Under liberalism, the central question of politics shifted from goodness to power, from God’s plan for his creatures to man’s unfettered will. Divorced from any God-determined truth (to which politics would have to conform), liberalism became willfulness writ large. The question — What can we get away with? — replaces the question — How do we build a political order that enables man to secure the good God willed for him?

The violent infantilism of the Left flows from the subjectivism and relativism that liberalism takes for granted. To the extent that that egotistical violence is checked, the check comes from outside liberalism, not from the logic or morality of liberalism itself. In other words, basic considerations of raw politics in a semi-Christian nation will force liberals to condemn, say, a Kathy Griffin for holding up a mock-severed head of Donald Trump. But would they condemn such a stunt without a public backlash? No. That’s why whenever a violent left-wing figure becomes sufficiently popular in the public mind — usually thanks to the propaganda of the mainstream media — liberals have no problem lionizing that figure.