liberal democracy. Free speech becomes “cancel culture.” Equality becomes “wokeness.” Justice becomes “identity politics.” By framing liberal values as existential threats, conservatives have managed to turn the core tenets of liberalism into liabilities. And liberals, in their endless attempts to defend themselves, end up reinforcing the right’s framing. By constantly insisting that they’re not as extreme as their opponents claim, they make themselves look weak, unsure, and apologetic. It’s a trap, and they keep falling into it.

Abandoned by the Left

To the left, liberalism is less a movement of hope and more a locked door with a stern sign reading: Progress, but only up to a point. For all its talk of equality, justice, and freedom, liberalism has acted not as a catalyst for systemic change but as the force that blocks it. In the struggle between revolution and reaction, liberalism plants itself squarely in the middle, insisting that progress must come incrementally, cautiously, and without upsetting the delicate balance of power too much. To the left, this is a betrayal. Liberalism, despite its lofty ideals, has become a gatekeeper for systemic change, perpetually policing the boundaries of what is considered “reasonable” or “possible,” and ensuring that the status quo, while slightly tweaked, remains intact.

The critique isn’t new. For as long as liberalism has existed, it has been criticized from the left as being too wedded to the systems of power it claims to want to reform. Its roots in Enlightenment ideals of reason and compromise make it inherently cautious, allergic to risk and wary of radicalism. Liberalism’s central promise — that progress can be achieved without tearing down the existing order — has always struck the left as naive at best and disingenuous at worst. For those seeking to dismantle systems of oppression, liberalism feels less like an ally and more like a particularly polite guard dog, standing between them and the transformative change they believe is necessary.

The tension between liberalism and the left is a disagreement about power. Liberalism doesn’t like to talk about power in blunt terms. It prefers to frame politics as a matter of negotiation, of balancing competing interests, of finding solutions that work for everyone. But the left sees this as a kind of willful blindness. Power, they argue, isn’t something you negotiate with — it’s something you confront, something you wrest away from those who hoard it. Liberalism’s reluctance to directly challenge power is why it so falls short in the eyes of the left. It wants to reform systems of power, not dismantle them, even when those systems are the root cause of the problems liberalism claims to want to solve.

Liberalism acknowledges that inequality is a problem. It supports policies like higher taxes on the wealthy, stronger labor protections, and modest expansions of the welfare state. But for the left, these measures don’t go nearly far enough. Inequality, they argue, isn’t just a matter of insufficient regulation or a lack of opportunity — it’s baked into the very structure of capitalism. Addressing it requires more than just reforming the system; it requires rethinking the system entirely. But liberalism balks at this. It refuses to entertain ideas that feel too radical — wealth redistribution, public ownership of key industries, universal basic income — because those ideas threaten the very foundations of the economic system liberalism is built on.

The same dynamic plays out in the fight against systemic racism. Liberalism is happy to champion diversity initiatives, anti-discrimination laws, and incremental reforms to policing. But it stops short of supporting the kind of structural changes the left demands — defunding the police, dismantling the prison-industrial complex, addressing the legacy of redlining through reparations. These ideas, to liberalism, feel too extreme, too disruptive. And so, once again, liberalism positions itself as the gatekeeper, defining the boundaries of what kind of change is acceptable and what kind is not.

This gatekeeping function is most apparent in liberalism’s relationship with social movements. Movements that start on the fringes, that demand sweeping change, are dismissed by liberals as unrealistic, unproductive, or even dangerous. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the labor movement — all of these were, at one point, too “radical” for mainstream liberalism. It was only after these movements gained traction, after they forced their way into the conversation, that liberalism began to co-opt their demands, sing their edges and repackaging them in a way that felt less threatening to the status quo.

This process of co-optation is a recurring theme in the left’s critique of liberalism. When liberalism does embrace change, it does so on its own terms, watering down the original vision in the process. The left demands abolition; liberalism offers reform. The left demands redistribution; liberalism offers tax credits. The left demands revolution; liberalism offers a seat at the table. It’s progress, but only up to a point. And for the left, that point is always too far from where it needs to be.

The critique isn’t just about what liberalism does — it’s also about what it doesn’t do. For all its talk of justice, liberalism shies away from confrontation. It prefers dialogue to disruption, consensus to conflict. But the left sees this as a fatal flaw, especially in moments of crisis. Climate change, for example, is an existential threat that demands immediate, radical action. But liberalism’s response has been depressingly incremental: carbon taxes, voluntary agreements, and vague promises to reach “net zero” emissions decades from now. The left argues that this approach is woefully inadequate, that addressing climate change requires confronting the fossil fuel industry, rethinking economic growth, and fundamentally reshaping our relationship with the planet. But liberalism, once again, stands in the way, insisting that the solutions must be palatable to the very systems that created the crisis in the first place.

