Why Organizations Turn Left

I was asked the other day why all organizations turn liberal. Everything from charities to churches to professional organizations to governments all seem to drift to the left. Why is that? The reason is actually quite simple: liberals are motivated to push these organizations to the left, and no one stops them.

As we all know, liberals are happy to impose their own views on others. Liberals do not believe that others can in good faith hold views that are different from their own, and they have no qualms about using whatever authority they are given to impose their views on others.

Consequently, liberals at colleges use their positions to impose liberal speech codes and to require attendance at liberal classes (and ban conservative classes). . . for the "good" of the students. Liberals who run charitable organizations look to steer their funds to "real" (read: liberal) causes and disdain "hateful" (read: conservative) charities. Liberals in corporate marketing departments look to steer corporate support toward liberal community projects to improve the corporate image and demand liberal policies toward gays and minorities to be a "good corporate citizen." Liberal newspaper editors and reporters slant their news to fit their views. And so on. They even prefer to hire other liberals, amplifying the problem. Thus, once liberals get authority, they will work diligently to shift the organization to the left.

Now I’m not saying this is always a conscious decision to subvert an organization, but I will say that liberals make no effort to separate their politics from the rest of their lives, and they see no reason why their work-decisions should not take their political views into account. Thus, for example, the liberal corporate charity officer is unlikely to see the NRA as a worthy organization or cause for corporate giving because they don’t agree with the message, but they have no similar qualms about anti-gun groups. Thus, intentionally or not, they will slowly steer the organization to the left.

By comparison, conservatives rarely look to change the purpose of organizations they join or to impose their political views as policy, nor do they normally suspect that the ideas put forward by their liberal colleagues are merely stepping stones to greater liberalism. Thus, this change tends to be in one direction only.

And in this, the natural ally of the liberal is incrementalism. Liberals rarely demand huge single leaps into liberal-land for their organizations because those are easily opposed and shot down. Instead, they simply look to swing every issue they encounter toward liberalism. This is liberalism by a thousand cuts, as each decision slowly moves the organization further and further left and plants the seeds for more steps to the left.

Indeed, the dirty open-secret of how the government has expanded is not that Congress got together one day and created vast new duties for the government (with the exceptions of Roosevelt and Johnson). What happened is that step by step, the government was asked to address a million small desires. And satisfying those desires has create a patchwork government that is chaotic, way too large, freedom suppressing, and very liberal.

The same holds true for other types of groups.

Sloppy thinking by the public also plays a role in letting this happen. When a problem arises, the public expects a solution. Liberalism is very good at offering what appear to be immediate solutions to problems, because it doesn’t worry about long term consequences. Conservative solutions, by comparison, often seem more harsh. Thus, even a conservative leaning public will often accept liberal solutions because they claim to provide immediate relief. The same dynamic is true within organizations, where short term solutions are often preferred because it stops the whining.

Now I said above that most liberals aren't trying to consciously change their organizations, they just follow their liberal instincts. This is true. . . but not always. Sometimes (many times), liberals set out to consciously high jack organizations.

Activists often seek out organizations that they want to change (like churches or the Boy Scouts) or that they think they can use to promote their own desires. These activists will join the unsuspecting organization and will actively seek out positions within the organization that will let them push their agenda. Once they get those positions, they will push that agenda as hard as possible. This is true of homeowners groups, church councils, professional organizations, etc.: the people who want to change the organization are the most motivated to seek positions that let them do that. Sadly, organizations are easily high jacked by activists because activists have an advantage over non-activist members in that they are highly motivated to achieve their goals, whereas others don’t even know those goals exist.

A good recent example of this involves Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The founder of MADD recently left because MADD has been taken over by activists who want to change the mission of MADD from stopping drinking and driving to opposing to all alcohol consumption. Churches are another example, where gay clergy have been working for several decades to change church doctrine without ever admitting their final goal.

Further, because these people usually hide their ultimate goals, few of their colleagues suspect what is going on and they don't realize they need to stop the plan from the outset. Instead, they examine each step in the process as if it were a wholly independent issue. And as each step seems reasonable enough given the then-current circumstances, they readily agree to each step of the plan. Thus, the activist can make huge progress before anyone even notices that the organization has been changed. And by that point, the activist has usually put barriers in place to prevent the organization from going backwards. Indeed, undoing liberalism often takes a complete reformation of the organization, with a purging of functions, goals and people.

That’s why organizations drift to the left -- because activist liberals seek out positions that let them push the organization to the left, because adopting liberalism is often an easy short-term solution that quiets those who are most upset, and because even non-activist liberals will seek to inject their views into every decision they make. Conservatives rarely do this.