It is important that every individual American citizen recognizes that somewhere in their life on some vitally important matter they hold a minority opinion, and that if it weren’t for our collective commitment to individual liberty, they would be vulnerable to majority tyranny. This point of conscious vulnerability in an individual is the fulcrum for moving them toward recognizing the need to defend the rights of others who, like themselves, are members of a minority group needing protection from fellow citizens.

To deny or dismiss as trivial these points of conscious vulnerability for all but a defined canonical set of “real” identities based exclusively on race, gender and sexual orientation is wrong on multiple levels. First, the canon glaringly incomplete. What about identities based on class and ideology? Second, is it not a betrayal of liberalism to decide on the basis of your classification scheme what another individual can or cannot do? But worst of all it makes zero political sense! Why alienate potential allies? We need more identities, a proliferation of minority identities to spread the passion for protecting all minority interests.

If we do not show the majority of Americans the importance of liberalism to their own lives and their own interests, this liberal democracy will continue to devolve into an illiberal democracy.