The Heterodox Liberal Movement Needs to be Honest About This

A political movement propped up by donor checks is doomed to fail, or worse

Photo by Maximus Mazar on Unsplash

At the end of last month, the Substack newsletter The Liberal Patriot (TLP) shut down for good. While its mainstream impact was limited, TLP was nevertheless a prominent player in the niche market of heterodox and/or anti-woke liberal-leaning media. While I have had several disagreements with them over the years (they were slightly to my right socially while to my left economically), they were undeniably operating in a similar area to myself on quite a number of issues, and I found their posts thought provoking quite a lot of the time. As many people have said already, the journalism at TLP will definitely be missed.

However, what really got me thinking was the reason why TLP shut down. It certainly didn’t shut down because nobody was reading it: the final post from executive editor John Halpin received 766 likes, and Ruy Teixeira’s final post had received 1203 likes as of this writing. My impression is that they shut down for financial reasons: as Halpin put it, “it turns out upsetting the partisan applecart on multiple issues is not a particularly good fundraising or business model”. Teixeira was even more blunt, saying that “funding for our modest enterprise, always precarious, has now completely dried up” and that the positions TLP took “has tanked our appeal among partisan Democratic donors”. One might retort that if partisan donors aren’t forthcoming, can’t one just find non-partisan donors? However, given what has happened to the TLP, I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to conclude that there simply aren’t any truly non-partisan donors left these days. The polarized political landscape has sadly led to this. The bottom line here is that it’s difficult to maintain funding for a publication that doesn’t consistently serve the interests of one political party or faction (I can’t imagine the right being any better, given the even higher level of party-line conformity among right-leaning publications).

TLP isn’t even the first heterodox publication to be shut down because their funders cut them off. Last August, Discourse magazine, another heterodox publication, had to shut down because their Washington, D.C.-based think tank stopped funding them, and they couldn’t find another source of funding to continue. But now that this has happened to two of the biggest names in heterodox political media, the question has essentially become, can this last at all? Can heterodox political media really be a continued presence in the political landscape, or will all of it be eventually washed away by financial pressures and counter-incentives? Alternatively, would the nightmare scenario of heterodox political media being hijacked by one side or another (more likely to be the right because of funding and messaging priorities) eventually come to pass? While Discourse and TLP took the respectable choice of rather shutting down than taking money that would lead to distortion or even betrayal of their founding principles, I can imagine that not every media outlet would be able to withstand temptation and remain honest. What I’m worried about is that this wave of heterodox media would sadly end up just like anti-woke 1.0, i.e. most of it eventually absorbed by the right, thus losing all credibility and giving leftist critics plenty of ‘I told you so’ moments. As the UATX controversies of 2025 demonstrated, whoever pays the piper calls the tune, and it might not be a tune that is in line with our commitments to free speech, intellectual freedom and independent thinking. This is why, if heterodox media has to either fold or fold into partisan media, then I would rather it fold on its own terms, like TLP and Discourse did.

I guess the lesson all this is pointing to is that, if there is to be a sustainable and sustainably honest heterodox political media, it would need to be maintained by the passion of its writers and thinkers, rather than the funding of think tanks and donors. What I mean is that, people need to be willing to write for little or no money, driven by their own passions, values and beliefs, and do so in a sustainable manner. And it’s much more possible than most people think. Firstly, I myself am a living example of this. Secondly, the far-left is only as strong as it is because there are many people who are working, essentially, for free, for their ideals. While we might not quite agree with their ideals, I guess it’s high time we develop a begrudging respect for their work ethic here, and aspire to the same for ourselves. I mean, I can’t imagine many billionaires willing to fund a political project that calls for the abolition of billionaires, among other things. Yet the far-left has managed to survive, and propagate their ideas over many generations. If we, the ‘centrists/moderates/classical liberals/whatever you want to call us’ can’t at least try to do the same, then are we even in a position to criticize the far-left the way we do? If most of the people on our side are essentially working for a paycheck (and would stop working if the paychecks stopped coming), and most of the people on their side are working for free out of their passion (and would not stop working until they physically can’t do the work anymore), then we have already lost the war, because ultimately, we can’t persuade others to be passionate about something we aren’t passionate enough about ourselves!

My conclusion here is that, there will be a ‘heterodox/centrists/moderate/classical liberal/whatever you want to call us’ community where the people are so passionate about what we believe in that we could work for free if necessary, or there will be no such community at all in the long run, and the whole project would be for nothing. Because let’s face it, relying on paychecks from donors doesn’t bode well for any political movement in the long run. In the constantly shifting political winds and political incentives, those whose main incentive is a paycheck would eventually have to bend with the winds, winds often created by the rich and powerful for self-serving and thus partisan purposes. This is why a political movement that relies on paychecks from donors can’t maintain credibility long-term. This is really something that we all need to be honest with ourselves about.

Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.

***TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the [Progressive Conservative Manifesto](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-progressive-conservative-manifesto), the [Moral Libertarian Manifesto](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-moral-libertarian-manifesto) and the [Moral Libertarian book series](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-moral-libertarian-perspective). She is also the author of her autobiography [The TaraElla Story](https://taraella.substack.com/p/the-taraella-story)*.