One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, racism, and death.

In One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad critiques the moral foundations of Western liberalism. He argues that contemporary liberal politics function primarily as a performance of righteousness rather than an actualization of moral principles, particularly when confronted with violence committed by Western powers or their allies. According to El Akkad, this moral vacancy manifests not as an absence of stated values but as a fundamental disconnect between professed ideals and political action. The author argues that the liberal establishment’s primary concern is maintaining its self-image as morally superior while evading responsibility for the violence it enables or ignores.

El Akkad identifies a central contradiction within modern American liberalism: its reliance on lesser-evil arguments that ultimately serve to perpetuate systems of violence. He writes: “What is the use, once elected, of doing anything of substance, when what was necessary, the negation of some other hypothetical outcome, has by definition already been achieved?” (115). This rhetorical question critiques a political philosophy that justifies itself not through positive moral action but through comparison to hypothetical worse outcomes.