One of the thing that intrigues me is the number of ways in which &quot;liberalism&quot; (call it &quot;doctrinaire liberalism&quot;, as practiced on universities) are convinced they believe in one thing by name even as they believe the opposite. Liberalism right now is actually highly authoritarian. It claims not to be, but uses every ounce of authority it can come across and seeks vastly more.<p>If you say &quot;I&#x27;m a liberal but I&#x27;m not an authoritarian&quot;, then I&#x27;d suggest at this point you may not actually be a &quot;liberal&quot; anymore, or certainly not a doctrinaire one. There&#x27;s a lot of people who are, IMHO, coasting on definitions now a decade or two out of date and voting for people who are labeled &quot;liberal&quot; without noticing the two &quot;liberals&quot; in question aren&#x27;t the same thing anymore. It&#x27;s a significant driver in the realignment process that we&#x27;ve begun seeing in the spectrum. (Trump is only the beginning of the realignment, not the end, and he is an effect, not a cause.)<p>It is also strange, for example, to see &quot;liberals&quot; who are, presumably, still considering them superior to those stuffy, stuck-up Victorians with their hangups about sex, even as they push consent laws that are far more constraining than a Victorian would ever have dreamed of.<p>There&#x27;s a huge gulf between what doctrinaire liberals believe, and what they believe they believe (no typo). It boggles my mind.