Liberalism and Groupthink

Have you noticed that the left seems to have a hive-like mindset on certain issues? That’s no accident and one of Frank Gaffney’s guests on Secure Freedom Radio last week has written a new book about it.

Dr. Kim R. Holmes was on the radio with Gaffney Friday. Holmes is the former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs . He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and his new book is called “The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.”

At the beginning of their conversation, Holmes described the foundations of liberalism:

“As far as the history of liberalism as an intellectual movement is concerned, it has two elements. One is the American version which really goes back to the American founding, to Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and even John Adams to a certain extent, where those people our leaders and founders were channeling the intellectual tradition of the moderate enlightenment mainly from the British Isles, from Scotland and England, philosophers John Locke and the like believed in the social contract, individual rights, checks and balances on the government and the idea that liberty was basically to protect individual rights against government tyranny. That was the philosophy of the founding, of the American founding.”

Holmes goes on to point out that a second version of this philosophy developed in Europe in reaction to the violence of the French Revolution but pointed out that the two movements share much in common.

Gaffney then delved into the radical transformation of liberalism into today’s progressivism or post-modern leftism and asked Holmes to explain the concept of Groupthink.

“Groupthink refers today to the radical left in America, the progressive liberalism as it’s become. We can recognize it in our university campuses where you find speech codes and demands for safe spaces. Shouting down people you disagree with, disinviting prominent speakers from campuses. Very authoritarian almost totalitarian mindset, that’s probably the worst but it’s not the only place… If you go across the board, not only ideologically and philosophically in the university, you find a monolithic view, a very strong monolithic ideological view where everyone pretty much instinctively agrees and there’s a consensus about what is right and what is wrong. What is true and what is not. It is not only in the universities, it is in the media, it’s certainly in government officials, state, local and federal, journalists, academics, activists, researchers, many of whom are funded directly or indirectly by the government. These make up what I call the ruling class, the new ruling class in America.”

Holmes suggests that because these people share such a similar outlook, it makes their task of political coordination extraordinarily easy. They don’t need a meeting in a smoke filled back room because they all know they agree on pretty much everything.

Gaffney made the excellent point that there are consequences for anyone who deviates from the collective and Holmes mentioned the example of Curt Schilling, who was recently fired by ESPN for posting something deemed politically incorrect on his Facebook page. Holmes asserts that this is a coercive form of public shaming and suggests that we have even moved beyond what used to be described as the culture wars.

That’s Groupthink and the new left. Disagree with them if you dare.