Liberalism in one sentence?

Albany Times Union editor Rex Smith writes in today's paper: "Dissent is more patriotic than attempting to squelch it." He writes, of course, in response to the President's insinuation that people who "hate" America -- that is, those who oppose his administration -- should find another place to live. The problems with Donald Trump's line of thinking have been widely discussed already. For the sake of argument, let's look at Smith's statement more closely. It reads like an epitome of modern liberalism, for which freedom of expression is among the highest priorities, if not the highest priority. It echoes classical liberalism, which conservatives will recall and embrace again once they're out of power. For Americans in general, the sine qua non for a free society is the right to complain, to the point where some go out of their way to find something to protest, in order to reaffirm their freedom. Appropriately, Smith's statement is unconditional. It recognizes no point at which "dissent" can become less than patriotic. That's probably because "dissent" is by Smith's definition -- which is the consensus definition -- not seditious. Sedition, however, is as much in the eye, or ear of the beholder as it is a legal category.

Most Americans, whether they admit it or not, recognize broad categories of informal sedition -- "dissent" that isn't actionable under the letter of the law but seditious or treasonous on some moral level. These forms of dissent, or counter-dissent, strike many hearers as betrayals of American ideals, culture or identity that require a strong response, be it denunciation, shaming, shunning or worse. The problem with defining anything as "un-American" in order to suppress it is that American ideals, culture and identity remain perpetually open to debate. Having rejected a secular American fundamentalism based on strict fidelity to the Founders' values, no faction can expect to claim to represent the "true" America without challenge; they'll have even less luck claiming a right to squelch dissent that seems to betray the "true" America. Liberalism simply assumes that no idea articulated by an American can be an un-American idea. It can be a bad idea, possibly, but no idea is so bad that it can't be aired out safely for public scrutiny. So, at least, went a liberal consensus still familiar to us, but not necessarily still in effect. Liberals themselves, or at least the harder leftists in their midst, are constantly accused of squelching forms of dissent, particularly dissent aimed not so much at the political order but at a socio-cultural order still seen as under liberal dominance. Those who bristle at anyone characterizing their opinions as un-American are perfectly willing to describe opposing views that way. There's evidence of that in Rex Smith's column, which cites a poll in which 59% of respondents describe Trump's recent comments on the "Squad" as "un-American." It may seem hypocritical for one side to say, "don't ever call us un-American" while saying, "you're the real un-Americans," but at least the majority in the poll isn't telling the other side, as far as we can tell, to go live somewhere else. That might be the one point on which today's self-styled liberals have the moral high ground. They might occupy that ground more securely if they affirmed the essential patriotism of a wider range of dissent more consistently, but that may grow more difficult as the privileging of an inviolable category of theoretically harmless "dissent" comes increasingly under question from all sides.