There is a viral video of a middle-aged blue-eyed woman who in many ways epitomizes one side of the ideological divide in this moment. She declares that she's "proud to be woke, proud to be a liberal, proud to be a Democrat." She then goes on to explain what that means, which is caring about everyone and loving America. She doesn't mention a single policy or action that she believes will aid people or America. Those matter less than the labels which render her inherently good. Because she is inherently good, anything she supports is inherently good. Even if the thing she supports has a history of failure or will have predictably negative impacts, it is actually good. Those negative consequences are largely irrelevant because that is the price of something so positive. The video is useful because it points to something that feels dangerous but difficult to describe. The internet would refer to the woman in the video as an AWFL—Affluent White Female Liberal. In my head I refer to people like that as representatives of the ideology of the crazy white liberal. Both feel somewhat pejorative, but watching that video makes it difficult to deny the accuracy. The cognitive dissonance burns behind her eyes and grows uncomfortable to watch. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in a way that speaks to a danger we have not even begun to recognize.
Looking at this moment of highly visible political conflict over deportations, widespread social service fraud, and voter proof of eligibility, there is an obvious element of political cynicism from elected leaders. That does not explain the willingness of citizens to self sacrifice— like Renee Good and Alex Pretti— and destroy the economic basis of a city like Minneapolis to protect illegal alien predators, fraudsters, and the political fortunes of people like Tim Walz. Gad Saad talks about suicidal empathy and Rob Henderson talks about the concept of luxury beliefs. Both are useful in explanation here. "Abolish ICE" and "no one is illegal on stolen land" are examples of luxury beliefs. They confer status or moral standing on the speaker while generally requiring no personal sacrifice or even consistency of action with the expressed belief. Henderson sees suicidal empathy as a kind of luxury belief. Empathy is an evolutionary adaptation for building pro-social interdependence and cooperation within kin groups or villages. Suicidal empathy refers to a maladaptive form of compassion detached from reason, boundaries or reciprocity. Empathy evolved for kin-based care. Suicidal empathy treasures others over kin, and is a cultural pathology that overrides self-interest. The connection is that only the affluent can afford to engage in endless compassion like open borders or restorative justice giving criminals many chances. They are largely insulated from the impacts of what they support, like losing resources to migrants and random street crime.
In his book A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell offers a lens through which to understand what drives the two sides in the ideological divide while explaining why the two sides appear to be talking past each other. He describes a dichotomy in the way in which people view human nature— those with a constrained vision and those with an unconstrained vision. Those with an unconstrained vision see human nature as malleable. They see humans as capable of massive moral or social improvement through social engineering aimed at ideal outcomes. They are distrustful of history and tradition. While those with a constrained vision recognize the inherent limits in human nature. They focus on checking human nature through policies that center incentives and trade-offs rather than engineered outcomes and perfect solutions. Sowell attributes the notion that there are no solutions, only trade-offs to the constrained vision. To simplify, those with a constrained vision look at history to predict policy outcomes. Those with an unconstrained vision base policy on the outcome they hope to achieve, regardless of the history of the policy. As with the woman in the video, detailing negative consequences of the policy they support has no impact on their support for that policy.
While Sowell attaches no political affiliation to either designation, the correlation between the political impetus of the left and the unconstrained vision is undeniable. The current left will choose policy with proven disastrous results simply because the policy they have determined is good matters more than the negative impacts which prove that the policies are simply bad. There are several real world examples right now, from Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City, to Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago, to California threatening to confiscate the wealth of billionaires. Consider also the left's continued fight against mass deportation, even of criminals and the continued support for boys in girls sports, issues which helped to decide the 2024 presidential election. Bearing in mind what we know about the psychological make-up of the left— detailed in White Guilt: A Seven Second Parable— helps to explain the potential danger of granting people with an unconstrained leftist vision power. Rather than use policy to serve the needs of their constituents, they manipulate constituents to serve their ideals and those they have clearly determined to be more deserving than their constituents. In other words, like all elites they are insulated from their luxury beliefs while uniquely forcing those they were elected to serve to bear the brunt of the consequences, showering the largesse of those luxury beliefs on strangers contributing almost nothing.
