Stop Deriding Liz Cheney
Demanding ideological purity among those who stand up to Trump is not a viable way to protect American democracy.
By Shay Khatiri
Every Ramadan my father would remind me before dropping me at school, “Don’t tell anybody we had breakfast.” A classmate of mine who was our neighbor once ratted my dad out for smoking during Ramadan. Before saying anything remotely political in public, I had to literally look over my shoulder. That is Iran, where I spent two-thirds of my life.
That is not the United States. America is a liberal regime, pluralistic and accepting of people with different views. Americans have always believed that diversity is our greatest strength—diversity in all forms, but especially in thought. That is the genius of the American project, and why I love this country so much—why I consider myself as patriotic an American as they come.
Some Americans, though, seem to have given up on this liberal ideal. For many partisans, nothing short of complete uniformity from their compatriots is tolerable. The most recent example is the purge of Liz Cheney from the House Republican leadership. Cheney was ousted as conference chair, the third-highest Republican role in the House of Representatives, not because she lacks conservative credentials, but because she failed the most important test of the modern GOP: complete and total loyalty to Donald Trump. Cheney’s sin—standing up to the former president’s clear and blatant lies about the 2020 election—was an untenable breach of protocol among Republicans.
Cheney deserves commendation for breaking with Trump and the GOP. The Republican Party’s refusal to accept the results of a free and fair election is an existential threat to our democracy. Defenders of liberal democracy of all political stripes should be applauding her honesty, courage, and refusal to bend the knee.
But in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and progressive publications besides, journalists have been attacking Cheney. They say that it’s too little too late, label her a warmonger, or complain that she’s just too conservative.
These critiques might be fair to level in a different circumstance, but raising them now as a reason not to applaud Cheney for standing up to her party is foolish. For five years, progressives asked for conservatives to come out and condemn Trump. Yet when they do, these same voices condemn conservatives within the Republican Party’s ranks for the sin of remaining conservative. It is ludicrous, if not reckless, to claim that the threat to the republic is imminent, and then rebuff potential allies who don’t come from the same ideological club.
Cheney could have gone along with Trump’s lie and stayed in Republican leadership. By fighting back, she is potentially sacrificing a powerful future in the party. Her quick rise up the party ranks shows that she is savvy enough to have had a clear shot at becoming speaker of the House. She was a State Department official and a viable future candidate for secretary of state or defense. She may have even had a chance at winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and becoming the first female president of the United States.
Instead, she chose to be cast into the political wilderness. This might have been why she waited so long to come out against Trump. To many of us, January 6 was the climax of Trump’s attacks on democracy. For Cheney, it was a wake-up call. But she finally woke up, and now she is sacrificing a potentially great future. That is worthy of admiration and praise, not scorn.
That is not to say that any progressive should become a Cheney superfan. Nor does it mean that Democrats should start agreeing with her on policy. It only means that they should welcome her efforts to preserve our liberal democracy and admire her courage.
As much as some progressives would like to do away with conservatism, America is going to have a conservative political faction with significant influence over a major party. We cannot afford to apply an ideological purity test, especially one that bans all conservatives, in our efforts to save liberalism in America. One can object to Cheney’s views on foreign policy, or even oppose conservatism altogether, and still see Cheney as a welcome addition to the fight against illiberalism.
I say this from experience. In 2009, in Iran, there was a massive uprising against the regime. People were yearning for a free life, which is why nobody cared to ask a fellow protester whether they were conservative or progressive, whether they were religious or atheist, traditionalist or gay. So long as someone had a commitment to a free Iran, we were all in the same camp.
Defenders of liberal democracy in America, on both the left and the right, should take the same approach. The main political divide is no longer between conservatives and progressives, but between liberals and illiberals. Demanding ideological purity among our liberal allies is not a viable way to protect American democracy.
Shay Khatiri is an editor at Persuasion.
