In contrast to intransigence on the right, which proudly proclaims its refusal to budge come hell or high water, the liberal Democrats’ brand of intransigence disguises itself as devotion to dialogue, conformity to morality, and reliance on reason. But their concept of dialogue is one-sided, the interpretation of morality constricted, and the progressive version of reason suffused with partisan judgments. The upshot is that progressives have managed to convince themselves that they are paragons of flexibility and open-mindedness while scorning those who diverge from the progressive party line.

President Obama exemplifies this sensibility. On the 2008 campaign trail he and his acolytes touted his ideological independence, inclination to reach across the aisle, and pragmatic approach to policy. And just the other day, in an interview with Politico, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi characterized the president as “open, practically apolitical, certainly nonpartisan, in terms of welcoming every idea and solution.” In reality, from the stimulus package and health care reform to the current Syria debacle, Obama’s favored approach to dealing with Republicans has been “my way or the highway,” even when, as in the case of Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, his way veers this way and that…

Legions of university professors provide the theoretical perspective that legitimates and camouflages progressive intransigence. Sometimes it goes by the name of “public reason.” Sometimes it flies under the flag of “deliberative democracy.” Sometimes it is couched as an expression of empathy. It is promulgated in the social sciences and humanities, in law schools and at popular interdisciplinary university centers on ethics and the professions. Its main idea is that moral public policy can be derived from dialogue constrained by reason.

In reality, however, the theory favored by progressive professors redefines dialogue as that which people would agree to if they were emancipated from their actual desires and opinions and instead guided by morality and reason progressively understood. By this ruse, the scholarly community — under the cover of dialogue, morality, and reason — banishes from the conversation those who contest progressive premises and policies.