The Mission of a Liberal

[True Blue Door]

4. Like it or not, leftism has an ideological element that cares more about form

than about consequences. That's how totalitarian Communism came about, and in modern times in the US why so much of the left is fragmented into solipsistic issue constituencies and has such a hard time uniting despite having the exact same underlying values.

And BTW, I don't mean liberalism is about harmlessness per se - it's literally impossible to lead without putting relative value judgments on things. But rather that it must reject false dilemmas that other viewpoints embrace. For instance, the left and the right embrace a false dilemma between markets and governments - liberals see them both as tools to serve humankind, and put them in their proper spheres, with democracy over all.