Even when liberalism does take bold action, it does so in a way that leaves the underlying systems of power intact. The New Deal, for example, is held up as a triumph of liberalism, a moment when the government stepped in to address economic inequality and create a safety net for millions of Americans. But from the left’s perspective, the New Deal was a missed opportunity. It saved capitalism from itself, shoring up the system at a moment when it was on the verge of collapse, rather than replacing it with something better. And it did so in a way that excluded many of the most marginalized Americans — particularly Black Americans, who were systematically left out of key programs like Social Security and housing loans. It was progress, yes, but only for some, and only up to a point.

Time and again, liberalism has been presented with moments of crisis, moments when the need for systemic change is clear. And time and again, it has chosen the path of least resistance. It has chosen to protect the institutions of power rather than confront them, to offer incremental reforms rather than transformative change, to prioritize stability over justice. And in doing so, it has paved the way for the very forces it claims to oppose. The rise of neoliberalism, the backlash against civil rights, the resurgence of far-right populism — all of these are, in part, the result of liberalism’s failure to act boldly when it mattered most.

This isn’t to say that the left has all the answers or that liberalism has no value. There is a reason liberalism has been so successful at maintaining its grip on the political imagination: its principles of equality, freedom, and justice are deeply compelling. But for the left, the problem is that liberalism rarely lives up to those principles. It talks about freedom, but only within the constraints of the market. It talks about equality, but only within the framework of existing power structures. It talks about justice, but only in ways that don’t threaten the stability of the system.

And to the left, any insistence on incrementalism feels less like pragmatism and more like complicity.

Betrayed by the Institutions

At the heart of liberalism is an almost unshakable faith in institutions: the courts, the press, the electoral system, legislatures, regulatory agencies, markets themselves. Liberalism is built on the belief that these structures are the pillars of a functioning society, the mechanisms through which rights are protected, conflicts are resolved, and progress is achieved. It relies on these systems so deeply that it cannot imagine a world without them — or a world in which they don’t work as intended.

But the very institutions that liberalism venerates are the ones perpetuating inequality, dysfunction, and injustice. They don’t just fail to deliver on their promises — they actively entrench the systems of power that keep things as they are. And liberalism, for all its lofty ideals about equality and justice, refuses to grapple with this reality. Instead, it doubles down, insisting that these institutions can be reformed, that the system isn’t broken, just bent. But what if the system is the problem? What if the institutions liberalism defends so fiercely are the very things standing in the way of the change it claims to want?

Liberalism’s faith in institutions assumes that because institutions have delivered progress in the past, they will continue to do so in the future. It points to the abolition of slavery, the expansion of voting rights, the creation of the welfare state — all of which were achieved through institutional processes — and takes this as proof that the system works. But this reading of history is deeply selective. It glosses over the fact that these victories were almost always the result of pressure from outside the system: abolitionists, suffragists, labor movements, civil rights activists. The institutions didn’t act on their own — they were forced to act, after decades of resistance and foot-dragging. Liberalism celebrates the outcomes without acknowledging the struggle it took to get there.

The problem isn’t just that these institutions are flawed — it’s that they were never designed to deliver the kind of equality and justice liberalism claims to stand for. The courts, the press, the electoral system — these are not neutral arbiters or engines of progress. They are tools of power, shaped by the people who wield them. And right now, those people are not interested in equality or justice. They’re interested in maintaining their own power, in preserving a status quo that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

This is where liberalism’s faith in institutions becomes a liability. By insisting that the system can be fixed, liberalism prevents us from imagining alternatives. It channels energy away from movements that seek to challenge power and toward efforts to reform institutions that are fundamentally resistant to change. It tells us to be patient, to trust the process, to work within the rules — even when those rules are rigged.

The left has long criticized liberalism for this blind spot, arguing that it makes liberalism complicit in the very systems it claims to want to reform. And they’re right. Liberalism’s faith in institutions isn’t just a quirk — it’s a fundamental flaw, one that prevents it from responding to the challenges of our time with the urgency and boldness they demand. It’s not enough to work within the system when the system itself is the problem. It’s not enough to defend institutions when those institutions are failing to deliver justice, equality, or sustainability. What’s needed is a willingness to think beyond the boundaries of the existing order, to imagine new systems and structures that can actually deliver on liberalism’s promises.

Liberalism’s faith in institutions is a weakness that its opponents have exploited with devastating precision. For decades, liberalism has treated institutions like sacred, unshakable pillars of democracy. It has built its entire worldview on the idea that these systems, from courts and legislatures to regulatory agencies and the media, are neutral forces capable of resolving conflicts and delivering justice. But this trust has been turned against it. While liberals clung to the idea that institutions could be reformed, protected, or worked within, the right saw them for what they really are: tools of power. And in treating these institutions as neutral, as legitimate no matter what, liberalism left itself defenseless against a conservative movement that was more than willing to corrupt and weaponize them for its own ends.

