The phrase “Unprincipled Exception” was introduced to me by a friend. It has explained to me something I could not understand on my own: why have so many formerly sane democrats gone loopy.

Late to the UE party. But the idea is that there are very different ways to be liberal.

One way is to look at the world as progressing, but subject to the constraints of what is possible.

The second way is to espouse a beautiful route to an impossible future and then grant oneself exceptions to living under the applications of those rule.

For example, “equality.”

One can say: “I want to live in an unequal world where that unevenness is modest and maximally reflective of contribution rather than race, color or creed.”

Or you can say “I believe in equality of outcome!” and then grant yourself an unprincipled exception from your Gulfstream.

Many anti-woke liberals and progressives never signed up for these big sweeping statements. I don’t believe genes are irrelevant, inclusion is always positive, diversity is always more productive, borders should be open, etc. I have hypocrisy, but those are insane dumb ideas.

But I now better understand the confusions. If you think those big dumb ideas can be kept from destroying you by invoking unprincipled exceptions, you are being separated from first principles thinking at a deep level.

For example, if I’m not anti-tribalist, that makes me “bad”.

But anti-tribalism is the failed instantiation of a good idea. You don’t have to be anti-tribalism to want to prevent genocides or communal violence. You can be for adaptive tribalism in a modern world. Xenophilic restrictionism is another example of this. A consistent position.

You don’t have to say “Borders are wrong!” only to live a life impossible under open borders by having some carve-out.

Bottom line is that liberalism without undue reliance on unprincipled exceptions is possible, but a minority position. Hence the anti-woke left is rather small.

For reasons I cannot explain, it takes many less courage to live on unprincipled exceptions to suicidal beliefs than to take the hit up front (e.g. I personally am pro-tribal.) but then not have to live knowing your philosophy can be knocked over with a feather at any moment.

The punchline will be that a liberalism built unduly on unprincipled exceptions **must** descend into wholesale gaslighting at scale with the introduction of the Internet.

It’s now too easy to challenge the exceptions. So fear must be induced. Cancellation for those who resist..

My fight is then recast: liberalism cannot live on this level of “unprincipled exception handling” or it will destroy itself in the age of the Internet. We must rebase on more realism or abandon it & admit it doesn’t work.

I believe that liberalism CAN base itself on reality.

This distinguishes me from conservatives who see liberalism as sloganeering plus a hypocrisy of exceptions. But it would require courage to carry out what I am advocating.

More to come. But wanted to share this with anyone else wondering why they were fighting their own side.🙏