Why I’m Less Afraid of the Illiberal Left than the Authoritarian Right

Cancel culture, de-platforming, Twitter mobs; we’ve all heard plenty of stories about progressives abandoning the norms of liberalism in the name of fighting social injustice. And sometimes those criticisms have merit. Some of those anti-racism seminars do smack of Mao-era self-criticism circles. And when you see school districts expending energy on renaming buildings rather than getting students back into classrooms (which would do a lot more to improve the educational success and hence life prospects of minority students) you can’t help but acknowledge that the Left’s critics have a point.

Still, I’m much less worried about the illiberal left than I am about the authoritarian right, and here’s why. Back in 2015 I wrote a book called Truth Evolves, in which I argued that the core element of any successful epistemological, ethical, or political system is its capacity for self-correction, or what I called “corrigibility.” When I look out at our divided society today, at the distinct sub-cultures that have coalesced around the labels “progressive” and “conservative,” I see plenty of excesses on both sides, but only on the left do I see the mechanisms that will afford it the capacity for self-correction.

A useful metaphor here might be that of physical health. We all engage in behaviors that aren’t the best in terms of maintaining a healthy physique, eating or drinking things that aren’t good for us, for example. But if our diet is mostly nutritious, and if we get…