The result is a brutal asymmetry: one side reveres the system and tries to play by its rules, while the other ruthlessly exploits its flaws. This dynamic has allowed the right to pack courts, manipulate elections, deregulate industries, and erode democratic norms while liberals wring their hands, issue strongly worded statements, and insist on the importance of preserving the very systems being weaponized against them. In doing so, liberalism hasn’t just failed to protect the institutions it loves so much — it’s failed to protect the people those institutions are supposed to serve.

The judiciary is the most brutal example. Conservatives didn’t treat the courts as sacred — they treated them as battlegrounds. They spent decades building a pipeline of ideologically driven judges, from law schools to think tanks to federal appointments. They relentlessly focused on seizing control of the judiciary, knowing that once they had the courts, they could shape policy for generations, no matter which party held legislative power. The culmination of this strategy was the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court, solidified under Donald Trump, who appointed three justices in four years — thanks in part to Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented decision to block Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016.

Liberalism’s response was predictable: outrage, but no real counterstrategy. Liberals decried McConnell’s actions as a violation of norms — and then rolled over and accepted them, unwilling to take more aggressive measures like expanding the court or even mounting a sustained public campaign to delegitimize it. Why? Because liberalism’s faith in the courts ran too deep. Even as the judiciary was being captured and turned into a conservative weapon, liberals continued to insist on the importance of judicial independence, treating the institution as sacrosanct even as it betrayed its own principles.

And yes, there have been moments when the courts have done exactly that — Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Obergefell v. Hodges. But for every progressive victory, there are countless examples of the courts upholding systems of oppression: Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Citizens United.

Even when courts do deliver progressive outcomes, those outcomes are fragile, subject to reversal the moment political winds shift. Look at the erosion of voting rights in the United States, or the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These weren’t accidents — they were the result of a conservative movement that understood something liberalism refuses to admit: institutions can be captured, weaponized, and turned against the very ideals they’re supposed to uphold. Liberalism’s response to these setbacks is always the same: defend the institution, trust the process, fight another day. But what if the process itself is the problem? What if the system isn’t capable of delivering the justice liberalism claims to believe in?

This same story plays out in the electoral system. Liberalism’s faith in democracy is one of its defining features. It believes in free and fair elections, in the peaceful transfer of power, in the idea that the will of the people can be expressed through the ballot box. But this faith has been systematically undermined by the right, which has spent decades rigging the rules in its favor. Gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, disinformation campaigns, and dark money have turned elections into anything but free and fair. And yet, liberalism’s response has been maddeningly inadequate. It files lawsuits, calls for investigations, and mobilizes voter turnout drives — all while refusing to confront the deeper reality: the system itself is being corrupted.

The right’s ability to weaponize the electoral system was on full display during the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath. Trump’s refusal to concede, his lies about voter fraud, the efforts to overturn results through state legislatures, and the violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, were a direct assault on democratic institutions. But these attacks didn’t come out of nowhere — they were the culmination of years of Republican efforts to erode trust in elections while stacking the system in their favor. Liberals were horrified, of course, but their horror only underscored their helplessness.

The right’s success in weaponizing institutions isn’t just a matter of strategy — it’s a matter of values. Conservatives see power as the ultimate goal, and they’re willing to bend or break any rule to achieve it. Liberalism, by contrast, is obsessed with rules. It believes that the legitimacy of institutions depends on adherence to norms, processes, and traditions. This belief leaves liberals playing defense, constantly trying to uphold rules that their opponents have already discarded. The result is a lopsided fight, where one side exploits every loophole and the other side refuses to close them for fear of damaging the integrity of the system.

Even the media — another institution liberalism venerates — has been weaponized by the right. Liberalism believes in the importance of a free press, in the idea that facts and truth are essential to democracy. But the right doesn’t see the media as an institution to be protected — it sees it as a battleground to be dominated. Conservative media empires like Fox News, talk radio, and far-right online ecosystems have created an alternate reality for millions of people, one where climate change is a hoax, vaccines are dangerous, and Democrats are part of a satanic child-trafficking ring. These outlets don’t just report the news — they manufacture outrage, spread disinformation, and undermine trust in any media source that challenges their narrative.

Liberalism’s response has been utterly inadequate. It clings to the idea that “the truth will win out,” that good journalism will prevail if only people are exposed to the facts. But facts don’t matter in a media landscape dominated by emotion, outrage, and algorithm-driven echo chambers. By treating the press as an institution that speaks for itself, liberalism has failed to grasp the need for a counteroffensive, for a strategy to combat disinformation and rebuild trust. Instead, it keeps playing defense, issuing fact-checks and debunkings that land with a thud in an environment where people choose their own reality.

Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that liberalism’s faith in institutions was supposed to be its strength. By trusting in systems rather than individuals, liberalism aimed to create a stable, fair society where no one could amass too much power. But this faith has become its Achilles’ heel. Institutions are only as strong as the people who run them, and when those people act in bad faith — when they manipulate the rules, undermine norms, and weaponize the system for their own gain — institutions become instruments of oppression rather than tools of justice. The right understands this. Liberalism refuses to.

