For a lot of these libs historical consciousness begins at 9/11. Like so much of their thought terminates at that point

Liberals basically think that ideology is a substitute for history. After all, there are entire libraries filled with books explaining how institutions like representative legislatures, the press, the courts, etc. are inherently good and constitute democracy by virtue of their existence. We learn about the Bill of Rights in school, how cool and good the Bill of Rights is, and that by extension the Constitution is good and all the institutions surrounding it are an outgrowth of that good thing and work in service of making the institutions better by serving as a check. We're taught about checks and balances at a Cromwellian "instrument of government" level of sophistication. The institutions are designed to be self-correcting. Look, it says so right here in the Federalist Papers! And look, we started with slavery and now we got Obama! The system works!

Liberals take it for granted that "democratic" institutions, not class struggle, are the primary engine of social progress, and from that foundation they fuck up everything. To a Liberal, anything done in the service of legitimizing these institutions is done in service of social progress itself. Likewise, anything done to undermine these institutions is a harm to the process of social progress. Graft and oppression need to be fought insofar as they harm the reputation of the noble democratic institutions, but no farther since the institutions will "obviously" self-correct and sort that all out "eventually." War after war is an acceptable price to pay as long as it can be explained as the necessary price of exporting these institutions around the globe. And once those institutions are established, they must be defended at all costs because of the indescribable price which was paid to achieve them.

The economics of it all don't even register. The historical precursors don't register. Instead of being the driving force of historical progress, class struggle only registers as forgettable scenery which they occasionally duplicate in cargo-cult fashion by walking around on the sidewalk with signs to assauge themselves of guilt. The only thing that matters is if the current action being discussed can be justified in the service of strengthening the institutions which are democratic and progressive by virtue of their existence.

Therefore we end up with shit like "Assad is bad because he's not doing a very good democracy. America does democracy really good so it is okay for us to micromanage a civil war on the other side of the planet. Some people will be vaporized but its okay because they were very anti-democracy and we are very pro-democracy. Sometimes we need to escort minerals over here or over there to make sure the terrorists don't interrupt the commerce of these fine small business owners. We can let everyone vote once the anti-democracy people are all gone."