Rationalizing Republicans

Who can doubt that all but the most brain-contorted Republican members of Congress are aware that Trump is a scoundrel. Many of these “lawmakers” are scoundrels too, albeit less conspicuously so, and few of them would admit it to themselves, much less anyone else. 

The more cerebrally competent of them self-justify their moral turpitude in protecting Trump by adhering to high-toned sophistry of the sort exhibited in the recently published, respectfully received, book titled The Failure of Liberalism, by Patrick J. Deneen,

In a review published in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Robert Kuttner systematically exposes the intellectual dishonesty that suffuses Deneen’s polemic. Liberalism hasn’t failed; it has been traduced, eroded, and betrayed. That right-wing propagandists have been largely successful in making “liberal” a dirty word is a tragedy of our time.