This refusal has left liberals defenseless. They keep appealing to systems that no longer work as intended, expecting institutions to restrain bad actors who have already figured out how to game the system. They insist on civility, fairness, and adherence to the rules even as their opponents treat the entire process as a power grab. And in doing so, they’ve allowed the right to reshape the very institutions liberalism holds dear, turning them into weapons of inequality, dysfunction, and authoritarianism.

Liberalism’s faith in institutions is so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to imagine it letting go. But if it wants to survive — if it wants to be anything more than a caretaker for a crumbling status quo — it has to recognize that its opponents aren’t playing by the same rules. It has to stop treating institutions as sacred and start treating them as contested terrain. That means being willing to fight for control of those institutions, to reform or even dismantle them when they’re failing to serve the public good. It means abandoning the naive belief that the system will save us and recognizing that the system is only as good as the people who shape it.

The right has weaponized institutions not because they believe in them, but because they understand their power. If liberalism wants to fight back, it has to stop fetishizing institutions and start understanding them for what they are: tools. Tools that can be used for justice or for oppression, for democracy or for tyranny. The question isn’t whether institutions can be saved — it’s whether they can be reclaimed. And that requires liberalism to stop playing defense, to stop clinging to a broken system, and to start imagining something better. 

But that requires something liberalism has always struggled with: letting go. Letting go of its faith in markets, in courts, in parliaments, in the idea that the system will save us if we just work a little harder. It means recognizing that some institutions can’t be reformed, that some systems need to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. And it means being willing to take risks, to embrace uncertainty, to trust that people — not institutions — are the true engines of progress.

The New Ideological Reality

We live in an age of extremes. The political center is eroding, and what’s left is a landscape dominated by forces pulling hard in opposite directions. On one side, there’s populism on the right — a relentless, ferocious energy fueled by grievance, nostalgia, and a refusal to play by the rules. On the other side, radical progressivism — a left that sees moderation as betrayal, demanding fundamental change to systems that have long perpetuated inequality and injustice. The battle lines are drawn, and liberalism — the ideology of balance, compromise, and incremental progress — finds itself stuck in the middle, looking increasingly irrelevant in a world that seems to have outgrown its cautious instincts.

The age of extremes isn’t an abstract notion; it’s the defining feature of our time. It’s visible everywhere — on the campaign trail, in social media debates, in protests that fill city streets, and in the rhetoric of politicians who’ve long abandoned the language of subtlety. The middle ground, once thought to be the hallmark of mature, functioning democracies, is vanishing. Instead, people are flocking to movements that promise something more urgent, more immediate, and more absolute. Movements that promise, in their own ways, to blow up the status quo.

On the right, populism has become the dominant force, transforming once-staid conservative parties into vehicles for rage and resentment. Populism isn’t just a policy platform; it’s an attitude, a worldview. It thrives on cultural grievance and the promise of restoration — a return to an imagined past where the world was simpler, better, more in line with “traditional values.” It identifies enemies everywhere: immigrants, the “woke mob,” the media, elites, and, increasingly, democracy itself. Its message is simple and effective: the system is broken, and someone is to blame.

What makes right-wing populism so dangerous isn’t just its targets — it’s its tactics. Populists on the right have abandoned the norms and constraints that once defined mainstream politics. They lie without shame, break rules without consequence, and use institutions not to govern but to consolidate power. Figures like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Jair Bolsonaro have made it clear that their goal isn’t just to win elections but to rewrite the rules entirely. They thrive on polarization, on turning every issue into a culture war, on convincing their followers that compromise is a dirty word and that politics is a zero-sum game.

Populism’s power lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t waste time on nuance or complexity. It tells a story of good guys and bad guys, of “the people” versus “the elites.” It taps into real frustrations — economic inequality, cultural alienation, political corruption — but channels them into dangerous scapegoating and authoritarian solutions. And it’s working. Across the globe, populists are winning elections, reshaping governments, and making it harder for anyone else to challenge them. They’ve mastered the art of weaponizing democracy against itself, using the tools of free societies to dismantle those very societies from within.

But the right doesn’t have a monopoly on the politics of urgency. On the left, radical progressivism is rising, driven by a deep frustration with the failures of moderation and incremental change. For decades, liberals promised that slow and steady progress would bend the arc of history toward justice. But for many, that promise feels hollow. The climate is collapsing. Wealth inequality is spiraling out of control. Racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression persist, not as relics of the past but as enduring features of the present. The left has lost patience, and radical progressivism has filled the void.

Radical leftism is fundamentally a politics of disruption. It rejects the idea that change can come from within the system, arguing instead that the system itself is the problem. Capitalism, policing, prisons, fossil fuel dependence — these aren’t just flawed institutions that need reform; they’re engines of injustice that must be dismantled. The left are no longer content to work within the boundaries set by liberalism. They’re demanding fundamental, structural change — and they’re willing to challenge power in ways that make moderates deeply uncomfortable.

