Beware the liberal thought police

One of the secrets of Donald Trump’s electoral success was his refusal to abide by many of the limits that liberals have sought to place on acceptable political opinion and debate. In devising their response, liberals need to be careful. Yes, Trump is putting certain previously excluded issues on the table for first-order public deliberation. Liberals (rightly) oppose Trump’s policy proposals on these issues. But the best way to respond is to make arguments against adopting those policies — to engage in first-order politics — and not to revert to second-order politics by repeatedly screaming “racism!” in the vain hope of getting these issues taken back off the table.

In the days since the election, we’ve heard an awful lot of the latter from liberals — and not only about Trump. Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, whose stances on government spending and social issues place him much closer than Trump to the gravitational center of the Republican Party establishment, is apparently beyond the political pale for many liberals as well.

I get it: I’m a centrist liberal. On most issues, I prefer Democratic policies and want to see them prevail. Having to watch a Republican president and Congress gut programs I favor will be painful, and I suspect those changes will badly hurt large numbers of Americans. But should the pursuit of those policies really be preemptively ruled out of bounds? Listening to liberals over the past week or so, you could be forgiven for thinking that many of them fervently wish they could be.

But they can’t be — because roughly half the country either favors some version of those policies or doesn’t think favoring them should disqualify a candidate from serving as president of the United States.