Something to Avoid

One of my favorite books on modern history is Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War.  Among other things it tells how the course of events left Spaniards of liberal sentiments with no influence and with no good choices in the conflict but only one between fascists and communists  - between Franco and proxies for Stalin. Though we in America are far from anything like that,  there is enough going on to justify being a little bit worried about trends in our politics.

That many on the American left are openly rejecting the liberal values of open discourse, freedom of speech, tolerance of dissent and dissenters, individual rights,  limits on the powers of governments, and  the uniform application of laws is obvious enough and has been for a while.  What seems new, at least in terms of frequency and intensity,  is some of the stuff happening among  the conservatives. I recently read an article at a mainstream conservative site calling for abandoning the practice of governmental neutrality with respect to religion and replacing it with “Christian nationalism”.  I’ve seen enough in various other places attacking the Enlightenment  and claiming liberal values have failed and need to be abandoned in favor of older traditions to make me think some conservatives  are getting more stirred up and becoming more right wing in the European sense than usual.

Decent Democrats and Republicans need to reject the authoritarians among them and do so plainly. All of us who care about a free society need to pay attention and do what we can to keep things from getting out of hand.