Voters have been conned into paying an inflated price for inefficient and ineffective policies dressed in the language of social justice. The more voters realize this, the more voters will reject things like critical race theory. One need only note how quickly polling support collapsed for the social-justice provisions of President Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better bill once it became clear that inflation was no longer “transitory.”

Not that those with a vested interest in the status quo will give up easily. Progressive rhetoric will almost certainly become shriller, ominously predicting a return of slavery, the end of oxygen, and a general collapse of civilization if progressives’ favored programs are in any way cut or altered.

But if the past is any indication, voters will prove smart enough to know that the need for fiscal discipline is always resisted the loudest by those who profit from wasteful spending. They will also know that taming inflation does a lot more for society’s most vulnerable citizens than anything some foot-dragging government agency can accomplish. Just as during the last great inflation of the late 1970s, the noisier and more threatening the dissenting factions begin to sound, the less political sympathy they will be able to muster.