An Idea Whose Time Has Come

In addition to our own contributions to the intellectual defense of liberalism here in Symposium, I will occasionally round up interesting articles on the future of liberalism that we see elsewhere. (And if you see an interesting one, send it to me at rwt@tracinski.com.)

Looking to the right, Reason’s Stephanie Slade offers some evidence that right-wing “economic populism” might not be so popular.

According to the new conventional wisdom within the conservative movement, Donald Trump's shocking electoral victory four years ago represented a blue-collar economic revolt against GOP elites, who had lost touch with their base. Rural and small-town Americans, disillusioned with the globally integrated modern economy, were desperate for a hand up. Trump alone noticed, and they rewarded him with their energetic support....

The post-liberals take great satisfaction in labeling the libertarian economic agenda of open trade, low taxes, and deregulation with sneering epithets like “zombie Reaganism” and “market fundamentalism.” They are persuaded that voters overwhelmingly share their disdain for the free market economic regime.

About ten years ago, I moderated a debate for a crowded Republican primary in Virginia’s 5th congressional district. I thought I would throw the candidates a curveball by asking them to name the philosopher or thinker who influenced them. I got a couple of interesting replies, like “Marcus Tullius Cicero,” before one of them cracked the code and said, “Ronald Reagan.” After that, the responses were nothing but “Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.” So it’s amazing to me to see conservatives now referring to Reaganism dismissively.

And yet:

[P]ublic polling suggests that America is still a country of people who broadly support free enterprise. In the fall of 2019, Gallup found that just 28 percent of Americans (and just 7 percent of GOPers) think there is too little government regulation of business and industry. But a desire for greater oversight of market actors—stronger fetters, if you will—is at the core of the nationalist alternative that people like [Oren] Cass are articulating.

Maybe the relatively pro-market, pro-trade mainstream of the turn of the 21st Century is crumbling—or maybe the parties are being pulled farther and farther away from the main mass of voters as they chase after the support of their most fanatical factions.

Looking to the left, James Kirchik offers an interesting overview of how the ACLU went AWOL from the cause of free speech.

In 2017, the ACLU of Virginia had supported the right of white nationalists to rally in Charlottesville. But once the rally turned violent, the national ACLU circulated an internal document with new “case selection guidelines,” stipulating, “Speech that denigrates such [marginalized] groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.” Before agreeing to take a free speech case, the document continued, the ACLU would now consider “the potential effect on marginalized communities,” whether the speech advances the goals of speakers whose “views are contrary to our values,” and the “structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur.”...

Were the ACLU today confronted with a lawsuit similar to National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, [former ACLU head Ira] Glasser doubts the group would take it. (Tellingly, in an essay collection celebrating its most important cases published on the occasion of the group’s 100th anniversary last year, the ACLU neglected to include that seminal litigation). And when other constitutional rights have come into conflict with a First Amendment freedom even more unpopular with progressives than speech—that of religion—the ACLU has made it all but official policy to consider claims of religious conscience as smokescreens for discrimination, arguing that an evangelical Christian baker must make cakes for same-sex weddings against his will (a violation of both expressive and religious freedom), and that Catholic hospitals must perform abortions.

Liberals are now discovering their own version of Conquest’s Second Law, in which any organization that is not explicitly anti-woke will eventually be taken over by wokeness.

I've been advocating for a while that we should counter both of these trends with a new ideological coalition of “Neo-Classical Liberals.” I even suggested, all the way back in 2016, that if the Republican Party was going off the rails, we should plan to form a new American Liberal Party.

So I was delighted to see Bret Stephens echo both of these suggestions recently in his New York Times column.

[T]he neglected territory of American politics is no longer at the illiberal fringes. It's at the liberal center. It's the place most Americans still are, temperamentally and morally, and might yet return to if given the choice.

By “liberal,” I don't mean big-state welfarism. I mean the tenets and spirit of liberal democracy. Respect for the outcome of elections, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the principle (in courts of law and public opinion alike) of innocent until proven guilty. Respect for the free market, bracketed by sensible regulation and cushioned by social support. Deference to personal autonomy but skepticism of identity politics. A commitment to equality of opportunity, not “equity” in outcomes. A well-grounded faith in the benefits of immigration, free trade, new technology, new ideas, experiments in living. Fidelity to the ideals and shared interests of the free world in the face of dictators and demagogues.

All of this used to be the more-or-less common ground of American politics, inhabited by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes as much as by Barack Obama and the two Clintons. The debates that used to divide the parties—the proper scope of government, the mechanics of trade—amounted to parochial quarrels within a shared liberal faith. That faith steadied America in the face of domestic and global challenges from the far right and far left alike.

But now the basic division in politics isn’t between liberals and conservatives, as the terms used to be understood. It's between liberals and illiberals....

This is not a political party, yet. But it could be the seeds of a party. America needs a Liberal Party that represents what we used to be and what we desperately need to become again.

I think Stephens might have some overly rosy memories of our recent political past, but I definitely think there is something to the idea that there is a politically neglected “silent majority” of Americans who are not woke and not in love with socialism but who are equally turned off by authoritarian nationalism.

Yet I should note that Symposium—as with many other similar efforts blossoming right now—is not really about trying to create a new political party. It's about encouraging the birth of a new, strengthened liberal movement, one with a broader and clearer conception of what “liberalism” means. Maybe that will eventually find expression in a new political party, or maybe it will be co-opted in some way by one or both of the existing major political parties. But which party we vote for matters a lot less than changing the terms on which we are debating one another.

We will look back on the last five years as a period that saw the rapid rise of illiberal doctrines on both the left and the right, but I suspect we will look back on the next five years as a profoundly creative period in which new movements and institutions arise to fight for a free society.

Jonathan Rauch hails this awakening.

Princetonians for Free Speech is not alone. The Academic Freedom Alliance launched in March to come to the moral and legal defense of professors whose free speech or scholarly independence is infringed. Also launched that month was the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, or FAIR, which promotes a liberal, pluralistic vision of antiracism while encouraging parents and other citizens to push back against the intolerant and divisive varieties.

It seems that hardly a day passes that I don't see some other example, like this call for a rebuilding of the intellectual infrastructure of liberalism.

Older liberals once fought for laws and regulations to overcome racial and gender discrimination and increase individual rights, while modern progressives increasingly fight over language, representation, group-based accusations, and who is allowed to say or think what.

A young person looking for a solid reform-based liberal education and philosophical training today would be hard pressed to find it anywhere in the billion-dollar progressive infrastructure of contemporary politics.

We’re going to be doing our bit here at Symposium. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this is an idea whose time has come.