By Luis Parrales
Monday, July 29, 2024
If there’s one overarching story being told about the
political trends of the past decade—about Brexit and Donald Trump, about an
ascendant populism in Europe and South Asia, about the growing authoritarian
threat of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—it’s this: Liberalism is in decline.
The governing philosophy that for much of the 20th century advanced democratic
elections, international cooperation, and a robust declaration of inalienable
rights is now being undermined or rejected in much of the world. Illiberalism
is ascending, and liberals have been caught flat-footed.
Addressing that reality head-on was the chief motivation
behind the recent Liberalism
for the 21st Century conference held in Washington earlier this month.
Organized by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA) as a
sort of foil to the National
Conservatism Conference, the gathering brought together nearly 300
journalists, academics, and wonks to both discuss attacks on liberalism in the
U.S. and abroad and chart a path forward.
Many of the conversations during the two-day conference
focused on ways to tackle specific policy challenges—safeguarding elections,
strengthening international institutions, addressing climate change—but what
struck me most about the gathering was how many in attendance seemed just as
eager to explore the theoretical challenges to liberalism and respond to
matters of first principles. In doing so, it was impossible not to notice a
disconnect between liberalism as painted by its fervent critics and liberalism
as envisioned by some of its most committed advocates.
“Admittedly, the NatCon movement has some very smart
philosophers and theorists asking probing questions about liberalism that we
need to grapple with,” Shikha Dalmia, a libertarian journalist and the
president of ISMA, said during opening remarks. Probing might be an
understatement.
The most vocal opponents of liberalism—a theory of
governing with roots in the 17th century that emphasizes personal liberty,
political accountability, the protection of civil rights, and toleration of
various ways of life—have in recent years relentlessly portrayed it not as a
steward of liberty but as an enabler of disorder and licentiousness. Liberalism
“constantly undermines and disrupts pre-existing practices among the populace,”
legal scholar Adrian Vermeule wrote
in 2019. It then delivers “the illusion of autonomy in the form of consumerist
and sexual license,” concluded
the political theorist Patrick Deneen in his book published the same year, Why
Liberalism Failed.
Much of the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference
seemed intent on reclaiming the definition. For many in attendance, the
Vermeules and Deneens of the world both mischaracterize liberalism and
misunderstand contemporary culture as a result. “Liberalism is not a utopian
ideology that promises to solve every human problem,” observed Dalmia, who was
also the conference’s main organizer. Columbia University professor Mark Lilla
took things further in a later panel, describing Deneen’s sweeping critique of liberalism
as emblematic of the “melodramatic historical dramaturgy” of post-liberalism
writ large—a tendency to create a grand narrative of recent history with
liberalism as the central villain.
But although these retorts were by no means outliers, it
was somewhat surprising that a conference for liberals by liberals did not
devolve into perpetual agreement. Everyone in the room was a self-described
liberal—in the philosophical sense; attendees and panelists were on both the
political right and left—and yet the conference revealed a surprising amount of
internal disagreement that’s all too often papered over.
Take an issue like immigration. Ask post-liberal
nationalists about the topic and you’re likely to hear concerns about community
cohesion and suppressed wages (and, admittedly, more than a few racist
dog whistles). To them, the fact that liberals generally defend immigration
reflects a division between “somewheres”
and “anywheres,” between cosmopolitan elites and those brave enough to assert that “a nation
without borders is not a nation.”
Most American liberals today are certainly proponents of
immigration. The left-leaning Substack writer Matthew Yglesias, for example, wrote
an entire book making a case for increased immigration. Dalmia too
previously covered
immigration for Reason magazine, often arguing for a similar
approach. To them, a more generous immigration policy stems from their belief
in the free movement of people and the fruits of diverse societies.
But for others, liberalism is wholly consistent with
raising concerns about the secondary effects of immigration—and even with
arguing for a more restrictive immigration policy. That was the point William
Galston, a fellow at the center-left Brookings Institution and opinion
columnist for the Wall Street Journal, made during one of the
conference’s panels. “We are no longer able to offer a principled defense that
we believe in of national borders and the need to secure them,” he said.
I later asked Galston about his answer, wondering how
he’d reply to fellow liberals who find immigration restrictions antithetical to
liberalism. Although he’s been critical
of the more severe immigration proposals of the nationalist right, he
didn’t mince words: “The proposition that, if you start talking about limits to
immigration, you’ve immediately deserted the liberal camp is profoundly
destructive to liberalism as a political creed that needs to gain political
support.”
Beyond that practical, political point, Galston also
stressed a theoretical one: The Declaration of Independence itself mentions
both “universalist” protections of inalienable human rights and a
“particularist” concern over the political bands that a specific people would
form with one another. That’s a tension nationalists elide in favor of the
latter point, but liberals often downplay the tension too. For much of the 19th
century, Galston went on, the idea of “liberal nationalism” would not have been
a contradiction in terms.
“You have to do a lot of simplifying, and a lot of
forgetting,” he told me, “to get to the conclusion that if you start talking
about a nation as a bounded community, bounded geographically, bounded
demographically, that you’re suddenly talking in an illiberal language.”
