04-04-2025
Beware Progressive Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
The cravenness of intellectual elites is one of Americas saving graces. They may self-righteously advance incendiary ideas about race, gender, politics, and culture, but they are always just a pushback away from retreating into crocodile tears.
President Trumps recent actions against leading universities, Democrat-connected law firms, and left-leaning mediaoutlets have exposed his liberal critics lack of spine. The crowd that just yesterday was denouncing our country as a racist cesspool, weaponizing the justice system, and endorsing censorship - as matters of principle - is now scrambling to memory-hole their egregious actions and words.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher illustrated this kowtowing capitulation during her congressional testimony last week as she sought to fend off efforts to cut federal aid to her organization. Confronted with a series of tweets she sent in January 2020 declaring that "America is addicted to white supremacy" and "America believes in black plunder and white democracy," Maher stated that "much of my thinking has evolved over the last half-decade."
This claim is hard, but not impossible, to believe. People do change their minds, but it is usually about small issues around the margins. Rethinking the big stuff, the broad conceptual frameworks and assumptions we use to process facts and perceptions, is rare because it is hard - especially when our careers and identities hinge on those beliefs. This is why confirmation bias is rampant, echo chambers abound, and the physicist Max Planck observed that science proceeds one funeral at a time.
Mahers Tweets were not small beer but big picture. They reflected fundamental views about our nation, clearly siding with those who see America as a deeply flawed, even failed experiment rather than a shining city on a hill. She was not a college student trying on ideas when she hit send, but an accomplished woman in her mid-30s operating near the nations center of powers, including as executive director of the Wikipedia Foundation, who boasted about turning the famous online encyclopedia into a mechanism to further a progressive agenda.
Yet, Maher testified under oath that in the five years since her revealing tweetstorm - a period during which the views she espoused were ascendant in those elite circles - her thought evolved in the opposite direction. Perhaps that happened, though one would never guess that from listening to NPR. All things considered, Mahers awakening from woke would be a counterintuitive conversion. Unfortunately, congressional hearings have largely become vehicles for creating social media gotcha moments rather than forums for true understanding, so Maher was never pressed to explain her remarkable transformation. Heres hoping an NPR journalist puts her behind the mic to hold that courageous conversation.
Even as Mahers personal thoughts remain beyond our reach, her example suggests two scenarios, both rife with implications. The basic question: Is she a true believer or a sheep?
If shes a true believer, Mahers testimony reflects the lefts strategic retreat in response to Trumps efforts to punish them for their excesses. Whatever they do or say, the forces that saw the eruption of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd as opportunities to weaponize the law and impose government mandates while pushing for trans rights and DEI programs have not seen the light. There is no road to Damascus for these committed ideologues, who are cravenly seeking to distance themselves from, rather than defend, their deeply held beliefs. They are hunkering down until the coast is clear so they can rise again.
But maybe Maher is actually a sheep who really did experience an epiphany. Though this seems unlikely in her case, it appears to be the case for millions of Americans who surrendered to the moral panic generated by progressives during the last decade. Even as they recoil from Trump, many led-astray liberals are now asking themselves, what were we thinking?
Much of this reconsideration is occurring in private because our deeply partisan politics make it hard to discuss such matters in public. Republicans would use such honesty as a cudgel to punish their opponents; progressives are loath to confess anything that might give the other side an edge. The result is a culture of silence: The only thing more astonishing than the momentous events of the last five years is the concerted effort to pretend they never happened.
The price we pay for refusing to confront and process such traumatic history is hard to measure, though a classic American novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," offers some clues. The refusal of Holden Caulfields family to discuss his brothers death is a metaphor for what J.D. Salinger saw as Americas unwillingness to grapple with the wounds inflicted on our hearts and minds by World War II. This obliviousness in the name of moving on is a source of Holdens anger and alienation, and his famous claim that everyone is "phony." Wishing away reality is a fools errand that usually creates dysfunction in individuals and society.
While Trumps allies may cheer his efforts to punish the left, retribution alone will not defang his ideological opponents. It may, instead, harden them in their beliefs. While recognizing that true believers are probably beyond hope, we must offer a generous and understanding spirit - especially in our conversations and daily encounters - with the many sheep who were led astray by those wolves. Otherwise, they will bite even harder the next time they are in power.
J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X @jpederzane.
