Dr Lilla on the troubles of Liberalism.

Dr Mark Lilla is a Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and of course is a Liberal. He is trying to formulate the ideas of why Liberalism is heaving such a hard time to be accepted. It is perplexing all right. With Liberals directing the Media, the Academia and the law profession, it is difficult to understand how Republicans made such inroads into State and national governments.

He attributes the loss of traction by Liberals to the side effects of identity politics. Supposedly, identity politics have driven the concept of "we" from Liberals, so that each group is looking inward instead outward. In such an environment, a Liberal's identity becomes its politics, leaving little room to reach out let alone debate us Conservatives. Liberalism thrives on campus, away from the population, sort of in an ivory tower.

While, Dr Lilla's analysis has some merit, he leaves out a crucial thing: Barack Obama has increased the speed of Liberal transformation and thus the population got to see the consequences of Liberalism. Everything that Liberalism has touched is a disaster with the exception of tech, though even that is coming apart as evidenced by the troubles of Google. Liberalism can exist only where it is subsidized and it can exert its own kind of fascism. For the time being. It is the ultimate swamp. It won't be drained but replaced by robots.