A lot to agree with here, but I found suddenly jarring this oppositional assertion that appeared in the middle of the quote attributed to Zakaria -- that liberalism is:
"opposed to religion and custom and in favor of science and secularism"
This contradicts and does great violence to much of the discourse in this article.
Free exercise of religion is the first of our Bill of Rights. The equality asserted in our Declaration of Independence is rooted in inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator." Respect for human life, equality, and the foundation of so much of our morality is the precious legacy of Judeo-Christian faith and custom passed down and developed over millenia. Our greatest moral leaders and visionaries who have lifted our liberal democracy to come ever closer to "living out the true meaning" of our noblest creeds -- John Adams, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King -- have been religious men inspired by faith.
No decent liberal would seek to impose their particular religious belief on a fellow citizen. But to say that a liberal must "oppose religion and custom" is tremendous and fundamental error.
Indeed! The Enlightenment Deists -- hinging the self-determination of the individual on "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" -- were not atheists (even halfheartedly), despite a long-standing leftist tendency to imply that they were merely at a way-station along that road.
Moreover, Boaz's analysis (and the Zakaria quote) overlooks (or obscures) the consolidation of secular hierarchies ostensibly based on rationalism or "expertise" -- which have become, by far, the most salient manifestations of Authority in contemporary societies. It doesn't account for the condition observed by Kafka, or for "Brave New World."
Boaz's account also fails to recognize the rise (and entrenchment) of corporate oligarchy as a form of authoritarianism (i.e., concentration of power) that claims legitimacy based on "property rights," and that takes on Orwellian overtones when it invokes terms like "economic freedom" to justify its predations. And (as has repeatedly occurred in the real world) it's not above enhancing or corrupting the power of the State when that suits its purposes.
I see no contradiction in that language and the free exercise of religion if you simply read it in context and reconcile that one clause with the entirety of Zakaria's extended block quote. As is stated twice elsewhere therein, liberalism stands against the power of the church. It stands against the powers and customs of institutional religion; the privileges of kings, aristocracy and clergy; and against the powers of the state. This opposition to the exercise of power would include the merger of state power with religion so that the state itself becomes a form of hybrid state-church and thus an expression of institutional religion that liberalism stands against.
Against those exercises of powers and privileges, liberalism favors the rights of individuals, which obviously would include free exercise of religion and related traditions and customs by individuals. You rightly note that no decent liberal would seek to impose their religious beliefs on a fellow citizen, but we must recognize that this would include the imposition of individual or societal religious beliefs, customs, and traditions through the state, which would thereby take on a role of institutional religion. This is also consistent with a full and complete reading of the quote at issue, and is further confirmed by the personal ideologies of some of the men you've identified.
John Adams, whom you rightly cite as an example of a religious man whose liberalism was tied to and inspired by his faith, was a congregationalist whose beliefs in liberalism included a staunch opposition to established churches and institutional religion, including the strict Puritan traditions from which his ancestors descended. His faith inspired and informed his liberalism in that he looked to religion as a source of personal virtue and morality, and believed in the importance of man's personal morality and virtue to his ability to practice the public virtue that was essential to man's capability to practice self government. Without them, self government was not long possible.
While the source of his beliefs on personal virtue and morality were rooted in his religious faith, they had more to do with the personal conduct and restraint of the men actually engaged in the practice of self governance, and the way they exercised political power. In other words, it was about maintaining a moral and virtuous relationship between the men exercising the powers of government and the people the government served, rather than a judgment on the morality and virtuousness of particular government policies or actions. The form of morality and virtue that concerned Adams involved things like the nature the duties owed by a government to its people, and the personal honesty, dignity, and aversion to corruption possessed and practiced by the men engaged in the acts of self governance or entrusted to serve as the people's representatives. The personal morality and virtue of men in this context ensured that the exercise of state power by these men served the public, rather than their own personal interests, and restrained the goverment and respected the rights of individuals.
The virtue and morality central to Adams liberalism wasn't about using state power to sanction, enforce, or condemn certain customs, practices, or traditions, or whether such a use of state power was morally required by religious customs or tradition. Rather, the latter is precisely to type of old power structures that liberalism had been developed to stand against. Its important not to confuse or conflate these concepts of morality and virtue when discussing the relationship between liberalism and religion, or else you end up with something that looks a lot like the modern American right and the problems posed on their end from state enforced culture war morality, which this re-commitment to liberalism is supposedly intended to address.
Opposition to organized religion shouldn't be conflated with opposition to religion itself (or to the ethics or beliefs pertaining to one's faith). The problem with organized religion isn't with religious belief. The problem is merely with the "organized" part (and its political ramifications).
That's the problem with claiming that liberalism is "opposed to religion." It's a VERY important distinction!
I'm not saying its a trivial distinction. I'm saying it doesn't say what you interpret it to say and is entirely correct when read in full context as referring to religion as part of the old traditional power structures that liberalism stands against in favor of the rights and liberties of individuals.
It should be read to mean that liberalism stands against religion expressed in institutional form whatever form it may take, meaning not only the organized and established traditional churches and clergy or Europe, but also against the merger of state power and religion that would a source of combined institutional power to infringe on individual liberty.
Liberalism is not opposed to the free exercise of religion, nor to contours in individual faith, belief, religion, traditions, values, or customs, and the expression of this exercise on the community level, which would be akin to the congregationalism of founders like John Adams. But it is opposed to imposing these concepts on other people through the use of institutional state power.
