The Left's Intellectual Crisis

How we lost the plot

My friends regret inviting me to dinner. When conversation turns to politics—as it inevitably does these days—the room gets tense when I start criticizing the left. Across the table, my wife frowns. She indulges me (love you babe) but I can see that she thinks my criticisms are misplaced.

She has a point.

The right is politically and culturally ascendant, degrading vital institutions built largely by progressives—academia, journalism, the administrative state—and weakening civil society, the rule of law, and the liberal international order. Conservatives have gained the power to inflict such senseless damage in part by depicting progressives as extremists and wokescolds. We don’t need to carry their water. Not when internal solidarity is so important.

To be sure, we shouldn’t naively reflect the distorted picture of the left painted by conservatives. Yet forswearing self-criticism is both intellectually dishonest and politically suicidal. We stand at an inflection point: some progressives are noticing that many left-wing positions are implausible and unpopular. Our political failures can no longer be ignored. The moment is ripe, in fact, because we’re finally in a position to recognize what ails us.

Progressives suffer from intellectual tribalism.

We take shelter in our caves, finding warmth in our shared convictions, while disagreement howls beyond our walls.

Captives of groupthink, our political tribe does our thinking for us, rewards conformity, and censures those who fail tests of moral purity. At the same time, we regard the barbarians outside the gates with suspicion and scorn.

The result? We are dogmatic about ideas that are very much contestable. We are aggressively uncharitable, treating ideological opponents as not merely mistaken but malicious grifters. Meanwhile, our attention to evidence shifts conveniently: if a view is popular in our circles, we settle for the first reason to accept it; if it’s unpopular, we won't stop searching until we find a reason to reject it.

Yes, conservatives are intellectually tribal too. Let’s be real, they’re far worse. Party loyalty has flipped many of the right’s core ideological commitments. Free market principles have given way to support for tariffs, hawkish foreign policy to isolationism. To conservatives, at one time, the moral virtue of elected officials was paramount.

We’d never waffle like this…would we? What exactly is our view on free trade these days? Do we favor prolonging proxy wars or winding them down? Plus, it’s disconcerting, isn’t it, that conservatives tend to have more accurate views of us than we do of them?

Regardless of political affiliation, all sides should resist intellectual tribalism. As citizens of a diverse and democratic society, we have a civic duty to listen respectfully to our political opponents, engage them in civil dialogue, and seek common ground. We shouldn’t chase people out of our tribe just because they disagree on one issue or fail to voice expected shibboleths, especially when the right welcomes them with open arms.

Yet however we respond to disagreement, intellectual tribalism is vexing for another reason: it warps our own thinking. Even if conservative thought is more disordered—and there’s little doubt that it is—it’s imperative that we put our own house in order.

Take negative partisanship. We shouldn’t let ourselves be drawn to views merely because our opponents reject them. Yet we do so regularly.

After COVID struck, conservatives grew more skeptical of health authorities and opposed lockdown measures along with mask mandates. In response, progressives reflexively demanded unwavering trust in scientists—even when they trespassed beyond their domain of expertise—and insisted on social restrictions regardless of the collateral damage to personal liberties, small businesses, and children’s education. This wasn’t an inevitable consequence of political ideology; it didn’t exist at the outset of the pandemic, and other countries polarized along opposite lines.

Intellectual tribalism has, over time, steered progressives toward profoundly flawed positions. We’ve embraced censorship of competing viewpoints, leaving ourselves vulnerable to the illiberal right now that they are bent on violently suppressing our speech. We’ve mainstreamed the idea that prisons and police should be abolished, despite opposition from communities most victimized by police brutality. We’ve even become skeptical of economic growth, arguably the single most powerful force for improving the lives of marginalized people.

These positions are well-intentioned responses to genuine problems—dehumanization, police violence, and deepening inequality—but they fuel policies and behavior that harm the very people progressives claim to fight for.

Progressives also have to face that positions like these contributed to electoral disaster. Economic factors may have been the primary reason Trump won a second term, but cultural factors also played a crucial role. Many voters perceived progressive positions as threats to their well-being. If you and your family live in a neighborhood plagued by violent crime and then strained by an influx of migrants, you’ll naturally be hostile to those who seek to defund the police and make the nation’s borders more porous.

Why are we so intellectually tribal? Well, tribalism is the natural human condition: we’ve inherited minds and cultures sculpted by eons of tribal competition.

Beyond that, we inhabit ideologically homogeneous echo chambers that constrain our imaginations and stifle dissent; algorithms and profit-driven media bombard us with the most extreme views of our opponents; our reasoning is warped by a primal drive to signal our tribal membership and enhance or preserve social status; and we’re trapped in an intellectual race to the bottom.

Counteracting these forces is one of the great social challenges of our time. Broad institutional reform is needed. Ultimately, given how political partisans have been sorting themselves—online and in physical space—the best solution may lie in radical social integration.

But structural conditions do not preclude personal responsibility.

We should step outside of our caves and accept that our political views might be mistaken, especially when our peers feel strongly about them. We should give alternative views a fair hearing and stop pretending that all dissent from orthodoxy is harmful. (Friends, please keep inviting me to dinner.)

Some critics will dismiss what I’m saying as a plea for moderation or reactionary centrism. But many tenuous views on the left share the same progressive ends as alternatives—alleviation of hardship and social inequality—while pursuing means that are ineffective and even counterproductive. We should seek to reduce poverty and disadvantage among African Americans, but intrusive DEI seminars and personal atonement for racial biases are distractions that provoke legitimate backlash. Better instruments of racial justice can be found in universal social programs that lift all groups simultaneously while building broader political coalitions. Expanding the welfare state is hardly a moderate position.

Some progressives adopt high-minded views because they’re insulated from the consequences. Immigrants deserve a better life, and they may be a boon to citizens overall, but their effect on working-class people is often to increase competition in the labor market, strain public services, and raise local housing prices by adding to demand. Elites, meanwhile, enjoy a wider selection of ethnic restaurants.

In other cases, tendentious views are falsely attributed to some minority class as a whole when in reality they’re championed only by tiny activist groups—composed of elites seeking to elevate their own status. Terminological entrepreneurship from academia is a case in point. “Latinx” is in vogue among knowledge professionals but remains unpopular or unknown among actual Latinos and Latinas.

Many views are left-washed when they’re really just the product of elite capture.

In any case, resisting intellectual tribalism means not endorsing any particular set of views but cultivating genuine openness to alternatives. That’s essential if you want to know the truth. You must genuinely grasp the strongest case for opposing ideas.

If you also aspire to persuade others—truly persuade them rather than browbeat—you must demonstrate authentic willingness to be persuaded yourself. You might think that this is hopeless—that we’re beset by reactionary forces that seek only domination and understand only power. You’d be right about the grotesque political leaders currently ruling over us, but many fellow citizens can be persuaded, if we can earn their trust.

The left’s intellectual crisis won’t be solved by better messaging. We need better thinking. We have much to gain by resisting progressive groupthink, exiting our echo chambers, and trying to understand where others are coming from without moralizing disagreement.

To reclaim intellectual honesty and rebuild our political future, we must transform closed orthodoxies into open questions.