Leftists aren’t interested in half-measures like carbon taxes or nonbinding international agreements. They want a Green New Deal — a sweeping, transformative overhaul of the economy that prioritizes sustainability, green jobs, and climate justice. To moderates, this vision seems radical, expensive, even unrealistic. But to progressives, the alternative — inaction or incremental change — is unthinkable. The climate clock is ticking, and radical solutions feel like the only morally defensible option.

The left aren’t satisfied with calls for police reform or diversity training. They’re demanding the abolition of systems they see as inherently oppressive — defunding the police, ending mass incarceration, addressing the generational harm caused by redlining and segregation through reparations. These demands make liberals bristle; they’re too radical, too alienating, too disruptive. But for leftists, anything less feels like complicity in a system that was never designed to deliver justice.

The same is true of wealth inequality. The left don’t just want higher taxes on the rich — they want wealth redistribution, a rethinking of capitalism itself. Universal healthcare, free college, affordable housing — these aren’t just policy proposals; they’re moral imperatives. The moderates who dismiss these ideas as “unrealistic” are missing the point. Progressives aren’t interested in what seems politically possible in the short term. They’re interested in what’s necessary to create a world that’s fair, just, and livable for everyone.

But radical leftism has its own challenges. While its vision is bold and inspiring, it’s uncompromising and unpragmatic, dismissing those who disagree as obstacles to justice rather than potential allies. Its demands for immediate, sweeping change collide with the slow-moving reality of democratic governance, creating frustration and disillusionment. And its rhetoric, while powerful, alienates people who might otherwise support its goals. The left’s critique of the status quo is incisive, but its ability to build broad coalitions remains uncertain. And there’s the unbearable truth that when the Left starts a revolution, people inevitably die. 

The age of extremes, then, is defined by a paradox. On one side, right-wing populism is tearing down institutions, weaponizing anger, and consolidating power in ways that threaten democracy itself. On the other, radical progressivism is challenging those same institutions, demanding that they be dismantled or transformed in the name of justice. Both movements reject the center, but for very different reasons. Populism sees the center as weak, as a barrier to its vision of cultural dominance. Progressivism sees the center as complicit, as a defender of a broken status quo.

And where does this leave liberalism? Stranded in the middle, clinging to its faith in balance and moderation, insisting that compromise is still possible in a world where neither extreme seems interested in meeting halfway. Liberalism wants to be the adult in the room, the voice of reason that bridges divides and keeps the system running. But the system isn’t working, and fewer and fewer people believe that it can be fixed through incremental change. Liberalism’s cautious, process-driven approach feels increasingly inadequate in a time when the stakes — climate collapse, inequality, rising authoritarianism — are existential.

Liberalism is not irrelevant. Its values — freedom, equality, justice — still resonate. But in the age of extremes, those values feel hollow, drowned out by the urgency and passion of the movements on either side. Liberalism’s insistence on working within the system makes it look naive in the face of populism’s rule-breaking and progressivism’s calls for disruption. Its reliance on incremental progress seems painfully slow when the crises we face demand immediate action. And its emphasis on compromise feels like a betrayal when one side refuses to compromise and the other argues that compromise is how injustice survives.

The age of extremes isn’t going away. If anything, the forces driving it — economic inequality, cultural polarization, environmental collapse — are only getting stronger. The question isn’t whether these extremes will define our politics — they already do. The question is what happens next. Will populism’s rage and grievance lead to the erosion of democracy? Will progressivism’s bold demands for justice reshape society, or will its uncompromising stance alienate potential allies? And will liberalism adapt, or will it fade into irrelevance as the battle lines harden?

The answers to these questions will shape the future. But one thing is clear: the center ain’t holding. The age of extremes is here, and it’s not going anywhere. Liberalism’s insistence on moderation, its faith in the system, its refusal to take sides — it’s no longer enough. The stakes are too high, the crises too urgent. The world is being pulled in opposite directions, and the age of extremes demands a response. Whether liberalism is capable of rising to that challenge remains to be seen. Only one thing is certain: the old rules no longer apply.

Liberalism, once the dominant ideology of the modern world, now seems to be caught in the crossfire of a political landscape it can barely comprehend. The age of extremes — populism on the right and radical progressivism on the left — has left liberalism unmoored, unsure of its role or even its relevance. Once, liberalism stood tall as the ideology of reason and balance, offering a steady, moderate path between the chaos of reaction and the upheaval of revolution. But as the political center collapses, and as the crises of the 21st century demand urgency and boldness, liberalism finds itself increasingly out of step with the moment. The question now isn’t just where liberalism fits in this new ideological battleground, but whether it fits at all.