There was a similar dynamic at play over another one of
liberalism’s key tensions. For its critics on the right, liberalism unduly
prizes procedural neutrality and personal autonomy. In doing so, it mistakes
human values or longings, and it is ultimately unable to defend moral right and
wrong from progressive excess. The result is that liberalism offers, in
the words of the traditionalist Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari, the “false
promise of freedom without limits” and a public
square “against the authority of tradition” rather than one ordered “to the
common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”
Yet when asked about his understanding of liberalism,
none other than Francis Fukuyama offered a response that eschewed illiberal
expectations. The political theorist—who in his landmark 1992 book The End
of History posited that Western liberal democracy would be “the final form
of human government”—did not extol neutrality but rather made a moral
pronouncement: Liberalism is about dignity. “Liberals believe that all human
beings, universally, have dignity; that they are owed a certain minimal degree
of respect; and that there are no subgroups of human beings that have a higher
status than other groups,” he said in the conference’s closing panel. “That’s a
foundational belief.”
But what happens, I later asked him, when a bedrock
liberal principle appears to clash with the dignity of a person? Landmark
Supreme Court cases have protected the right of Nazis to march in
predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and of Westboro Baptist Church followers to protest the funeral of a
deceased soldier. Aren’t these examples of neutrality run amok, keeping us from
making moral pronouncements we should feel comfortable making? (Will liberalism
really fall apart if we tell the Nazis that they can’t march there?)
To my surprise, Fukuyama thought these concerns had
merit. Though he didn’t explicitly say that the court wrongly decided either of
the aforementioned cases, he did grant that the “absolutism” of American law
and practice is an outlier compared to other liberal democracies, and even that
liberalism errs when it becomes unduly preoccupied with “abstract rules.” But
if not abstract rules, then, what should guide a liberal’s moral reasoning?
“Actual moral thinking is very much embedded in cultures and traditions,”
Fukuyama said. “Those cultures cannot dictate what morality is. But
realistically, you have to take those into account when you’re assessing things
morally.”
Like Galston, Fukuyama’s response eluded a simplistic
post-liberal characterization. And as with immigration, plenty of liberals at
the conference would flatly reject the possibility that moral
preoccupations—about dignity, for example—could trump a procedural guarantee
like those protected by the First Amendment. New York Times columnist
and former senior editor at The Dispatch David French, for example, has
been a steadfast advocate of viewpoint neutrality on campus, social media, and
American jurisprudence. “Handle bad speech with better speech,” he
wrote in 2019. “Counter bad speakers in the marketplace of ideas, not
through the heavy hand of government censorship.”
The Liberalism for the 21st Century conference did not
try to resolve these admittedly notable disagreements. On the contrary, it
highlighted that even those who embrace the liberal label and worry about the
rise of illiberalism have different approaches and points of emphasis.
Multiculturalist liberals and feminist liberals do not always agree or reach a
clear solution. Neither do libertarian liberals or more egalitarian
liberals.
But by the same token, the varieties of liberalism on
display at the conference suggest the philosophy is far more varied than
post-liberal critics have granted. While the latter present liberalism as an
ideology that’s devoid of local or national attachments or unconcerned with
advancing a vision of “the good,” the liberals in attendance had clearly
thought seriously about these questions.
Yet even if it’s mistaken to portray liberalism as
monolithic or as myopically obsessed with autonomy or neutrality, a key
question remains: If liberals disagree among themselves about these and other
consequential matters, what ultimately unites them?
For Dalmia, part of the answer is a shared concern over
“majoritarian grievances” being stoked by antiliberals worldwide. To her, liberalism
is founded in a “commitment to personal liberty, toleration, pluralism,
political equality, and the rule of law that holds everyone, even the most
powerful person on earth, accountable.” Liberals might disagree on some
consequential matters, but they agree that the pursuit of a good society cannot
excuse tossing what she referred to as “the fundamental architecture of
liberalism”—i.e., constitutional checks and balances, minority protections,
etc.—to the wayside.
And moreover, Dalmia stressed another quality that she
believed set those attending the conference apart: a willingness to call out
their own side. Rather than fueling ever more polarization by focusing solely
on the flaws of political opponents, Dalmia told me that she sought to bring
together “reformists within their own political camp.”
With those goals in mind, the Liberalism for the 21st
Century conference envisioned what a liberal realignment might look like—at
least for some of the most engaged participants in these debates. It modeled
how liberals across the ideological spectrum might table old left/right divides
to focus on the more pressing threat of illiberalism worldwide.
The conference also subverted post-liberal clichés in
this other way: Though certainly global in scope, it showed a clear commitment
to America. “It’s very important for liberals to recapture that sense of
nation,” Fukuyama said as the conference drew to a close. The conference
intentionally focused most on the threats coming from the authoritarian right,
but it also drew a contrast with the pessimism about America coming from
left-leaning critics of liberalism. Harvard University’s Keidrick Roy, for example,
argued that black leaders throughout American history had often been “grounded
in the liberal principles of the U.S. founding documents” to advance racial
progress.
And while he recognized America’s often embarrassing past
on questions of race, Galston nevertheless asserted a liberal confidence that
American institutions and ideals at our disposal could help us fend off
challenges moving forward. Even when our actions and practices undermine those
ideals, for Galston, “the practice can be redeemed by the principle.”
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