Are today’s liberals really liberal?

Of course, terms like “liberal” and “conservative” change values over time, so there is no permanently fixed answer, but the question is still meaningful. Looking at the general standards of what “liberal” has meant in living memory (the past 50 years or so), today’s liberals are not liberal by a 1960s definition, and indeed, for better or for worse, are working feverishly to dismantle the 1960s liberal vision. The 1960s counterculture liberals pushed hard for a non-restrictive (break all restraints), radically integrationist (everyone share everything openly, regardless of race), and non-puritanical (celebrate all forms of robust sexuality, so long as no one is forcing anyone) vision. Using these three criteria, today’s liberals are by 1960s standards “pseudo-liberal” at best, “reactionary” at worst — i.e., they are restrictive (policing speech and every false move), segregationist (cultural appropriation and do-not-cross lines and “you can’t know my truth” because you’re not my color), and puritanical (crude jokes and clumsy flirtations are actionable offenses, every hint of male heterosexual desire is suspect in a vague consensus that “male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting” [Dworkin]).

So are liberals today “liberal”? If by liberal, you mean restrictive, segregationist, and puritanical, yes. Perhaps this is indeed what “liberal” has become. But if you are old enough to have set your benchmarks of “liberal” over a longer range, say reaching back through the hippies to John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, the new “liberalism” (restrictive + segregationist + puritanical) might seem “pseudo-liberal” or even reactionary, in some cases more reactionary than today’s college-age conservatives.