The new ideological battleground is defined by urgency, by movements on both the right and left that reject the cautious incrementalism liberalism holds so dear. On the right, populism has transformed conservatism into a wrecking ball aimed squarely at the institutions liberalism cherishes. Populists are not interested in preserving the system or following the rules — they’re interested in seizing power, weaponizing grievance, and dismantling any norm or institution that stands in their way. On the left, radical progressivism isn’t looking to preserve the system either. For progressives, the institutions liberalism trusts — courts, markets, legislatures — are not just flawed but complicit in perpetuating inequality and injustice. They argue that the system itself is the problem and that justice requires a fundamental transformation of the status quo.

Caught between these two forces, liberalism finds itself paralyzed. It can’t align with the right’s populism, which it sees as a direct threat to democracy, equality, and the rule of law. But it also struggles to align with the left’s progressivism, which challenges liberalism’s faith in institutions, capitalism, and incremental reform. In trying to avoid taking sides, liberalism has left itself stranded in a no-man’s-land, insisting on the importance of compromise in a world where neither side seems interested in meeting halfway.

This is the heart of liberalism’s dilemma: its refusal to let go of its faith in balance, compromise, and institutions leaves it unable to adapt to a world where those things no longer function as intended. Populism on the right has abandoned any pretense of playing by the rules, while radical progressivism on the left argues that the rules themselves are the problem. Liberalism is still trying to referee the game, insisting that everyone follow the rules, while the field burns around it.

But this isn’t just a strategic failure — it’s an existential one. Liberalism’s cautious, measured approach feels increasingly out of place in a world defined by urgency. The crises we face — climate change, inequality, systemic injustice, the erosion of democracy — are not problems that can be solved with half-measures and incremental reforms. They demand bold, transformative action, and liberalism’s reluctance to embrace such action makes it look not just outdated but complicit. It insists on working within the system, even as the system itself collapses under the weight of its contradictions.

Where does liberalism fit in this new ideological battleground? The answer, increasingly, is that it doesn’t — at least not in its current form. The age of extremes demands clarity, urgency, and a willingness to take sides. Liberalism, with its insistence on moderation and balance, offers none of these things. Its refusal to confront power, its obsession with process, and its faith in institutions leave it unable to rise to the challenges of the moment.

This isn’t to say that liberalism’s values — freedom, equality, justice — don’t matter. They do. But those values need to be paired with action, with a willingness to fight for them in a world where the rules are breaking down. Liberalism needs to recognize that its faith in institutions is not a strength but a weakness, one that leaves it vulnerable to populist rage on the right and progressive impatience on the left. It needs to move beyond its cautious incrementalism and embrace a vision of progress that is bold, transformative, and inspiring.

The alternative is irrelevance. If liberalism cannot adapt to the age of extremes, it will be left behind, a relic of a political era that no longer exists. The future will be shaped by the forces that have the clarity and urgency to fight for it — whether that future is defined by the authoritarianism of the populist right or the justice-oriented radicalism of the progressive left remains to be seen. Liberalism has a choice: evolve or fade away. But the clock is ticking.

Is There a Way Back?

Liberalism feels like a relic these days — an artifact of a time when slow, cautious progress seemed not only possible but inevitable. In the 20th century, it was the dominant force shaping politics in the West, the ideology of democracy, freedom, and human rights, a steady hand guiding societies toward a better future. But now, in the 21st century, liberalism looks tired, outmatched by the forces of right-wing populism on one side and radical progressivism on the other. It dithers while the world burns, offers technocratic half-measures when systemic collapse looms, and clings to institutions that are increasingly unfit for purpose. The big question isn’t just whether liberalism can survive in this new era of extremes. It’s whether it can reinvent itself to matter again. Because if it can’t, it will continue to wither, a ghost of its former self, bypassed by movements willing to take the risks and confront the challenges that liberalism is too timid to face.

Reinvention is a tall order. Liberalism isn’t just an ideology — it’s a way of thinking about politics and society that has been baked into the DNA of Western democracies for centuries. It’s pragmatic, cautious, and allergic to radicalism. It believes in balance, in the idea that progress comes from mediating between competing interests rather than siding with one against the other. And while this instinct has served it well in calmer times, it now feels wholly inadequate in a world that demands bold action and confrontation. Climate change, wealth inequality, rising authoritarianism — these aren’t problems that can be solved with compromise or incremental reform. They require a kind of urgency and imagination that liberalism, in its current form, seems incapable of delivering.

What would it take for liberalism to adapt? What would it look like if it reimagined itself for a world that no longer rewards moderation? The answer starts with recognizing that the rules have changed. The old liberal playbook — trust in institutions, faith in markets, appeals to civility and reason — no longer works. Institutions are failing. Markets are exacerbating inequality. Civility is being exploited by bad-faith actors who use it as a weapon to disarm their opponents. For liberalism to reinvent itself, it needs to let go of its outdated assumptions and confront the realities of the 21st century head-on.

