Why Can't Liberals Tell a Good Story?

Every pundit worth his or her stripes has an opinion, and I'm no different.

One thing that isn't usually done in these discussions about liberal ineptitude, however, is discussing why the left actually is inept.

There's lots of talk about how they're inept, but the why is often left out of it.

The right describes it as the weakness of idealism, and excessive mothering of the unfortunate, and the progressive left describes it as spinelessness in the face of stiff opposition.

They're both right in a fashion, but their diagnoses are little more than a catalogue of symptoms rather than an assessment of the cause.

So, what's my explanation of the cause?

The left lacks a coherent story.

A coherent story needs a few things:

1. It needs a goal, something to attain, something that makes all of the difficulties along the way worth it.
2. It needs a direction to attain that goal, sometimes called a plot or a plan.
3. It needs an enemy, something to struggle against.

The right has all of that. The left? None of it.

When Marxism fell apart as a viable possibility, the left lost its way. It no longer had an ideal to struggle towards.

Now, you may argue that, at least in the United States, the left never intended to promote Marxism in any full-throated sort of way. It's an arguable point--although anyone even a bit familiar with their U.S. history knows that the workers as a united socialist force were a potent player in American politics during the early and mid-twentieth century.

The thing about a good story is, you don't need to reach or even desire the actual realization of the ideal in order to make the story worthwhile. You just have to believe there is an ideal.

Most thinking Christians don't actually believe God's judgement is coming "right soon," but it is useful to live your life as if that were the case--everyday to the fullest, and all that jazz.

For over a hundred years the idea that progressive social policies could produce a progressive citizenry held sway. In other words, you could make people better through education and opportunity.

This idea that people can be made better has its secular roots in Marxism, but that story has reached an ignoble and unsatisfying conclusion. As a result, the idea that state programs can improve the individual condition has fallen on hard times.

On the other hand, one of the cornerstones of conservative politics is that you can't produce straight lumber "from the crooked timber of humanity." People are already as good as they're ever going to be.

This story works out very well for the right since nobody believes they are the wheat which is crushed under the grindstone of industry. We are all the hero of our own story. So the right gabs on and on about how government is interfering with the "average American," and how government is the problem, and the solution is less government, and the enemy is the Democrat who wants to preserve government, etc, etc.

And the progressive story? Well, as I said, there isn't one. There are lots of fragmented stories about oppression and demonization and unfair Republican strategies, in which progressives always play the victims.

Frankly, these fragmented variations on a theme are boring and predictable.

At some point the left is going to have to find a story to replace Marxism and its various socialist iterations. And if they don't, they will continue their descent into irrelevancy.