Dila Cakir

Incendiary opinions and factional partisanship. There exists a collapse of democratic deliberation and a growth of resentment in our political dialogue. One Cambridge study found that polarization has increased by 64 percent from 1988 to 2024, with almost all of it taking place after 2008. There is an increasing prevalence in political rhetoric that relies on the “othering” of certain groups of individuals, whether that be immigrants, the “woke” or the wealthy elite. This rhetoric emanates from both sides of our political spectrum and relies on uniting “the common people” against a vilified group or corrupt elite, capitalizing on a feeling of resentment amongst “the common people.” This resentment stems from neoliberalism, whose blind faith in efficiency, free trade and free markets has fundamentally hobbled Americans’ self-government and capacity for moderation. This has cultivated a sense of a loss of control in many Americans, which populists who seek to move fast and break things have channeled into a rhetoric of resentment. A new type of populist political frontier ought to be endorsed—one grounded in moderation and local self-government—that will erode the hegemonic position that neoliberalism holds and nurture the spirit of liberty.

Neoliberalism is the economic ideology that was first fashioned as a political logic by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. This ideology enshrined free markets, free trade and globalization as efficient ends that would benefit all. It would serve as a “rising tide that would lift all boats.” Neoliberalism became the dominant bipartisan ideology and continued through the 1990s, with Bill Clinton entering China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). This opened American markets to a rising authoritarian power, turbo-charged deindustrialization and led to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Beyond the promotion of “free trade” with undemocratic states, neoliberalism also called for deregulation, notably in financial markets. Neoliberalism’s sacrifice of justice to efficiency was laid bare by the 2008 housing market crash and the ensuing global financial crisis, when Wall Street banks bundled highly risky subprime mortgages into collateralized debt obligations. Corrupt private credit rating agencies rubber stamped these flawed mortgage bundles with AAA safety ratings. The U.S. federal government bailed out the banks, and the only major Wall Street investment bank that was allowed to fail was Lehman Brothers. The lack of justice in response to the housing market crash marked the pyrrhic victory of the financialization of the U.S.’s political economy and neoliberalism’s crumbling intellectual foundations.

In 2016, Trump rose to prominence as an outsider who would “drain the swamp” in Washington. He symbolized the popular backlash to the unilateral globalization and financialization project of his neoliberal predecessors and was an instinctive and unreflective vehicle to re-assert popular control over government. However, the administration’s policies (across both terms) were contradictory and demonstrated the endurance of a hobbled neoliberalism. The administration used tariffs to attack free trade and the authority of the WTO, expanded state ownership interests in industry and attacked independent agencies to which Congress had lent its legislative duties. Yet, the administration continued to promote deregulation, corporate tax cuts and executive over-reach. The result was a populism that channeled resentment of distant elites while continuing to centralize the executive branch of government.

Now, the populist moment seems to be converging as the far right and the far left increasingly break ranks to back one another. Tucker Carlson praises progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. Libertarian Thomas Massie and progressive Ro Khanna introduced the Epstein Transparency Act in 2025. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) teamed up to raise Social Security taxes on wealthy wage earners in 2026. These alliances share a goal in elite accountability, but there lacks a shared structural re-assertion of popular control over the political process itself.

Neoliberalism is the outgrowth of individualism, as it is the economic form of a democratic peoples’ retreat from public life into private concerns. Tocqueville warned that an equality of conditions disposes citizens to withdraw into small circles and prize material comfort. The neoliberal order institutionalized that withdrawal, trading faith in democratic self-government for a blind trust in efficiency, free trade and free markets. Individualism has led to a narrow self interest and the spread of a centralizing state which may culminate in soft despotism. Competent liberal citizens with a strong spirit of liberty may be reduced to a flock of industrious sheep. But, Tocqueville believed that feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged and the understanding developed by the reciprocal actions of men, one upon another. Self-interest, well understood, can be used to inspire individuals to take part in their communities, local governments and duties of citizenship when individuals are afforded the autonomy to do so.

Although a renewal of bottom-up federalism would be extremely inefficient, it serves a loftier goal of re-asserting popular control and the habits of moderation and cooperation which modern democracy needs. As we interact less with our fellow citizens, our imagination runs wild with caricatures of them. In our increasingly complicated world, our spirits of restlessness desire to section off portions of the population and vilify them, in order to give ourselves points of reference in antagonizing an “other” as the root of our problems.

The remedy is local self-government. Moderation and rational self-control is a habit that must be given space to be practiced. American philosopher John Dewey believed that humans are prone to extremes, and that the solution was to use education to channel raw impulses into thoughtful habits. “Man’s struggles,” Dewey wrote, “invite him not to partake in lofty moral encomiums that short-circuit his struggle, but to develop, in concert with others, a competence through which he creates a world. Man is, only through his working association with others,” as quoted in “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time” (2020) by Joshua Mitchell. A positive populism, guided not just by a villain, but by a faith in self-government, is what this moment calls for.

Jack Higgins is a member of the Class of 2027.