First, liberalism must confront its relationship with power. For too long, it has treated power as something to be managed rather than wielded. Liberalism prides itself on its restraint, on its commitment to rules and processes, on its refusal to “stoop” to the tactics of its opponents. But this restraint has left it defenseless in a world where the right has no qualms about breaking norms and weaponizing institutions, and the left is increasingly impatient with liberalism’s refusal to confront the systems that perpetuate inequality and injustice. If liberalism wants to matter again, it needs to stop playing defense. It needs to stop treating politics as a debate to be won with facts and start treating it as a struggle for power. That doesn’t mean abandoning its principles — it means fighting for them, unapologetically, with the same ferocity that its opponents bring to the table.

There is a critical need for a change in liberalism’s mindset. It needs to stop fetishizing institutions as inherently good and start treating them as tools that can either serve justice or perpetuate oppression, depending on how they’re used. Courts, markets, legislatures, the press — these are not neutral entities. They are battlegrounds. For too long, liberalism has ceded these battlegrounds to its opponents, trusting that the “system” will hold. But the system is only as good as the people who control it, and right now, those people are acting in bad faith. If liberalism wants to reclaim these institutions, it needs to be willing to fight for control of them, to reform or even dismantle and rebuild them when they’re no longer fit for purpose.

More than anything, liberalism needs to learn how to inspire. One of liberalism’s greatest weaknesses is its inability to connect with people on an emotional level. It prides itself on being the ideology of reason, but reason alone doesn’t move people. Stories do. Visions do. Liberalism needs to stop talking about technocratic fixes and start painting a picture of the future worth fighting for. It needs to articulate a vision of progress that is bold, tangible, and emotionally resonant — a vision that gives people hope, that makes them believe that a better world is not only possible but achievable. Radical progressives have been much better at this, offering clear, inspiring visions of universal healthcare, climate justice, and wealth redistribution. Liberalism doesn’t need to copy their rhetoric, but it does need to learn from their ability to connect with people’s hopes and fears.

Finally, a reinvented liberalism must embrace the politics of urgency. The crises we face — climate collapse, inequality, systemic injustice, the erosion of democracy — are not problems that can be solved in 10 or 20 years. They require immediate action. Liberalism’s traditional patience, its faith in incremental progress, feels increasingly like complicity in a world where the stakes are life and death. A reinvented liberalism would need to let go of its cautious instincts and act with the urgency that these crises demand. That doesn’t mean abandoning pragmatism — it means recognizing that sometimes pragmatism requires boldness.

The question, of course, is whether liberalism is capable of this kind of transformation. Reinvention is hard, especially for an ideology that has spent centuries defining itself by its moderation. But the alternative is irrelevance. The age of extremes has no patience for half-measures or hollow principles. If liberalism can’t adapt to this new reality, it will continue to fade, bypassed by movements that are willing to fight for the future with the clarity and conviction that liberalism has long lacked.

But reinvention is possible. Liberalism has reinvented itself before — from the classical liberalism of the 18th century to the social liberalism of the 20th. Each time, it adapted to the challenges of the moment, evolving to meet the demands of a changing world. The question now is whether it can do so again. Whether it can move beyond its faith in balance, compromise, and institutions and embrace a vision of progress that is bold, inspiring, and urgent. Whether it can confront power rather than manage it. Whether it can stop playing defense and start imagining something better.

Liberalism, in its current form, is not up to the task of solving the crises we face. But if it can reinvent itself — if it can find the courage to let go of its old assumptions and embrace the realities of the 21st century — it might still have a role to play. The world doesn’t need liberalism as it was. It needs liberalism as it could be: a force for justice, for equality, for survival. But that will take more than tweaks and adjustments. It will take transformation. The only question is whether liberalism is ready to rise to the occasion — or whether it will fade quietly into the past, leaving others to fight for the future.

Liberalism on the Ropes

The decline of liberalism isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a broader collapse of the old political order, the result of years of stagnation, betrayal, and neglect. Liberalism promised freedom and equality, but too often, it delivered half-measures that left the status quo intact. It spoke of progress but refused to challenge the systems of power that kept so many people excluded from it. It told itself that gradual reform was enough, even as the crises of the 21st century grew too large, too urgent, to be addressed with politeness and moderation. Liberalism built its identity on balance and compromise, but balance is a fragile thing, and compromise only works if everyone agrees to play fair. In today’s polarized, unstable world, where existential challenges demand immediate action and bad-faith actors have no interest in rules, the center cannot hold.

The question now is not just whether liberalism can survive, but what happens if it doesn’t? What comes next? What does a world without liberalism look like? And what happens when the center collapses, leaving only extremes to define the political landscape? The answer depends on which side wins the battle for the future: the authoritarian right or the radical left. Because without liberalism, the middle ground disappears. There’s no more “third way,” no more balancing act, no more room for moderation. What remains is a fight between opposing visions of what the world should look like, and both come with risks as well as possibilities.

