Neither Left Nor Right, But Catholic . . . Liberal Authoritarianism

By STEPHEN M. KRASON

For some years now, things have been written about the increasing authoritarian attitudes and practice of American liberalism. Kim R. Holmes and James Kalb in recent years have written books about this. Holmes, who is a historian, says that even though liberalism through the twentieth century always made freedom of expression and speech a central concern, it is no longer the case. The only “truth” that liberalism embraces are liberal ideological positions. Kalb has written that liberalism’s present-day spokesmen view other — non-liberal — perspectives as an outright threat and a public danger.
We have seen many examples of the authoritarian bent of liberalism. There was the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status a decade ago. The top IRS official involved, Lois Lerner, also shared confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Justice to try to get it to open unmerited criminal investigations into some of the conservative organizations.
The IRS even leaked one organization’s donor list with the obvious objective of motivating people to harass and embarrass the donors. In case there was any question about political thinking motivating the IRS, Holmes points out the fact that two-thirds of political donations by IRS employees over the nearly quarter-century before this episode went to Democrats.
Many more federal government bureaucrats are Democrats than Republicans — thus tilting to the left — and we see many abuses by the “deep state.” Other examples include leftist state and local government officials targeting Christian clergy and church employees for dissenting from hard-core liberal positions. In Idaho in 2014, city officials told Protestant ministers that if they did not perform same-sex “weddings” they would face jail time. In Houston a lesbian mayor subpoenaed pastors’ sermons and public statements to see if they opposed homosexuality.
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Oregon’s hefty financial penalty imposed on a baker for refusing to bake a “wedding” cake for a same-sex couple. Oakland, Calif., threatened to fire any of their employees who set up a Christian employees association, even though they recognized a homosexual employees organization. The liberal-dominated Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, centered in California, held that governments could censor terms such as “natural family” and “family values” as hate speech.
We have also observed the left effectively trying the force people to accept their moral perspective, even to provide funding to promote it. This was seen clearly with the contraception mandate in Obamacare. The Democratic Attorney General of the State of Washington, Robert Ferguson, has been pushing legislation that would criminally punish what he considers “misinformation” — which could be merely advocacy of politically conservative positions — on the grounds that it is “domestic violent extremism.”
The proposed legislation would also compel counseling for people whose views fit into this category as determined by a commission it would set up to get them to change those views. This sounds, to this writer, like essentially a form of brainwashing.
The left is not even reluctant to try to squash conservative-oriented media. Upon the urging of two Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives, AT&T’s DirectTV took off two conservative-leaning news networks. (Almost all other news networks lean left.) One of these was Newsmax, which gets millions of viewers. They reversed themselves only after a public outcry.
We have witnessed one of the most outrageous examples of liberal authoritarianism with the Democratic district attorney of Manhattan indicting former President Donald Trump for an alleged criminal violation of federal campaign laws — even though a state prosecutorial official has no role in enforcing those — and some other ill-defined “crimes.” He stretched and twisted the law to get the indictment, even though the U.S. Justice Department previously said the matter did not involve a violation of federal law.
This, of course, follows from the two baseless impeachments of Trump by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives when he was in office and then trying to make claims that he purloined classified documents when he left office. All of this makes it appear that the rule of law, a central principle for a democratic republic, will be readily dispensed with by today’s liberals for the sake of their political advantage.
Most American campuses have been known for their leftist orientation for a long time, but in recent years their intolerance of opposing viewpoints seems to have intensified. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which especially monitors free speech in higher education, concluded from the annual survey that it does that in 2022 only about 12 percent of American universities and colleges had acceptable free speech policies. We see prominent conservative figures disinvited or intimidated when they come to speak at universities.
Even a federal appellate judge viewed as a conservative who was invited to speak at Stanford University Law School was shouted down by students who will be future members of the legal profession. That certainly doesn’t augur well for sustaining the rule of law. The intolerance on campuses seems to have been bred in part at least by the eagerness to suppress non-leftist speech — as the Stanford episode illustrates — by students themselves.
Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post has written how today’s college students are both more leftist and more “openly hostile” to free speech than those in the past. They come to college already having those views (possibly shaped by their leftist-oriented pre-college public school — and, in some cases, even private school — education). They particularly want to suppress “racist” and “sexist” speech on campus, without defining what these terms mean — in other words, inviting a sweeping suppression of speech. They also insist on “diversity” and “diversity sensitivity training.”
The latter is another example of leftist brainwashing, trying aggressively to reshape people’s thinking along the lines of leftist ideology. As far as pre-college education — specifically, public education — is concerned, we witness the same suppression of non-leftist thinking as in higher education. As an example, public school teachers in certain states have been suspended or forced to resign because they refused, on the basis of their Christian beliefs, to use students’ preferred pronouns or names when they claimed to be the sex they were not.
More outrageous is the fact that numerous public school districts around the country have policies in place that require withholding from parents the claims of their enrolled children to be a different sex than they actually are. Transgenderism, of course, has become a leading element of the liberal agenda.
Then, there is the matter of the Tech “oligarchs” — known for their leftist bent — who suppress views that go against liberal orthodoxy.
Kalb says that the centralization of social life and pervasive reality of government regulation of so many things effectively make all significant social institutions agents of the state, and these institutions are controlled throughout the Western world by those with a liberal mindset. He says that they force their ideology on society, unlimited by any standard outside of themselves. In other words, something like natural law is not a restraining force because they don’t believe in it and it is not widely stressed in modern society as a real force restraining men’s actions.
The bottom line is that liberals push aside good arguments, won’t engage in discussion with or give any credence to those with opposing views, and don’t believe that their ideology can be challenged. Hence, you have liberal smugness, liberal intolerance — and, in the end when they get power, increasingly liberal authoritarianism.
As some writers have pointed out, liberals are particularly hypocritical because they think of themselves as more open-minded than everyone else even though they really aren’t. One wonders if the only political perspectives mainstream liberals are truly tolerant of are those of the far left, which they have increasingly embraced themselves. Columnist Jonah Goldberg says that the increasingly intolerant thinking of liberals is driven their elites — the liberal opinion-makers. It comes from the top down (which is curious for people who always tout how much they are promoting democracy).
Is there any way to reverse the effects of liberal-generated intolerance and oppression? Holmes suggests that liberals may be overconfident in thinking that they can successfully suppress opposing thinking and remake American politics and life according to their ideology. He thinks that a backlash against it may be developing. A combination of moderate liberals (he believes there still are some), libertarians, social conservatives, and religious people may challenge it.
I would comment, however, that for this to happen people must resolve to come forth, make the effort, show basic courage, and be willing to assert themselves irrespective of the opposition and criticism they will receive.

• + + (Stephen M. Krason is professor of political science and legal studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, associate director of the University’s Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life, and co-founder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. His latest books are Catholicism and American Political Ideologies: Catholic Social Teaching, Liberalism, and Conservatism and a Catholic political novel, American Cincinnatus.)