Symposium: Year Three

We just passed the beginning of this publication’s third year. I know a number of you are being asked by Substack to renew your subscriptions right now, and I wanted to make a pitch for why you should do that—or restart your subscription if you have let it lapse, or upgrade to a paid subscription if you haven’t before—by reminding you of the reasons Symposium exists and what we’re trying to do.

I also want to convince you to give extra support for our new non-profit organization, the Symposium Foundation for the Study of Liberalism.

The purpose of Symposium is not just to get people to talk to one another and have interesting and important conversations about what a free society is, what it means, and what ideas are required to defend it. We do all of that, of course, but the larger purpose of Symposium is to get people to think and talk about these questions in a different way. It’s about getting people to think about liberalism as the central issue of politics and to escape the dogmatic hold of the old left-right divide, which obfuscates the big issues rather than clarifying them.

It reminds of the other day in Substack Notes (Substack’s new Twitter-like microblogging feed) when there was a discussion about whether “conservatives” are active in Notes, and someone cited me as an example. I quickly protested that I am not and never have been a conservative and instead describe myself as a liberal, with the extra descriptor of “classical liberal.” But I understand why some persist in thinking of people like me as a “conservative,” despite the fact that I have never described myself that way.

People have these two categories in their head. You are either a “liberal”—which means you are for big government and these days usually means you are for a lot of illiberal attitudes when it comes to policing speech—or you are a “conservative.” So if you’re not one of these two things, then you must be the other. Ironically, I also hear from Trump-era conservatives that I am a “leftist” who has gone “woke.” They know I am not on their side, so I must be on the other side—and in their minds, that means the illiberal left.

This is precisely the mindset Symposium is trying to break through and change. That’s why I want to get people to talk to each other and find common ground across some of the usual partisan lines. I want us to think of each other as fellow liberals in a race to the top to offer alternative visions for and defenses of a free society.

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Changing the terms of how people think is the most effective way to make intellectual change and progress possible.

Here's just one example, on the topic of “progress” itself. Fellow Substacker (and Symposium supporter) Anders Ingemarson traces the progress of recent discussions on Progress. He says some nice things about one of my own recent contributions, but he also looks at the bigger picture in which the recognition and study of progress has been gaining ground across some of the usual divides, from free-marketers like Tyler Cowen and Jim Pethokoukis to center-left types like Steven Pinker, Ezra Klein, and Noah Smith. It has led to a real change in how people think about political and economic questions, and I think we’re only beginning to see its impact.

That’s how new political movements and new ideological alignments begin to take root, and this year, I want Symposium to do more to seed this sort of change. I can’t give much in the way of details yet, but I have been in the planning stage of several events that will bring people together to make common cause along “liberal” lines—in one case, exploring policies that are gaining support across the usual partisan divides, in another case, trying to promote Enlightenment values. I have been approaching possible participants and co-sponsors, and so far, the response has been enthusiastic.

To make all this happen, though, I need your support. I recently received a modest and greatly appreciated grant which is enough to support some of our basic operations but is intended only as seed money to help Symposium grow. That’s where you come in.

If you are not currently subscribed to Symposium, please do so. I give away a lot of our material for free, because part of the purpose is to reach as large and wide an audience as possible. So you don’t have to subscribe to get access to most of our articles and podcasts. But those who do subscribe are providing the revenue that makes these discussions possible. You can be a “free rider” on these efforts, but please consider signing up to be one of the people moving the engine.

Also, I have now formed a non-profit organization that will provide the underlying support for this effort, the Symposium Foundation for the Study of Liberalism. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation that will help fuel a larger effort.

Thanks for your readership and support over the past two years, and I am looking forward to announcing more progress in our third year.