The rise of the authoritarian right is the clearest and most immediate danger. Right-wing populism has filled the void left by liberalism’s collapse, offering simple answers to complex problems and channeling people’s frustrations into rage and resentment. It thrives on cultural grievance, fear of change, and nostalgia for a past that never really existed. Its leaders — figures like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, and Marine Le Pen — use the tools of democracy to dismantle democracy, weaponizing institutions to consolidate power while stoking divisions to maintain control.

The authoritarian right doesn’t want to reform liberalism’s institutions — it wants to hijack them. It attacks the press while building its own propaganda networks. It gerrymanders elections and suppresses votes to rig the democratic process. It packs courts with partisan judges who will uphold its agenda. And it uses culture wars to distract from its failures, convincing people that immigrants, minorities, or “woke elites” are to blame for their struggles.

A world dominated by the authoritarian right is one of exclusion, hierarchy, and repression — a stark regression to systems that privilege the powerful and suppress the vulnerable. It promises security but delivers surveillance, offers identity but fosters division, and glorifies tradition while stifling innovation and progress. Under its rule, power is hoarded by the few, dissent is not merely discouraged but violently silenced, and inequality is enshrined as a virtue. The right thrives on exploiting fear and resentment, weaponizing nostalgia to justify oppression. Liberalism, for all its flaws, provided a critical check on this brand of authoritarianism, championing pluralism and individual rights. Without that buffer, the right’s authoritarian agenda gains dangerous traction, preying on those disillusioned by rapid change and offering them a scapegoat instead of a solution.

On the other side, the radical left is rising, driven by a fervent impatience with the failures of the old order. Unlike liberalism, which at least attempts to work within existing systems, the radical left operates with a zero-sum view: the system itself is irredeemable and must be torn down. Capitalism, policing, prisons, fossil fuel dependence — these are flawed institutions and they must be reformed. But they are framed as existential threats requiring immediate eradication. It’s a worldview, cloaked in moral certitude, that overlooks the practical complexities of governance and human society. For progressives, compromise is weakness, and incrementalism is complicity. Climate action, racial justice, economic equality — not goals to be balanced, but non-negotiable demands to be pursued with sweeping, often untested solutions, no matter the fallout and no matter the human cost. This absolutism risks replacing one form of rigidity with another, trading liberalism’s gradual progress for a radicalism that leaves no room for dissent or pragmatism.

A world dominated by the radical left is one of sweeping ambition but profound risk. Radical progressivism aims to address inequality, injustice, and environmental collapse with uncompromising urgency, rejecting the incrementalism of liberalism. But this willingness to challenge existing systems often ignores the potential for widespread instability, violence, and backlash. Its demand for a fundamentally different world feels less like an invitation to progress and more like an ultimatum to those invested in the current one. Bold as its vision may be, it alienates allies, fracturing coalitions rather than building them. Liberalism, for all its compromises and flaws, excelled at managing complexity and fostering collaboration across divides. Leftism’s unyielding demands risk turning every disagreement into an existential conflict, undermining its ability to achieve even its most essential goals.

Abandoning liberalism entirely comes with its own dangers. Without the center’s mediating influence, politics becomes a zero-sum game, a fight where one side wins and the other loses completely. The question is whether we can navigate this new terrain without descending into chaos or tyranny.

The world without liberalism will not look like the world we’ve known. The institutions that liberalism built — courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies — will either be transformed or hollowed out, used as tools of oppression or engines of justice depending on who seizes control. The political norms liberalism relied on — civility, compromise, deference to process — will no longer restrain the forces vying for dominance. The future will be defined not by balance but by conflict, by movements fighting for fundamentally different visions of what society should be.

No ideology can survive by clinging to its past glories. Liberalism failed because it refused to adapt, to confront the realities of a world that demands bold action and confrontation. Its faith in moderation blinded it to the urgency of the crises before us. Its obsession with process left it vulnerable to bad-faith actors who exploited those processes for their own gain. And its commitment to compromise led it to defend systems that perpetuate inequality, injustice, and environmental destruction. Liberalism’s death is a warning: the middle ground is not a place to stand when the ground itself is shifting beneath you.

A world without liberalism will be a world of extremes, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a world without hope. The authoritarian right’s vision is clear: a return to hierarchy, to exclusion, to repression masquerading as order. The radical left’s vision is equally clear: a reimagining of society that prioritizes justice, equality, and sustainability. The battle between these forces will shape the 21st century, and the outcome is far from guaranteed.

Unless something changes, the future will not belong to the center. In its current form, the world has outgrown liberalism’s cautious approach, its faith in balance, its reliance on institutions that no longer function as intended. The center isn’t holding, and the jury is out about whether it should. Perhaps the lesson of this moment is that the time for moderation is over. The crises we face demand something more — a willingness to imagine, to fight, to transform. A world without liberalism will not be a world of compromise. For better, or for worse.