Jul 11, 2026 · 52 min · 11 segments
Why is liberalism in crisis? Jeremiah discusses why people seem to be turning away from liberal principles on both the left and the right. He also talks about the importance of being ruthless within…
So the impetus for producing this episode really came from a series of defeats and close calls, I would say, that liberals have suffered in Democratic primaries recently.
It's no secret that the Republican Party used to be more liberal than it is now.
The Republican Party has turned away from liberalism in almost every respect, both in cultural terms, in economic terms.
And worryingly, the most worryingly, in fact, the Republican Party has turned away from the liberal ideal of representative democracy itself.
the attempts to overthrow elections, the intellectual culture on the right that actually venerates monarchy and authoritarianism, it's all very troubling.
But that's something we've been living with for years now, for the better part of a decade since Trump went down his escalator and announced his campaign.
What's newer and potentially just as worrying in the long run is that the democratic party and the left wing of the democratic party especially seems to be giving up on liberalism as well.
You see this most expressed in terms of economics, that left-leaning populist candidates have totally given up on the idea that liberalism is a worthy economic system, and they've gone all in on socialism, all in on big government the government can cure everything kind of beliefs.
And even in some cultural ways, the rise of outright identity politics, the rise of woke, whatever term you want to give to the rise of woke politics.
You know the type of ideas that we're talking about, but the decline of the idea that every man is an individual and every individual can stand on their own two feet and decide for themselves what they should make out of life towards a more group based more communal sense of you know uh view of society, where you are an immutable member of a group that must be judged as part of that group.
Typically, we would have thought of that as a right-leaning racist thing, but you see this group essentialism more and more on the left from a woke angle, and that worries me as well.
Yet, despite the fact that I think this is very worrying, I think this is a bad turn, perhaps you do as well, despite that, the left wing of the Democratic Party seems to be more and more ascendant.
The It's not yet universal, but you can see in many, many Democratic districts, the deep blue districts, the clear trend over time is that we are getting more and more extremely progressive members of Congress, representatives, etc., that we're getting more socialists and more DSA aligned candidates and that the far left is simply out organizing and out hustling the moderate wing of the party or the liberal wing of the party, however you'd like to say it.
So the impetus for producing this episode really came from a series of defeats and close calls, I would say, that liberals have suffered in Democratic primaries recently.
It's no secret that the Republican Party used to be more liberal than it is now.
The Republican Party has turned away from liberalism in almost every respect, both in cultural terms, in economic terms.
And worryingly, the most worryingly, in fact, the Republican Party has turned away from the liberal ideal of representative democracy itself.
the attempts to overthrow elections, the intellectual culture on the right that actually venerates monarchy and authoritarianism, it's all very troubling.
But that's something we've been living with for years now, for the better part of a decade since Trump went down his escalator and announced his campaign.
What's newer and potentially just as worrying in the long run is that the democratic party and the left wing of the democratic party especially seems to be giving up on liberalism as well.
You see this most expressed in terms of economics, that left-leaning populist candidates have totally given up on the idea that liberalism is a worthy economic system, and they've gone all in on socialism, all in on big government the government can cure everything kind of beliefs.
And even in some cultural ways, the rise of outright identity politics, the rise of woke, whatever term you want to give to the rise of woke politics.
You know the type of ideas that we're talking about, but the decline of the idea that every man is an individual and every individual can stand on their own two feet and decide for themselves what they should make out of life towards a more group based more communal sense of you know uh view of society, where you are an immutable member of a group that must be judged as part of that group.
Typically, we would have thought of that as a right-leaning racist thing, but you see this group essentialism more and more on the left from a woke angle, and that worries me as well.
Yet, despite the fact that I think this is very worrying, I think this is a bad turn, perhaps you do as well, despite that, the left wing of the Democratic Party seems to be more and more ascendant.
The It's not yet universal, but you can see in many, many Democratic districts, the deep blue districts, the clear trend over time is that we are getting more and more extremely progressive members of Congress, representatives, etc., that we're getting more socialists and more DSA aligned candidates and that the far left is simply out organizing and out hustling the moderate wing of the party or the liberal wing of the party, however you'd like to say it.
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