By: Carter Schroppe
Following the 2024 Presidential Election, the New York Times published an enlightening map of America showing how nearly 90% of counties swung rightward and thus propelled President Donald Trump to a resounding victory. The small, red arrows pointing toward the Atlantic—sized proportionately to each county’s relative swing—are dotted so ubiquitously across the map that one hardly notices a blue, leftward indicator without taking a second look. What explains this?
In every state and every county across the country, disenfranchised, former Democrats are finding a new home in a populist Republican Party by adhering to the most fundamental ideology championed by the Left.
This omnipresent political realignment appears on the surface to be a contradiction: How can one claim to be both a liberal and a Republican at the same time? Mutual exclusivity exists here according to our culture’s vernacular and understanding of the two parties’ political philosophies. Yet, with the onset of this new administration and our cultural pendulum swinging back to the center, now’s not a bad time to examine this proposed paradox. A Cheney just endorsed a Democrat and a Kennedy is serving in a Republican administration, so clearly the current political moment is dismantling conventions and opening doors to new perspectives.
The term “liberal” has a complicated epistemology and its modern interpretation depends heavily on context and individual perception. The Oxford English Dictionary provides two similar definitions that explain how someone such as myself can participate in the aforementioned political shift while still laying claim to this term. As an adjective, “liberal” is defined as being “free of restraint; free in speech or action,” or “free from narrow prejudice; open-minded, candid.”
I remember being told when I was a kid that liberals wanted things to change, while conservatives wanted things to stay the same. So this definition makes sense to me. Open-mindedness offers one the liberty to politely disagree, question orthodoxies, and adjust personal opinions accordingly. A propensity to listen matters the most; rather than making assumptions about unfamiliar people and ideas, liberals approach dissenters with sympathy and respect in the name of denouncing discrimination. After all, self-awareness that gestures one to look inward and analyze biases and preconceived notions is the only mechanism through which progress is possible.
The problem is that our personal incentive structure gets in the way of embracing this philosophy. Admitting that you’ve been wrong in the past or even regretting who you voted for—that isn’t exactly a whole lot of fun, is it? You impose a hefty cost upon yourself by doing so—it’s so much easier to retain your original beliefs than it is to take a long, harsh look in the mirror and reevaluate the positions and opinions you’ve held for years. An imposing, psychological hill must be climbed if you dare set down your proverbial sword in the pursuit of ascension and enlightenment. Lost time, money, and effort are nothing compared to the social implications that are sadly inevitable in this journey.
To impose these costs upon yourself, proudly and without reservation, is what it truly means to be liberal. Setting prejudice aside in the name of personal progress—regardless of who’s on the receiving end of the discrimination—is never a bad thing, but always a good one. And you’re allowed to know that an idea exists without endorsing it, so no one’s stopping you from turning around if the terrain is too rough or the mountaintop is out of sight. You have the liberty to say what you’d like and do as you please!
But so do I, and so do the millions of aforementioned Americans who find themselves represented on that map. We’re not a group who are stuck in our ways or clinging to the past, nor are we dismissive of outsiders or fearful of the future. Most of us are quite the opposite and, in fact, aren’t really “conservative” at all. We dared to expand our intellectual horizon by engaging with the very academics, journalists, and politicians whom we once looked down upon. Bloodied and bruised many of us are upon reaching this summit…but the view from up here makes it all worth it.
Eminent New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column in the summer of 2023 titled, “What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?” where he put himself in the shoes of the typical Republican voter. Check the comments if you dare—Brook’s ability to see both sides of an argument is what sets him apart as a prominent intellectual, but this piece yielded scorn rather than praise from his supposedly tolerant audience. Brooks beckoned these left-leaning readers to consider a terrifying proposition; what if we’re the problem here? He wrote: “I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.”
Though not aware of the article, I was ironically beginning to scale that rocky peak right around the same time this piece was published. It had always been clear to me, clear as day, that this narrative, in which the Left was good and the Right was bad, wasn’t an opinion but an objective fact. It had never occurred to me that I was even allowed to think any differently!
The authors of this supposedly fabricated story were quite different from me. A disproportionate amount didn’t go to college and were thus less educated than me. I believed their divine worldview to be not only unfounded but somewhat morally misguided. These were people who lived in the South and the Midwest, far from the righteous, coastal urban sprawl that I called home. Paradoxically, “liberals” had instilled in me that shunning this group was somehow noble and virtuous, that reading Thomas Sowell and National Review was a bad thing! God forbid a guy tries to squeeze in some light reading when he’s got a moment, jeez.
Yet, I remembered being taught as a kid that you should treat others the way you would like to be treated, and that everybody deserves the same amount of respect. So, with these core values in mind, I decided to set my prejudice aside and approach the authors of this unfamiliar fable. I decided to no longer look down upon or dismiss them, nor did I allow myself to believe that I was intellectually or morally superior. I decided to treat everybody with respect, regardless of what they looked like, who they voted for, where they were from, or which God they believed in.
It’s so funny because myriad political pundits (such as Brooks himself) have opined that a fringe, radical group of liberals within the Democratic Party is to blame for Trump’s victory.
They’re right, but they’re thinking about the wrong fringe, radical group of liberals.