liberal tyranny

Matt Yglesias has an update on right-wing wish fulfillment masquerading as science fiction, including Orson Scott Card's new book:

The problem is that liberalism's alleged weakness is crucial to the conservative critique of liberalism, which makes it hard to outline a coherent liberal totalitarianism.

. . .

Liberal weakness is supposed to lead to jihad run amok. But they want to make liberals rather than jihadis the real bad guys for emotional reasons so the liberals need to be tough and repressive. But if the liberals are so tough, why are the jihadis run amok? It's well known, after all, that jihadis don't like liberals (feminists, gays, etc.) very much. If the jihadis are strong, they kill the liberals, not leave them around to repress conservatives. And if the liberals are strong enough to repress conservatives, they should fight the jihadis. The upshot is dystopias that are not only "implausible" but that don't really make sense.