In contemporary political discourse, it has become fashionable to treat "liberalism" as a singular, malevolent engine of social decay. Critics from both the populist right and the radical left increasingly frame the liberal tradition not as a system of governance, but as a corrosive force responsible for everything from economic inequality to the erosion of community.
Legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues that this personification is a category error. To Sunstein, liberalism is not a sentient actor or a "force in history" with its own agency. Rather, it is a collection of institutional commitments—to free speech, due process, and individual rights—designed to allow diverse people to coexist. By treating these principles as the source of "social terribleness," critics risk dismantling the very protections that prevent authoritarian overreach.
Sunstein’s defense rests on a rejection of ideological melodrama. "It’s not Voldemort," he notes, suggesting that the tendency to hunt for a hidden, dark essence behind the political order obscures the messy, contingent realities of policy and human behavior. Blaming the framework for the failures of the actors within it is, in his view, both reckless and intellectually lazy.
With reporting from Arts and Letters Daily.
Source · Arts and Letters Daily
