The Left is More Moderate 'Cause We've Been Winning

Kevin Drum has a post today arguing that there's no great mystery why the Republican Party is so much more beholden to its radical wing than the Democrats are: there are a lot more radical right-wingers than radical left-wingers these days. I think that's basically true, but I have another thought: part of the reason why that's true is that the liberals have been winning. Most notably we've been winning the culture wars. Over the last half-century, American society has been remade in a wildly more progressive, individualistic, liberal direction. We're a long way from perfect application of the ideals of egalitarianism and individual liberty, but as a society we are pretty clearly trying, and committed to trying. And the government's been a big part of that. Sure, there have been a lot of Republican Presidents lately, but almost all of the big stuff they did that liberals dislike was about concentrating the economic resources of the extremely wealthy. That's not a trivial issue, but we're a long way from fighting over segregation or rampant sex discrimination. Notably, since post-Reagan Republicans have embraced deficits just for the hell of it, they're been able to pursue this pro-rich agenda without actually doing too much damage to the anti-poverty parts of the budget; programs have been cut a little at the margins, but the only time a central plank of the social insurance scheme was structurally altered was welfare reform and that, apparently, worked out a lot better than most liberals expected. The point is, someone who thirty or forty or fifty years ago felt the need to demand massive liberal changes both from the political process and from society at large would find that they've received a pretty large chunk of those demands, with more pretty clearly on the way in the near future (on gay rights, Obamacare actually taking effect, maybe immigration reform and some sort of executive action on climate change, etc.)

If, however, you were a conservative those same few decades ago, well, the intervening years have been a horror show. Particularly if you were a social conservative, you are now greeted with the spectacle of all these strange people running around acting like they're your equal. (Women, black people, Hispanics, gays, atheists, etc.) It's now just routine that everyone, not just weirdo free-love hippie types but nearly every ordinary American young adult, has a sex life that would've been considered scandalously promiscuous when you were born. People go around cursing all the time. You get the point: a certain vision of how American society should be structured, one held by a not-insignificant portion of the populace, has pretty much died over the past couple of generations. Which turns yesterday's conservative into today's apocalyptic reactionary, no longer merely making the Burkean argument that we should hesitate to make significant changes but forced to argue that changes which have already taken place are in fact destroying American society. That's a much more radical posture, and I think the frantic sense of doom has been really magnified by the fact that we've got a black President now. Nothing gets people riled up like identity politics, and for a long time now the ascendant American identity has been the liberal one.

I'm honestly not sure what explains the over-the-top hostility found these days among the one group within the Republican coalition that's been making out like bandits over this same time period, namely rich people and financiers. One way to look at it would be that they've transmuted the simple desire to have more money, rooted in nothing more than good old-fashioned rational self-interest a.k.a. greed, into a kind of identity politics, where anyone who doesn't just want to back a truck full of cash (and no small bills, please) up to the gates of their mansion is committing some unforgivable slight. That's a phenomenon in itself, but more broadly I think it's true that the liberal identity has been whupping the conservative identity's ass for generations and that this trend shows every sign of continuing. What more explanation do we need for the perceived radicalism gap?