He is asking the same question I have been asking myself for the past few years as First Amendment rights get steamrolled by the Federal government again and again. Most recently, and perhaps most comprehensively, during Covid-19 when Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Petition, Freedom of Religion were all effectively suspended under the guise of a self-created panic.
Part of this is just an accident of historical nomenclature. America was founded in a revolution and on the revolutionary concepts of Classical Liberalism. Once those concepts were embedded in the Constitutions, the American Revolutionaries became conservative. They sought to conserve the Classical Liberal vision.
In the 1900s -1920s though, there emerged the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, exemplified by Woodrow Wilson, became enamored with immanentizing the eschaton. The political clerisy sought to use government to shape the nation and its goals rather than accepting the goals of the people. The Progressive Wing was very comfortable using authoritarian means to accomplish their goals. Democrats began to distinguish within their party between Progressives and what they chose to term Liberals. In that terminology, Liberals were not as radical as Progressives but they certainly were not fully committed to Classical Liberal ideals either.
So we have ended up with the misnomer of Liberals (authoritarian progressives) versus the misnomer of Conservatives (who stand for the revolutionary concepts of Classical Liberalism.) The 1960s were the highwater mark for the remnants of Democratic Party liberalism which held any sort of semblance to the revolutionary ideals of Classical Liberalism. Think Daniel Patrick Moynihan who had progressive goals while respecting Classical Liberal disciplines and constraints.
Taibbi is contrasting the current "liberals" of the establishment Democratic party with their positions against government censorship in the 1990s and 2000s. I am of an older generation where the touchstone case was that of the Illinois Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. They wished for, and were granted permission, under the First Amendment, to hold a march through Skokie, a heavily Jewish neighborhood with many survivors of the Holocaust resident there.
It was a horrendously repulsive gesture and caused quite an uproar but was properly, I believe, decided that under the First Amendment, that no matter how hateful their peaceful demonstration, they had the right to hold their march.
Gloriously, probably no one now remembers them any longer other than through the famous John Belushi scene in Blues Brothers. John Belushi as 'Joliet' Jake Blues: "I hate Illinois Nazis."
Double click to enlarge.
Taibbi is mystified that the current mutation of the old Liberal of America, who used to be substantially resident in the Democratic Party, are silent on Natural Rights and freedoms and act as if they are strangers averse to free speech.
There are many Just So stories that could be told to explain this outcome. I observe that the issue is bigger than just an abandonment of Free Speech. These same clerisy seem to have abandoned all the trappings of the Classical Liberal revolution embodied in the American Constitution. They explicitly, or by act, have abandoned Rule of Law, Equality Before the Law, Due Process, Property Rights, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Petition, Consent of the Governed, etc. They have been demonstrating increasing authoritarian and statist tendencies for several years, first at the margin, but now at the core. It was in evidence before Covid-19 but that masquerade certainly seems to have whetted their appetite for rule by force rather than by consent.
Many have remarked the reversal of parties over the past five decades. Democrats used to be the Party of the average man, Main Street, the worker, Blacks and minorities, Civil Rights, Unions/Blue Collar workers, International Entanglements and Institutions, Classical Liberalism, etc. Republicans were nominally the Party of Big Business, Isolationism, social conservatism, House of Un-American Activities, etc.
Since 1965, on most policy issues now, Republicans hold positions closer to Democrats in 1965 and Democrats hold positions closer to Republicans in 1965 (and worse).
I think what Taibbi is observing is in part, the Party Inversion.
I suspect that there may be something else going on though. I suspect that Party characteristics might be downstream from political culture. I suspect that most Conservatives, Libertarians, and Independents have been reminded via the extreme authoritarianism of the Democratic leadership, just what it means to be a Classical Liberal. All Classical Liberals are revolutionaries in rejecting the natural order of authoritarianism which has always existed everywhere and is often barely constrained even among Western democracies today.
The demonstration of malevolent authoritarian behavior in terms of deplatforming, suppressing speech, defunding the police while constraining right to self-defense through gun control, restricting religious institutions, arbitrarily wielding complex laws to bring ill-considered cases based on politics rather than law, closing bank accounts for the politically disfavored, holding US citizens in prison for excess of two years without charges, forced vaccinations with novel and untested vaccines, forced closure of schools, etc. All these authoritarian actions, I suspect, are alarming the citizenry and probably reawakening the bedrock revolutionary Classical Liberalism of America.
The authoritarian clerisy are still wielding much of the power, damaging both our citizens and our institutions but I think their time before the court of public opinion is arriving. Taibbi is right to appalled by their past behavior and astonished by their having been enticed from the right side of history back into the darkness of authoritarianism, but we will pass through this patch as well.
Hopefully with a renewed and strengthened commitment to Classical Liberalism.
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