Mamdani ran on increased affordability for New Yorkers through rent freezes, free transportation, universal childcare, and city run grocery stores, among other proposals. His proposals are designed to benefit everyone in the city, including illegal aliens. To pay for his proposals he suggests raising taxes on corporations and those he considers high earners. This requires approval from the state that is unlikely to come. Instead of scaling back his proposals or increasing efficiencies to decrease costs in city agencies, Mamdani wants to increase property taxes throughout New York City. The impacts of every Mamdani desire is predictable from recent history, but history is irrelevant to a leftist with an unconstrained vision. Otherwise, Johnson in Chicago would be Mamdani's cautionary tale. He is further along the exact path that Mamdani wants to tread. The primary reason that New York state leaders are reluctant to raise taxes on the wealthy is the likelihood of losing that tax base to migration over time, shifting the tax burden to the middle and working-classes. This is the exact issue facing Chicago. Between taxes and crime Chicago has seen a corporate exodus that has resulted in crashing commercial property values and a $129 million decrease in commercial tax collections. To make up for the shortfall the tax burden has been shifted to residential property. Some areas of Chicago, especially black and Latino neighborhoods, have seen their property taxes increase by 99%-133%. Many Chicago residents are incensed by these increases because they see the mayor as more committed to continuing to pay for illegal aliens than the black and Latino residents he says are at the heart of his constituency.
Like Johnson in Chicago, Mamdani is likely to cause the greatest harm to New Yorkers presumed to be vulnerable to the affordability crisis he is meant to address. As with Johnson in Chicago, New York City residents are learning that instituting Mamdani's policies matter more than the impact of those policies. Upon entering office Mamdani reversed a position of his predecessor Eric Adams of conducting aggressive homeless sweeps in dangerous weather conditions. He considered the sweeps inhumane and wanted to emphasize the rights of the homeless to shelter voluntarily. As a result, at least 20 people died in a long stretch of sub-freezing temperatures in his first month. Facing strong public pressure he has reversed course to a modified version of the sweeps. With a spirit of generosity one might call this leftist unconstrained vision the ideology of unintended consequences. It would be more accurate to see it as the ideology of obvious negative consequences ignored. It was predictable that homeless people would die if left to decide for themselves to seek shelter during such a long cold snap. Many are homeless because they are incapable of making rational decisions for themselves. It was predictable for anyone who does not need to relive history to learn its lessons. For those with an unconstrained vision, the lessons of the past can be changed until the real world consequences prove that they cannot. It is the equivalent of asking, "how can you know the fire will burn if you don't touch it," to someone who has been burned by the fire daily. This is why it is dangerous to give power to those with a leftist unconstrained vision. Their constituents will be expected to sacrifice for their suicidal empathy and luxury beliefs. The real world examples are numerous. The hallmark of this style of leadership is ideological representation and acknowledgement over competent management. The policies aim to be emotionally satisfying rather than effective, and deliver constituents nothing they voted for.
Biden's open border is one important example of this style of leadership. There was no rational reason for allowing over 10 million migrants into the country over the course of four years while housing and feeding many of them. His administration only changed course when the consequences were so undeniable they harmed his personal political fortunes. The massive Somali social services fraud first highlighted in Minnesota is another example. It is galling because it is so blatant and artless that getting away with it is the equivalent of a 3-year-old winning a game of hide and seek. It is only possible when the adult pretends not to see. Whistleblower complaints make it undeniable that the lack of scrutiny was deliberate. Not only does the fraud withhold critical funds from people in need of the various services, it increases the chances that the public will withdraw funding for those services in the future. According to some reports, the Somalis were able to succeed in their fraud by threatening to accuse investigators of racism. The appearance of virtue is more vital to the leftist with an unconstrained vision, than actually being virtuous. The possibility of appearing racist is the greatest shield against correcting the impacts of these policies. People have regularly been called xenophobic for wanting the deportation of the migrants Biden allowed in. Those wanting a thorough investigation of the Somali fraud have been accused of racism, despite reporting of the fraud from a decade ago. This bears numerous parallels to the far more serious UK grooming gang crisis that remains unresolved after more than two decades.
The UK grooming gang scandal sits at the intersection of obvious but ignored consequences, suicidal empathy, luxury beliefs, and sacrificing children to appear virtuous. The scandal tracks back to patterns that began developing in the late 90s to the early 2000s. In northern England towns there were reports of organized grooming and abuse of working-class girls. Investigations in the 2010s found that a majority of the men perpetrating these offenses were Pakistani heritage and taking place in areas with high South Asian populations. The abuse has continued for so long because the victims—white working-class girls— are the perfect sacrifice to elite luxury beliefs, and ignoring that the perpetrators are over represented by Pakistanis avoids accusations of racism. If the victims were Pakistani and the perpetrators white, it would never have risen to the level of a crisis. As it stands, the Parliament is still struggling to complete a full investigation of the scandal.
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