The Last Experiment: Notes from a Liberal "Builder" Turned Desperate "Firefighter"

A Thoroughly Unsatisfactory Friday Night Rumination

I don’t like lables and feel there has always been a certain duality in my pesonality — but bottom line, I think I have to own being a liberal. I became a “liberal” many years ago because I felt that we as a country could do better; could evolve towards a more “perfect” and just society; that the status quo wasn’t good enough. As Bill Clinton said: “Make change your friend.” I did.

Those on the other side were loyal and respectable American conservatives who, like their name implies, were skeptical of change; who wanted to “conserve” the status quo; who found comfort in conformity, adherence to tradition. Wear a tie; keep your hair short; got to school; get married; buy a house; have kids. All of that. They were honorable people, reasonable—they were just, it seemed to me, overly cautious, nervous about new things.

Now, all these years later, I’m still a “liberal” but now I’m the one trying to “conserve” the institutions that “conservatives” used to cherish. I’ve largely given up on the world getting better — I just want it to not burn down into aa smoking pile of rubble. So the liberal is trying to “conserve” and the “conservatives” are trying bring about drastic, radical change. Up is down. Down is up.

In all this I wonder if democracy was perhaps never as stable and fundamentally “right” as we all accepted it to be. Did it lack something in concept? Or has it just been a failure of implementation in recent decades? When I ponder this I frequently remember when I was in college, I studied Classics, which meant learning Greek and Latin the old-fashioned way — through translation, line by line. To learn Greek, we spent a semester reading Plato’s Republic in the original Greek. That sort of slow plod through the book gave plenty of time to reflect on what was there. Plato was not a fan of democracy. His mistrust of democracy didn’t resonate for me at all — it struck me as elitist, even cynical. His idea that ordinary citizens, ruled by appetite and emotion, were in essence unreliable and would eventually choose a demagoguic tyrant seemed absurdly pessimistic. Democracy, I thought, was the story of progress — of reason overcoming instinct. I focused on mastering the aorist tense and ignored the warnings in the text.

Flash forward a few decades, and I find myself rethinking what I rejected back then. The demagogue has arrived, promising freedom but selling vengeance. The citizens cheer him for his authenticity — his willingness to say what “they” won’t. The institutions meant to safeguard democracy are vilified as corrupt. The crowd becomes the chorus; the truth, whatever flatters them.

Plato wasn’t wrong about how democracies can destroy themselves. He was wrong only about the remedy. He wanted philosopher-kings; I still want citizens — thinking, caring, self-governing citizens. But I’ve come to see what he saw: that democracy’s danger is not external invasion but internal decay, the corrosion of shared reality.

Decades ago, as a liberal, we thought government could be an instrument of reason — a social science, not a superstition. You studied data, applied lessons, and built policies that nudged the species forward. The project was human improvement — a slow, pragmatic engineering of justice. It was imperfect but noble: a faith that knowledge and empathy could make the world better.

That spirit felt scientific. We were the researchers in the laboratory of society, testing hypotheses of fairness, calibrating the experiment of democracy. We believed in progress the way an engineer believes in bridges — not as a dream, but as a structure you could build if you understood the load.

Now all that feels like it’s been ripped away. The blueprints are still there, but the lab is on fire. The task isn’t designing the next iteration of democracy — it’s keeping the current one from collapsing into ash.

We’ve become firefighters in our own laboratory, racing to save the instruments and the notebooks while the arsonists shout that knowledge itself is the enemy. We’re still idealists, but the mission has changed: defend before you can rebuild. It’s not the work we signed up for, but it’s the work that’s left.

How did it come to this?

Part of it, I think, is exhaustion. Decades of economic and cultural whiplash left one side feeling perpetually scolded and displaced. The old conservative faith in order curdled into a hunger for chaos — because chaos at least feels alive. The demagogue gave them something order never could: the thrill of destruction disguised as liberation.

Meanwhile, those of us who once argued for reform are now clinging to institutions we used to critique. We defend the courts, the press, the civil service — not because they’re flawless, but because they’re all that stand between civilization and the mob. I used to believe progress was about perfecting the system. Now it’s about protecting the possibility of having a system at all.

Maybe this is what happens when the center collapses: the compass spins, and everyone grabs the other side’s uniform just to survive the blaze. Conservatives turned revolutionaries. Liberals turned guardians. The vocabulary stayed the same, but the roles switched.

I still want progress. I still want the better rules, the wider circle, the fairer shot. But progress now begins with preservation — with holding the line against the fire long enough for the next experiment to begin.

Plato feared that democracy would devour itself; he may be right.

But I still believe we can learn, even in the smoke. The lab may be burning, but somewhere in the embers lies the data for how to build it better next time.

So yes, I became a liberal because I wanted to change the world. I still do.

I just never imagined that the first step would be learning how to be a firefighter.

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I called this a “rumination” for a reason — it doesn’t arrive at a clear conclusion. It’s just a collection of thoughts, still being chewed over. “Ruminate,” after all, is what cows do — not with nine stomachs, but with one stomach divided into four chambers — endlessly chewing and digesting. It occurs to me that some of our wiser readers may have something to add or clarify, and I welcome that.. Meanwhile, in the words of Paul Simon in one of my all-time favs, “American Tune”: It’s all right, it’s all right/ We can’t be forever blessed/Still tomorrow’s gonna be wroking day/I’m tryin’ to get some rest/That’s all I’m tryin’ to get some rest.” I’ll sign off. Thanks for taking the journey with me.

And if you don’t know “American Tune” (or if you do) — it’s worth a listen, more relevant now than it was in 1975.