Career Liberals Should Clear Their Eyes

I am a liberal. I can just say that flat out, as if it's some key to my personality, which it is. My liberalism is not necessarily actively political--not a matter of student government or political journalism (beyond the occasional casual column). It's more just a part of my identity, a part of my history, a system of values and a way of looking at the world.

This deeply felt, deeply personal affiliation is, I think, a common brand of college politics on both ends of the spectrum--and it certainly has its appeal. There's something very satisfying about meeting another dyed-in-the-wool liberal and realizing that we speak the same language. We roll our eyes at the same time, we get worked up about the same kinds of injustices, we recognize that we're playing for the same team. In fact, this experience is so gratifying that it's tempting to just stick to our liberal selves and to stop dealing with the other team altogether. When we're talking to each other, we aren't constantly forced to explain ourselves, to start from square one in every argument. We share certain basic tenets and assumptions that allow us to move straight to what feels like a much higher level of discourse.

Clearly, however, this kind of career liberalism also has some serious problems. Too often we end up shutting ourselves off from the opposition and curling up in our comfortable liberal bubble. The ideologically incestuous environment to which this gives rise breeds some of the most significant weaknesses in campus liberalism, and perhaps in liberalism all over. It allows us to stop thinking about the basic principles on which we base our politics, and once we stop questioning these basic principles, we become less responsible in their application.

With its emphasis on various forms of historical and social injustice, liberal rhetoric can be dazzlingly eloquent, blindingly inspiring. When we start talking about controversial policies regarding gay rights or rape or the distribution of wealth, feelings run so high that rational acknowledgment of the opposition can seem insensitive--almost degrading to the issues at hand. But the very severity of these issues demands that we clear the sparkles from our eyes for long enough to treat them more thoroughly and even-handedly than this emotionalism allows.

Rape politics are a particularly difficult area in this respect. The more strongly we feel about the crime of rape--and the more we understand about its devastating consequences for its victims--the less inclined we are to care about the other side of the story. I have heard people say, with the most earnest passion, that if a woman says she's been raped that's enough for them--as if to need any more evidence than that was to insult and trivialize rape survivors everywhere, to perpetuate the abhorrent tradition of blaming the victim. But it should work in just the opposite way. The more horrifying we consider the crime of rape, the more horrifying the title of "rapist" becomes and the more carefully the accusation must be considered.

Liberal ideology is full of these kinds of buzz topics--topics about which feeling is so strong and unequivocal that two-sided discussion becomes impossible. Rape is one such topic. Any kind of racial bigotry is another. At the most basic level, of course, these issues are no longer up for discussion. For the most part, people are not debating the question of whether rape is a severe crime or of whether racism is wrong and destructive. These are no longer liberal causes and it would be an undeserved insult to conservatism to suggest that they are. But there are still laws and policies to be made and cases to be tried--and thus discussion remains necessary. If liberals want to hold their own in these new levels of discussion, they have to keep a clear head.

This means parting with some of our most beloved absolutes, and detaching ourselves from the blinding associations of the buzz topics. It means giving up some of the straightforward emotionalism that makes the kind of "identity liberalism" that I initially confessed was so personally satisfying. If political discourse at Harvard and beyond is going to serve to refine liberal ideology, raising it above the frequent epithets of "knee-jerk" and "bleeding-heart," then liberals need to be wary of the assumptions we share with each other. This is, after all, a good rule for conservatives and liberals alike--although these assumptions function differently in the two communities. In the end, I suppose, it just comes back to the importance of keeping an open mind, a subject about which liberals generally have quite a lot to say. We would do well to follow our own advice.

Jody H. Peltason '01 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.