The left leaning media has distorted this story greatly. It is not an example of "cancel culture," but rather a party taking over its own leadership. This would be happening to the Democrats if Biden had not become a full throated progressive in his policies. AOC and others would be challenging Democratic leadership. Moreover, if a single democrat ever ONCE spoke out against Critical Race Theory or cancel culture or the debate over biology and trans rights and if they then went on Fox News and spoke to Tucker Carlson about it - do you think the Democrats would stand for that? Not a chance. Moreover, they seem to only care about "cancel culture" when it applies to Liz Cheney - then suddenly they care. Well, which is it? Liz Cheney was not doing what they want her to do - and is instead helping Democrats stay powerful. If it were "cancel culture" they would have forced her to resign as the Democrats did with Al Franken. They have every right to vote out the leadership they don't want. The left - and especially the left press - continue to be obsessed with Trump even though he isn't even on social media or anywhere in their line of sight. They can't let go. Not to mention, that THIS is the obsession during a week of devastating violence in the Middle East, gas lines, ongoing unemployment and growing fear -- tells you everything about the current state of the Democratic Party and the the massive media machine that does its bidding.
This is a very silly post.
Iran? Trump? This author seriously compares The politics of Trump to Iran? Trump was and is no threat to our “liberal Democracy” — in fact a bigger threat to our liberal Democracy is the politics of those like the author’s, or Liz Cheney’s.
You see, I didn’t vote for Trump, either in 2016 or in 2020. I voted for Hillary and then Jorgensen. Between 2016 and today, the faction that was obsessed with ideological purity more than any other was that of the Progressives in the Democratic Party. Even the reason the author is happy with Cheney is because she satisfies his ideological purity, at least regard to his delusion that believing the results of an election was caused by fraud(which the the Democratic Party asserted was essentially the case with Trump and the Russians for 4 years) is somehow a threat to American Democracy(tm).
Personally I don’t think voter fraud is why Trump lost, but I don’t think there is any problem with people believing that it was so—that’s their right. Nor do I assume that Republicans are *lying* when they say it is the reason; they could just be *wrong*. Because someone thinks something we think is false doesn’t mean they are lying. When Christians say that Jesus was a god, I don’t think they are lying, I think they are wrong. When Democrats say that climate change will destroy the earth in 12 years.... well... when AOC says it I think she is lying, but when the average Democratic Party voter says it, I think they are just in error.
Now, Trump being Trump, and the delusional narcissist he is, I think it is highly plausible that he believes that the reason he lost was because of voter fraud. Thus for Democrats... and Liz Cheney, to say that Trump losing because of election fraud is a LIE, I think... no it’s just a conspiracy theory like the idea that Hillary lost in 2016. Hillary though is not the sort of delusional narcissist that Trump is; she is just a lizard person—thus I suspect actually she lies about that, and the Democratic Party leaders as well simply because they know that the Democratic Party base are gullible loyalists, which can easily be demonstrated by the fact that the Democratic Party have on their website in their history link that they have been fighting for civil rights for 200 years when 150 years ago they fought a war to preserve slavery, and no Democrats seem to give a fuk.
Cheney isn’t spreading the Democratic Party narrative because she is a warrior for truth, as she portrays herself, she does so because she hates Trump, maybe because he denounced the Iraq War, which was itself based on lies, and which Cheney still supports. So to applaud Cheney simply because she shares a shred of the ideological purity of the Democratic Party, that DEMOCRACY IS UNDER ATTACK by Trump, when the Democratic Party admitted in court that they didn’t give 2 shits about democracy when running their own primaries and then spent 4 years attempting to remove an elected president under the banner of a conspiracy theory, is itself just base factionalism. As is the author’s post. “We [progressives]” — I’m certainly not part of the authors faction. But I’m acutely aware of its demand for ideological purity: climate change, “anti racism”, abortion, cultural relativism, post modern gender theory, economic “equity”.
I suspect the Democratic Party would not keep a senator in a party leadership position if they for some miraculous reason began to denounce the Democratic Party’s perverse flirtation with “investigating” how “America”, and innocent immigrants, should pay reparations for the legacy of slavery, which is actually the Democratic Party’s legacy. If a Democratic Party senator actually had the nobility to demand the Party of Slavery finally redeem itself for fighting a war to keep slavery and its 100 year terrorism of black people, and pay reparations themselves from their own wealth and power that they derive from slavery — well I do not suspect that senator would remain in their position of power and the author would not be writing trite horseshit about diversity of thought. He would be calling for that senator to be purged as being disloyal to the Democratic Party and its BIG LIE.
And despite our country’s current political factionalism it is no where near the political conditions of Iran. May the matrix bless the USA.