The Progressive Need for Conformity

For the intolerant New Left, "somewhat" progressive is a contradiction in terms

“Left” and “right” are a myth, or so claim academics Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis. In today’s WSJ, they point out that these political categories have no fixed meaning, and conclude that it is a myth that America is experiencing ideological polarization. The reality, they argue, is that the left-right struggle reflects a tribal social conflict, in which “social conformity, not philosophy, explains … beliefs.”

Lewis and Lewis have hit upon something important when they talk about conformity and the essential role of socialization in modern politics. But they undersell the importance of the content of ideology. Social polarization in America is a real phenomenon, and it is being driven primarily by the content of progressive ideology. That is because the primary content of progressive ideology requires the enforcement of conformity.

In today’s America, ideologies are often (poor) functional substitutes for religions. As with any religion, boundaries must be enforced by members to allow identification of who is and is not one of the faithful. Also like a religion, an ideology does not need to be internally consistent or logical, and it is certainly subject to change. It follows that the boundaries of an ideological group may often seem arbitrary to outsiders. Progressive ideology is particularly susceptible to this problem because it lacks any moral content other than hedonism, and lacks any epistemological foundational other than authoritative words. Under these conditions, conformity becomes a necessary virtue, even the highest one. Conformity is necessary not just to define who is a progressive and who is not, but because progressivism itself has no meaning beyond conformity to what the group consensus is at the moment.

This is superficially similar to what Lewis and Lewis argue about “left” vs. “right,” but there is a critical difference. While the terms evolve, “left” and “right” define a set of beliefs that, even if sometimes arbitrary in details, exist along a recognizable spectrum at any given point in time. It is perfectly coherent to claim that you are “center-right” or “center-left,” and thus accept a greater portion of one side’s positions while still accepting some of the other side’s positions.

Conversely, you cannot be a “center-progressive”; either you accept all of the current tenets of progressivism, or you are a heretic banished from the tribe. (See, e.g., J.K. Rowling. This also applies retroactively to the dead; see, e.g., Woodrow Wilson.) This impulse to conformity is not a brief social aberration. It is the logical result of progressive thought—there simply is no goal beyond hedonism, no method to obtain the goal beyond the self-reinforcing application of power, and no way to determine the attainment of the goal beyond group consensus.

The conformist nature of progressivism is the root of our current climate of polarization. I won’t absolve the Right of all blame, of course. But the contrast is striking. While conformity rules among progressives, the Right is now home to a variety of people who would have been persona non grata a generation ago. Gutfeld!, the decidedly right-wing and massively popular late night show, is full of atheists, gays, and drug legalizers happily agreeing and arguing with traditional conservatives. Traditional liberals now regularly appear on Fox News after having been expelled from the new progressive Left. Conformity has decreased on the Right, but ideological polarization will continue to grow so long as progressivism maintains its power.