The Progressive Left Has Destroyed Civil Society

The social contract no longer exists and we have them to thank for it

The past two weeks have been quite an adventure for people who are concerned about the direction which American civil society has been taking recently. The widely reported leak of the Supreme Court’s impending decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation led to a system-wide meltdown on the Left. Since then, they’ve been “protesting” at the homes (and threatening the safety) of conservative SCOTUS justices, which is a federal crime. Violent left-wing fanatics have been firebombing pro-life HQs and pregnancy centres across the country. More generally, lefties have been making royal nuisances of themselves as they’ve thrown a nationwide temper tantrum at the prospect of not being able to kill babies to make their own selfish lifestyles more convenient.

I have to admit, I have zero sympathy for them. Zilch. Nada. None whatsoever.

So yes, they’re right - I don’t care about the Left’s arguments for “bodily autonomy” or “constitutional rights.” Sooner or later, we’re going to end their “right” to strangle babies in the womb and then suck their dismembered bodies out using a vacuum. They can play dress up or threaten sex strikes all they want but it’s not going to stop it from happening. And if they want to get violent about it (and many of these people are seriously threatening to start a civil war over Roe v. Wade), no amount of institutional support or police powers of the state are going to be able to protect them from a broadbased, nationwide self-defence by the normal people in this country.

This is especially the case since these same creatures of the Left have spent the last decade or more denying everybody else their actual, genuine rights as determined both by the Constitution and by traditional common law. You want to talk about bodily autonomy after spending two years trying to force people to get a vaccine with a disturbingly high chance of causing them serious medical conditions or death? After you’ve repeatedly harassed Christian bakery owners to force them to cater to your lifestyle choices against their own consciences? After you’ve used the police powers of the state to rob parents of their children for not going along with the trans agenda? Nah, I’m perfectly fine with telling these people they can’t murder their babies and that if they do, then they can face robust criminal consequences for it.

Long-time readers know that I am not a fan of democracy or republicanism and that my attitude towards the US Constitution is basically that it was “a valiant effort, but to no avail.” However, as a formalist in the classical Moldbugian mold, I also believe that when you have a system in place you follow that system until it can be replaced via formal, legitimate means. If, in our case, you have a formalised Bill of Rights that explicates what can and can’t be done in our system, then you follow it. You don’t ignore or subvert it to advance your own left-wing agenda. Yet, this is what progressives have been doing for over a century and which they have accelerated exponentially in recent years.

Part and parcel with any republican system such as ours which purports to both restrain governing powers and to support a robust civil discourse is that it necessarily relies upon the idea of a social contract, even if that term is not specifically used. Philosophically, the “social contract” was most often appealed to in Enlightenment western political discourse as a way to balance legitimate governing authority versus the rights and consent of individual members of society. However, for there to be any relevance to this, there must also be a balancing between individual members and groups within society versus other individuals and groups.

In other words, government isn’t the only threat to somebody’s rights and ability to participate in civil and political society. Other members of society, with or without backing from elements within government (whether officially or unofficially), can also negatively impact this as well. And this is where the Left has basically dynamited whatever remained of the unwritten but longstanding social contract in America.

Remember all that “I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend you’re right to say it” stuff that used to be the ideal for American political discourse? Well, that doesn’t exist anymore and we have the radical progressive Left to thank. This is after spending the last few years “canceling” people who publicly express a non-woke sentiment or who belong to the wrong group, getting them fired, debanked, and socially ostracised and harassed. This is why all the arguments about social media platforms being “private companies” with respect to user free speech and anonymity fall so flat. When a small circle of companies wield oligopolistic power over the public discourse of millions of users, it doesn’t matter that you’re not (technically) a government, you’re still suppressing free civil discourse like you are. The fact that you’re most likely doing this in collusion with elements within official governing organs only adds to this.

But as I noted, this social contract is now null and void. The Left broke it, so we on the Right should not feel constrained to abide by it, either. The fake National Review-style “conservatives” love to burble on about “our sacred norms.” But norms are only norms when everybody agrees to abide them. Since this is obviously not happening anymore - since even threatening the lives of Supreme Court justices and burning down entire city centres when you don’t get your way are apparently on the table - it’s time to abandon this idea entirely and just deal with radical lefties however we want. That’s “unfair”? Well, life ain’t fair, so get a helmet.

What people on the Right need to internalise is that left-wingers are not really Americans, by their own “propositional citizenship” standard that they’ve assiduously sought to establish for decades. If being a “real American” depends on adherence to certain propositions upon which American civil society is based (as opposed to more natural and historical bases like ethnicity, language, and culture), then the progressive Left fails to meet the criteria. They’ve done nothing but undermine and destroy the traditional American nation, liberties, and institutions. They don’t get to claim the mantle now after systematically trying to blow up (sometimes literally) everything for their permanent revolution.

The Left should no longer be able to expect the protections of civil society as it was understood in classical American republicanism. Not with the way they’ve been acting. Targeting our children for grooming so you can sexually and psychologically exploit them is not winning you any friends. Neither is responding to Lori Lightfoot’s insurrectionary “call to arms” by bombing pregnancy centres. You may think that your institutional support from the current administration will protect you, but all you’re really doing is creating a backlash that is going to destroy you.

In sum, just like the tango it takes two to have a civil society whose social contract is maintained by reasoned debate and discussion. Once one side throws that away, everything begins to be on the table. In one sense, it’s not surprising that this has happened when you consider that we’re deep into our demographic-structural collapse phase. Concomitant with this, we have the combination of no social cohesion and rampant elite overproduction that guarantees the sort of “social tinderbox waiting for the right spark” that we have now. The social contract usually serves to defuse this type of situation, but now that this is no longer an option, the Left’s behaviour is only making a bad situation worse. If we don’t watch out we may well get that civil war that the radical Left seems to want so badly.