Agents of subversion: Can liberalism sustain itself?

The Amy Tan brand

Reshaping liberalism - ABC Radio

By Anonymed (an anonymous Canadian Doctor)

“This experiment has run its course, and we now know that the Enlightenment-liberal hypothesis was false. A political regime founded on Enlightenment liberalism cannot sustain itself for even three generations. Enlightenment liberalism initiates a perpetual revolution that destroys its own foundations in the name of reason, opening the door to Marxism and fascism. Our concern now must be to restore, as much as possible, the Anglo-American political tradition as it existed prior to the hegemony of liberal ideas.” - Yoram Hazony

As cathartic as it is to mock those swindling out a living in the DEI department, I find myself becoming a bit pedantic of late about the content of the volley fire. It’s not just that some of the pushback can be tactless (though there is that). It’s that I’m increasingly unsure about the scope of the problem. I agree on some level that things are so bad in so many ways that any pushback is good, but I also think we need to be clear about what’s going on. Specifically, we need to decide if our institutions have simply been co-opted, or whether they have failed entirely. If we (the non-authoritarians) are going to stand a chance of winning, we need to be clear about who the enemy really is. 

For example, is it really the case, as I too have often remarked, that the inmates are running the asylum? That is to say, have the crazies truly usurped the non-crazies in charge of otherwise sustainable institutions? Or is something else at play? These sorts of statements imply that the institutions are blameless victims, noble places that have been overrun by the forces of darkness, rather than places whose very incentive structures courted the problem in the first place. But is this true?

It is an increasingly common conservative critique of the postwar world order that liberalism wasn’t betrayed or subverted so much as the project itself always contained within it the recipe for its own destruction. In this view, it’s not that the inmates have taken over. It’s that the caretakers themselves have gone (progressively?) insane and were destined to do so. The argument goes something like this: Radical individualism and faith in the infallibility of human reason inevitably spawned a relativist culture completely decoupled from social pressures or (even healthy) coercion. As Toqueville foresaw, we are people, “who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.” The empirical evidence is tough to refute. In no time flat, we went from “I have a dream” and “follow your dreams'' to “I am what I dream and if you don’t affirm my dream you’re a bigot.” Welcome to the fever dream of Western civilization.

So is this bug or feature? Newcomers to Hollywood have occasionally remarked how strange it is to see so much power concentrated in the hands of the mentally unwell - not as an inexplicable anomaly, but as a matter of predictable course based on the workings of that system.

This is how I feel about medicine these days. Sure, woke activists and DEI grifters have infiltrated our ranks to a previously unimaginable degree, and there remain principled and sober holdouts in medicine’s upper echelons who want no part of whatever we’re supposed to call this barista-stocked revolution. But it should not be lost on us that a disconcerting number of our colleagues have been (seemingly) content to welcome the new regime. Physicians who have been in the system for years and, until recently, had seemingly little ideological giddyup, are now parroting the talking points of the most unhinged activists. I’m willing to grant that some are bullied and afraid, but does this really explain the level of buy-in on the part of those who ought to know better? Does it explain why so few seem to think something is even amiss? Does it explain why every single medical institution, from east to west and urban to rural, operates like a Stasi-produced remake of Revenge of the Nerds?

The Toronto Sun recently published an article about the online antics of a physician named Amy Tan. Tan apparently shared an article on social media arguing that those who don’t wear masks (we’re still doing this?) are racist, ableist and all the rest. She then shut her Twitter account. It’s not entirely clear why, but according to her activist allies, the article has put Tam’s life, as well as her family’s, in danger. That’s quite troubling if true but, given the way in which such people define words like “violence”, I think a little skepticism is in order.

For those lucky enough not to know, Tan is one of a handful of Canadian physicians whose very minds were broken by COVID and George Floyd and the power grab that followed. For years, her social media presence has been a parody of woke delusion and irony-free sanctimony (think Titiana McGrath with a medical degree) as well as a reminder of the vengeful undertones of all this. Part of her rage at being doomed to a life as a mere physician and university professor apparently stems from the knowledge that white people are not so numerous (globally speaking), but still run things in the West - “we are the majority!” she says with just enough menace to send a chill down my spine. Lumping all “black and brown” people into one giant horde facing down the white man sounds a little racist to me, but the major takeaway seems to be how much she resents the fact that this “we” is not in charge - everywhere.

Tan is also a professor. Her official title at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine is Director - Teaching Advancement. I don't know what these made up jobs entail, but it seems likely that she has some sway over students at the medical school. She isn’t a voice in the wilderness. She isn’t just some far-left troll placated by the medical establishment because to counter her is to invite that special feeling between nails applied to chalkboard and eardrums mercifully rupturing. She is where she is because she is the medical establishment. She and other artless dodgers like school trustee extraordinaire, Nili Kaplan-Myrth, have made names for themselves as vociferous critics of a world that doesn’t exist, and “advocates” for one that ought never to, all the while themselves occupying seats of power and influence. They are consulted by the media, elevated by our regulatory bodies, and featured in medical journals, despite the fact that every one of their “opinions” or “findings” is preprogrammed by an ideology that sees itself as the ultimate end, and the means as something that can be made up along the way, truth and decency be damned.

I know I’m being a pessimistic Peter, but when our institutions so readily welcome the agents of their own subversion, I can’t help but think: It was the liberal system that created such people. It was the liberal system that elevated them to positions of influence. And it is the liberal system that seems incapable of even tempering (nevermind stopping or excising) their fervor. So I ask: is liberalism dead? Or, like the lot of us, was it dying the moment it was born?

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Systemic symptoms: Privilege and advantage in “antiracist” medicine

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