Analysts of all intellectual affiliations have, of late, been observing that liberalism is increasingly besieged by its various foes, if not altogether marginalized. Indeed, many so-called “respectable” pundits in the mainstream media have spent long hours lamenting the ascension of bugaboos such as illiberal democracy, authoritarianism, and populism, while also trying to pinpoint just where liberalism took its wrong turn.

The phenomenon of these worldwide mass movements rejecting liberal democracy in the name of a variety of alternative causes, is highly important for us to understand in that it lays bare a fundamental contradiction in the political foundations of the modern Western ruling establishment: that of “liberal democracy.”

Liberalism, in a variety of forms, has been the ballast of the Western ship of state now for over two hundred years and experienced a truly remarkable expansion of its principles during that period, with its mantras of free speech, elections, open societies, secularism, pluralism, free markets, an unfettered press, and constitutionalism dominating the political discourse to such an extent that even many illiberal nations seek to mimic the form, if not the substance of liberalism. It is a further testament to the power liberalism wields (or used to wield) that until the current era of populism really launched the mutiny that lay brewing deep in the hold of the liberal ship of state, that most political parties in the West, even the self identified “conservatives,” were in the grand scheme of things some species of liberal.

Take the pre-2016 GOP, which was essentially a neoliberal/classical liberal entity depending on the leadership. For all the horror its operatives expressed at the “liberal” worldview, none of them could ever summon the strength to slaughter those sacred cows of free markets, constitutionalism and small government that had been passed down from Locke to Franklin to Reagan.

Yet for all the intellectual reverence and material prosperity liberalism has generated among its subjects, it possesses several glaring vulnerabilities, perhaps the most discussed at the moment being again that troublesome phrase “liberal democracy.” Despite its promiscuous usage in the political lexicon, liberal democracy was almost universally examined as being composed of two inseparable concepts, one inevitably engendering the other, with few seriously entertaining the idea that they could be incompatible or even opposed.

But it must be said: the very freedom of the liberal society allows for the destruction of that liberal society, especially via the ballot box. In a liberal democracy, after all, the majority (or rather those who influence the passions of that majority) has absolute power over state and society, and there is no ironclad rule that the majority must vote for liberal ideals forever, making it inevitable that charlatans or fanatics will seek to use the masses to realize their own ideologies. And it’s all perfectly legal. H.L. Mencken, in his often neglected Notes on Democracy, remarked that the masses could tear the Constitution to pieces if they had the votes for it, succinctly laying bare how in modern Western societies, the law and the morality it is supposed to reflect only exist at the behest of whatever a majority has been taught to believe.

This growing chasm between liberalism and democracy has been expounded upon, in different forms, by many thinkers far more eminent than myself. John Lukacs, in his excellent book Democracy and Populism, noted the division in early 20th century America between working class Populists, who voted en masse for more economic protectionism and middle-class progressives who favored a more elitist social engineering for solving social ills. In The Demon in Democracy, Ryszard Legutko described the serious enmity that emerged between “aristocratic liberals” such as Tocqueville and the Founding Fathers, who wanted merely to liberalize the political sphere, and radical democrats who demanded the expansion of democracy (read “the state”) into every facet of life in order to eradicate any inequality. Moreover, history podcaster Mike Duncan has frequently mentioned in his Revolutions podcast the seemingly insurmountable divide that emerges in times of upheaval among political revolutionaries who desire only increased political liberties, and social revolutionaries who want to overturn society.

It is through these disparate analyses of conflict that we can make out the form of one liberalism’s most determined and fanatical adversaries, not that of reaction, but rather, leftism. Leftism is not a new phenomenon and has reared its head in countless nations and epochs throughout human history, from ancient Chinese Agriculturalism to the English Diggers to the Jacobins to Lenin, with the common theme of doing away with any inequality by any means whatsoever. The leftist’s claim to legitimacy in all of this is essentially democratic in nature: only he really cares about the people’s well being, only he knows their best interest, even if they themselves have been deceived as to just what that is; he represents the majority. He is the General Will.

For the leftist, liberal buzzwords about civility, merit, moderation, and limited government are just constructs created by an immoral class seeking to preserve its privilege in the face of the leveling that is the only just way to order the world. The liberty the liberal so cherishes cannot be allowed by the leftist to persist in any form because it might be used to perpetuate that most odious of sins, inequality. Freudo-Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse admitted as much when he laid out his vision for the ideal society in his lesser known work Repressive Tolerance:

Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for ‘the other side’, I maintain that there are issues where either there is no ‘other side’ in any more than a formalistic sense, or where ‘the other side’ is demonstrably ‘regressive’ and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.

Despite its pretenses to liberation, this worldview, like so many similar ones expressed in the name of equality, is inherently totalitarian. Abstract concepts like inhumanity and regressiveness are interpreted differently from person to person, for one man’s revolutionary is another’s reactionary, but, as shown above, only Marcuse’s interpretation is valid. So right is he, apparently, that the mere existence of alternative thought must not only be opposed, but silenced, too. In the face of these totalitarians, liberalism has no real defenses. Norms are no defense in the face of people who believe the very construct of norms is oppressive. Constitutions are powerless when a majority has been incited by media and academia, all exercising their freedom of speech of course, to vote to take the 49%’s stuff and award it to themselves.

Yes, politics is like a classic horror movie: there is strength in numbers and the worst thing you can do is split up. The old Randian cliche of the “rugged individualist” that many people cling to is no good, as in a democracy, the virtuous individual can always be compelled to comply with the will of the tribe. Instead, if you want to be safe in modern democracies, you first have to join a tribe of your own, open society be damned. The tribe may be Christian or Muslim or Hindu. It can be class based or ethnocentric. Perhaps it is structured around a shared past, fondly remembered. The tribe needn’t be leftist; in fact, it may be explicitly anti-leftist. The only rule is that by their very collective, exclusive nature, tribes can never be liberal. For this reason it may well be that it is the cannons of the tribes that finally sink the liberal ship of state.