Liberalism as "Loser Talk"

There’s something about political liberalism, with its vocabulary of toleration, pluralism, deliberation, and process, that feels, to many people today, like weakness. When Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute came to campus in May and spoke about liberalism, he used the phrase “loser talk” to describe how people feel about liberal politics right now and that’s stuck with me ever since. In a moment of radical polarization, rising authoritarianism, and a sense of constant crisis, the liberal insistence on rules, procedures, and respect might seem totally out of step with the urgency of the situation at hand. It can come across not just as slow or naive, but as a political failure.

At its core, political liberalism is a philosophy of limits; it demands that we approach not only power, but even our own commitments with skepticism. It insists that both citizens and leaders alike tolerate views they find wrong and to play by the rules even when doing so will frustrate our immediate goals. This restrained and reasonable temperament liberalism’s great strength, but in a moment when we’re told that compromise is actually cowardice, it can easily be made to seem deeply unappealing instead.

Philosophers like Locke and Mill shaped liberalism around the idea that no one holds a monopoly on truth. From that starting point came the liberal commitment to toleration and open disagreement. Mill, especially, worried that even the right ideas can become hollow if they’re not subjected to challenges that require a rigorous defense. In other words, liberal societies need to allow space for serious dissent and disagreement to stay intellectually and morally healthy. But this ideal of toleration, once seen as courageous and principled, now often feels like appeasement in a political climate where ideological enemies are seen as existential threats. It offers no grand promises; it doesn’t work to eliminate its opponents; it listens and deliberates. And in a moment dominated by political actors who promise sweeping change through sheer force of will, that quiet patience is easily mistaken for surrender. To argue that your opponent is wrong but still entitled to speak is, in today’s political discourse, often read as a sign that you lack conviction.

This is compounded by liberalism’s preference for process over outcome. When liberals invoke “the rule of law,” “institutional norms,” or “checks and balances,” they’re appealing to a tradition that prioritizes fairness and stability. But to a populace that’s fed up with gridlock or the usual one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance of making and then undoing progress, these crucial liberal ideas start to sound a lot like ways of avoiding taking necessary action. Martin Luther King’s claim that “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” sounds good and gets repeated all the time … especially when we’re trying to convince ourselves that the current loss will eventually turn into a win. That’s constitutionally wise, but emotionally it can sound like the dream of the perpetually defeated.

Meanwhile, illiberal political figures around the world have gained ground by rejecting these exact liberal commitments. They promise swift action, strong leadership, tough talk, and political life unburdened by deliberation. From Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, these leaders portray themselves as doers, not talkers; they’re powerful men who claim that they’ll get things done instead of spending precious time and energy worrying about institutions and process. When they’re put in positions of power, they work to make good on those promises, bypassing the constraints that have held back other politicians—things like legislatures and courts—on the grounds that they are obstacles to necessary progress. For many voters, what ought to be worrying can also feel like a breath of fresh air and a sense of relief because, finally, someone is getting something done. Whether the issue is crime, immigration, corruption, or national decline, and whether those things are real or imagined, the illiberal promise is blunt and effective: action, action, action. And the electoral success of these politicians with their illiberal ideas reveals something deeply uncomfortable: that liberalism’s emphasis on respect and rule-following can seem, to many, like an obstacle to a flourishing society rather than a pathway to it.

In a moment where things feel chaotic and unfair, the image of decisive leadership carries serious emotional weight. Illiberal politicians project strength and purpose; they talk about fighting and winning, taking back control and restoring national prestige. They name enemies, declare emergencies, and see what they can get away with. The appeal of a Trump, as his supporters will straightforwardly say, is that he says and does what others won’t and ignores or fights directly against the institutions and processes that his political opponents are so desperate to protect.

The more liberalism defends debate, disagreement, and slow-moving procedure, the more it risks seeming irrelevant to urgent problems by appearing weak and ineffective. And the more illiberalism delivers fast results, the more it excites and motivates its supporters. This is both an efficiency trap and a PR problem. In the age of memes, 24 hour cable news outrage cycles, and populist theater, liberalism just doesn’t sell itself well. Its strengths are nuanced and procedural; its victories are often subtle or even invisible. The very things that allow a liberal society to sustain itself over time can sound maddeningly bloodless in a moment that seems to demand bold action. Even major liberal successes tend to be absorbed into the background without any fanfare. The peaceful transfer of power, a bipartisan infrastructure bill that fixes the roads or enlarges the local airport, and a bureaucracy with tens of thousands of workers whose jobs don’t depend on political patronage are actually miracles of modern governance, but none of those things go viral. When the media algorithm is totally pitched toward spectacle and outrage, liberalism’s accomplishments are too quiet to be heard.

If liberalism struggles to sell itself in the short term, it’s because it’s all about the long game. It wasn’t designed to excite people at all; rather, it’s an attempt to construct a political order that can accommodate deep disagreement without collapsing into violence. John Rawls argued that a liberal society must accept the idea that free people will inevitably arrive at different, possibly even incompatible, worldviews. The point of liberal institutions, then, isn’t to settle all disputes once and for all, but to create conditions under which people can live together peacefully despite those disputes. That requires compromise and a commitment to following the rules even when your side loses the argument.

This is decidedly not triumphalism. It’s a politics of restraint, one that assumes power will eventually change hands and that those in the majority today will be in the minority at some point in the future. That’s why liberals build procedural guardrails: to limit power and make sure that the rights we have today will be maintained (or, better yet, expanded) over time. These achievements aren’t necessarily exciting and they might show up on the thirteenth page of the newspaper rather than above the fold on the front page. But liberalism encourages us to think in generations, not news cycles.

Having said all of that, it would be a mistake for liberals to dismiss the emotional appeal of illiberal politics as nothing more than the usual reckless messiness of deeply unserious people. Liberalism is slow and, especially at a moment like this one, it can feel, even to committed liberals, like it’s just not sufficiently committed to winning. Liberal academics and politicians alike can drift into treating politics as an interesting puzzle to be solved by experts and they often assume that, as long as the rules are followed, the outcomes will take care of themselves. But that’s not the reality in which most people find themselves and so even the liberal elite needs to learn to speak to that reality. This means reclaiming the emotional register of politics. Liberal commitments—to dignity, toleration, freedom, equality, and the rule of law—are moral visions, and they should be expressed that way. There’s no reason illiberalism should have a monopoly on passion or conviction. Liberal democrats who fail to find ways to speak in a meaningful way will surely lose to people who do, even if the things those illiberal people are saying are built on anger, hypocrisy, and injustice.

Liberals needs to stop playing defense and start fighting for their principles. At a moment of populist authoritarian swagger, we have to get away from what looks like a lack of certainty about what we stand for. We have to inspire, we have to tell better stories, and we have to make clear that what looks like “loser talk” is actually a deep and abiding refusal to win at any cost. Liberalism insists that the rule of law matters more than any single outcome, that democratic institutions matter more than any single leader, that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it, and that the dignity of others—even your political enemies—can’t be tossed away. That’s not fast or flashy, but it’s right and, if we do the work, it can win.