Preserving a vision: Part IV

Despite the warm glow of self-satisfaction that the liberal vision confers on liberals, ugly facts keep intruding to undermine that vision. Some liberals eventually jump ship and defect to conservatism when the facts keep piling up too high to ignore.

This takes time, of course, and in the meantime there is a never-ending supply of new young people to become charmed with the liberal vision and replace those who have become disenchanted with it.

Other liberals hang on to liberal ideas to the bitter end -- especially when the end is not that bitter for them personally, when they live insulated lives in academia, the courts, foundations and other places where there is no price for liberals to pay for being wrong, no matter how disastrous the consequences for others.

Still, facts are a danger to the vision. In recent times, those on the left have increasingly sought to suppress facts that go counter to the vision.

Thomas Sowell