Lack of loyalty why the left keeps losing

Why can’t the left win elections? This question was raised in Monday’s National Post in a Bloomberg News piece by Leonid Bershidsky. And I think the answer is that it has a loyalty problem.

There are other possible explanations, of course. Including denying the premise and saying it can win, from Justin Trudeau in 2015 to the U.S. Democrats in the 2018 House elections. But as Bershidsky notes, the left is on the ropes in Europe, where among other failures the French Socialist party got crushed by an empty suit named Emmanuel Macron who now seems to be losing to nobody at all, while Germany’s Social Democrats are fading even as their chief adversary, Angela Merkel, does the same.

Meanwhile in North America, Hillary Clinton somehow lost to Donald Trump in 2016 and a smart gambler wouldn’t bet much on Trudeau in 2019, though better him than Jagmeet Singh or what’s-her-name in Ontario. Which makes short work of another alternative theory, that the left is losing due to the calibre of their opposition. Liberals didn’t think much of Ronald Reagan but at least he had charisma. And convictions.

Another admittedly polemical explanation is that left-wing policies don’t work. It didn’t stop leftist parties from dominating politics in the industrialized world for most of the 20th century, but their habit of promising the moon then failing even to deliver green cheese might be catching up to them. On the other hand, whatever intellectual vitality conservatism exhibited in the 1980s, forcing “neoliberals” to embrace markets and discuss civil society, has long since vanished, taking inspiring leadership with it.

Most liberals would reject the possible conclusion that the left is now essentially losing politically to itself, that the “right” abandoned conservatism and stole its adversaries’ big-government clothes. But in that case what do they think is wrong? Why aren’t the Democrats running the table in the United States if Trump is as bad as they claim and, The New York Times assures me, the government shutdown is causing voters pain while Trump’s wall is a fraud?

Ah yes. The wall. Here’s where I think the left has a serious, unrecognized loyalty problem exemplified by their delight in porous borders.

I said delight. In Canada the Trudeau Liberals made a typically half-hearted and quarter-brained attempt to deal with our own refugee border issue before claiming they actually regarded uncontrolled immigration as an economic and social blessing. And one is tempted to retort “Yeah, right” along the lines of the Herman cartoon of the golfer’s wife asking him “Did you mean for it to go in the lake?” But while it’s easy to believe Trudeau couldn’t close the border to all but approved immigrants if he wanted to, it’s hard to believe he wanted to.

It’s just not chic to take that view. It’s “nativist.” It’s “bigoted.” It’s not “open.” It’s not cool. But on this issue I don’t think voters are very chic, just as I don’t believe most Americans share the Times’ hugely positive view of government, even if they like their handouts.

Here let me invoke psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s excellent 2008 TED talk arguing that when it comes to morality, everybody except sociopaths is deeply concerned with fairness and protecting the vulnerable. But, Haidt says, liberals value openness more than conservatives while conservatives place more emphasis on three other dimensions: purity, authority/respect and loyalty.

I’m a bit suspicious about the first given the PC obsession with purity of thought and language, especially about sex where conservatives are meant to have the hang-ups. But conservatives definitely worry more about authority, respect and social order. (Trump is the exception that proves this rule; his supporters enjoy his utter disrespect for the authority of an elite in open revolt against Western civilization since the 1960s.) And from the Cold War on, conservatives have been infuriated by liberals’ apparent unwillingness to take their own side in an argument.

From Stalin to Castro to Chavez, liberals have applauded regimes that would have put them up against the wall in a heartbeat. And on contemporary issues from immigration to terrorism, they don’t seem to disagree with conservatives on how to enforce rules and protect our society but on whether to. Which profoundly alienates voters sympathetic on many other issues.

In the short run I’m happy to see the left defeat itself because, for instance, implementing a socialist platform would be ruinous especially for the poor. But I’d prefer higher-quality political discourse because stupidity is never helpful and a smarter, more self-aware left would force the right to up its intellectual game.

On that basis I urge leftwing parties and thinkers to recognize that their visceral dislike of their own culture, civilization and history is politically harmful because it’s morally wrong. Which in turn requires recognition that loyalty is a virtue.

A SMART GAMBLER WOULDN’T BET MUCH ON TRUDEAU IN 2019. — JOHN ROBSON