The Epidemic of Capitulation Suggests the Liberal Order Has …

The institutions of civil society, the organizations and practices that give democracy its substance, are crumbling. The word of the day is capitulation. It’s astounding how fast the liberal order is collapsing. Those charged with its preservation are bowing to the will of a would-be king and a tech lord who is so empowered by his billions that laws and norms don’t apply to him. This suggests that the rot—the disbelief in the system, the sense that it serves little more than the personal ends of power and privilege—is deep and long-standing.

The blame does not rest solely on Trump and Musk. They announced their intentions. More concerning is the rapid capitulation to their demands. The absence of a will to fight, to defend the institutions of liberal democracy, is breathtaking. Yes, these institutions were and are flawed. They often fail to live up to their rhetoric and ideals. But now the ideals have been smashed. It’s power, money, and self-interest all the way up and down the chains of relations where rule by men has replaced rule by law.

Columbia University threw its students, faculty, and reputation under the bus just for a chance to restore some of the $400 million in federal grants the Trump administration canceled on March 7. A powerful New York law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, agreed to provide Trump with $40 million in free legal services so that it wouldn’t be subject to the president’s order barring its members from federal buildings and suspending their security clearances. Neither the university nor the firm fought back—although surely they could have. It appears that they didn’t because they believe more in money and privilege than they do in truth and justice. For many, it probably seems naïve not to.

These capitulations follow Chuck Schumer’s failure to use the little leverage the Democrats had in the budget process to push back against Trump’s cuts. They also continue the concessions that started immediately after the election. Recall, ABC News settled a defamation suit Trump had brought in retaliation for on-air comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library. Meta settled a suit Trump brought against Facebook (and Instagram) following his suspension from the platform after the January 6 uprising. The company ponied up $25 million, with $22 million going to Trump’s presidential library. In case that wasn’t enough to establish himself as a reliable vassal, Mark Zuckerberg bent the knee still further, eliminating fact-checkers and loosening content moderation on Meta’s platforms.

Trump is shaking down firms for money and using money to shake down institutions. His mode is plunder and predation. He demands loyalty and punishes those who have crossed him. Leaders in media, law, and academia are servilely kissing the ring.

In his “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes the advance of inequality in three stages. The final one transforms legitimate into arbitrary power. Rousseau writes:

Here, all private individuals become equals once again, because they are nothing, and once subjects have no law other than the will of the master and the master has no other guide than his passions, notions of good and principles of justice vanish once more. Everything here is reduced to the law of the strongest alone.

Our institutions are self-destructing. What old-school civics taught us about checks and balances isn’t working. Now the fight is all the more urgent and dangerous. Many of us have taken for granted a system where people like us would ultimately be OK, so long as we did our jobs and kept our heads down. Some of us have felt secure enough to stick our necks out, armed with the sense that what is just and right and good will prevail. A few of us have been confident that facts and truth would redeem us when we faced our day in court. These days are gone.

Our fight can’t be to bring them back—at least not in the old way. It has to be for something better, for an economy oriented toward meeting needs, not making profit, for social relations of equality and mutual respect. This is a fight we can we win.