For all you might want to read into it, the quote characterizes liberalism simply as "opposed to religion." Taking the words (and that concept) at face value (regardless of context), Peter Smith's comments on this thread amply demonstrate where such a simplistic (or sloppy) formulation all-too-readily leads. It's a slippery slope.
Please see my initial response to GF's original post for a more comlete elucidation of this problem -- and of its further ramifications.
The quote is the entire block, not one clause, and even when reduced down to that one line it says opposed to religion and in favor of secularism. Again, both these words describe the way liberalism relates to the exercise of power and they have to be read together. Liberalism opposes the exercise of religious power and requires it be exercised in a secular manner, which does not mean religion is not permitted or cannot provide a moral foundation for secular government power or virtue. Peter Smith is absolutely wrong about liberalism's incompatibility with religious belief, but you are resisting the actual meaning of the words here as well, and neither position is productive.
Agreed that Peter Smith's hostility toward religious belief is wrong-headed, and a (helpfully clear) example of intolerance that is infecting the illiberal left.
Also agreed that there is a problem on the illiberal right with calls for using the powers of government to impose "Christian" policies by law.
I disagree with the suggestion that a line should be drawn between individual religious belief (acceptable) and "organized religion" (which liberals should oppose). Religious practice in a community of faith has great value -- and inherently involves "organization." I would submit that the line we should care about is between civic life and the state. The state must pass no law infringing on the free exercise of religion, and no religion may be established as a compulsory otthodoxy on the free citizens of our liberal democracy. Those are the liberal principles adopted by our Constitution. I cherish them and support the call for a rebirth of our essential liberal values in America.
I see both the illiberalism espoused by Peter Smith (i.e. religion is bad and should be actively opposed) and the right-wing illiberalism of "Christian nationalists" as equally wrong-headed and undesirable.
I take your point re context, but again, please see my initial response to the OP -- regarding secular hierarchies (and corporate oligarchy), which (compared with religion) currently pose a far greater threat to (and have more immediate impact on) personal freedom in our everyday lives.
FWIW, as a gay male (who finds nothing "queer" about same-sex attraction), I'm not nearly as afraid of a preposterous caricature like "Gilead" as I am of a reality that every day looks more and more like Brave New World.
(As it is, I have to mind my every word far more carefully in Berkeley than I do in Texas. I'm happy that we're rid of "sodomy" laws -- but meanwhile [amid all the hideous drag queens touted as exemplary of the so-called "LGBTQIA+ community"] where are the cute guys?)
"Gender-affirming care"? "Behavioral health"? Online tracking? GPS as surveillance? And that's before we've even begun to contend with AI!
The Religious Right is merely a decoy (useful to those running a protection racket, playing on fear). Meanwhile, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," as the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
As I lament to my cat: "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore."
To top it off -- as things are looking right now -- the anti-religion folks might well be teaming up with the rednecks when they come for the Jews. And if you think anti-Zionist or otherwise-dissident Jews are exempt, consider the history of the Lodz ghetto. As luck would have it, my father got out of Lodz (arriving in NY) in 1934. Dad was an agnostic -- but he died (in Florida) with the Sh'ma on his lips.
All this might begin to suggest some of the background for my own sensibilities. ln other words, I recognize your nuance, but the reality is even more nuanced than that. :-)
"This contradicts and does great violence to much of the discourse in this article."
No, it doesn't. It is crucial. Religion has got to go and the backsliding towards religion is responsible for today's many issues and our move away from liberalism.
"Free exercise of religion is the first of our Bill of Rights. The equality asserted in our Declaration of Independence is rooted in inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator.""
That's because the documents were written before even the Theory of Evolution and would not be in any such document if it was written by actual classic liberals today.
"Respect for human life, equality, and the foundation of so much of our morality is the precious legacy of Judeo-Christian faith and custom passed down and developed over millenia."
This is laughably false as even a superficial look at history and the ideas of religions in general will show you. There is not even such a thing as "Judeo-Christian" since Christianity is the source of antisemitism as we know it.
"Our greatest moral leaders..."
But it's the morality of Christianity that is the issue, even more so than the supernatural nonsense. If one thinks morality consists of self-sacrifice, then what do you need liberal values and rights for? Just walk into the gulag like your morality demands.
Liberal values are for the anti-religious. It's a requirement for those selfishly focused on their life on this earth and those who reject the idea of human sacrifices and any afterlife. That's why concepts like individual rights are important. We need this for prosperous life on earth. We do not need liberal values if we can just go by arbitrary commandments and sacrifice is our moral purpose. That's a society that wants a dictatorship.
This is the hardest part of the whole issue. Until the confusion around ethics is cleared up, there will be no classic liberal resurgence.
It's classic liberal values OR Christian values. You can't have both and only one leads to civilization and prosperity.
The Gulag is an example of taking Christian morality to its logical conclusion.
Communists were some of the most serious Christians we've seen since the Dark Ages. Just not on a superficial level that most people look at it.
But Nazi's were actual Christians, on every level, and they invented the Death Camp, as part of continuing the ancient Christian antisemitic pogroms in Europe, so don't get hung up on just the word "gulag."
"But Nazi's were actual Christians"? ...except for those Nazis that considered themselves Nietzscheans.
In the end, all of this just goes to show that ANY belief system (including atheist formulations!) can be corrupted. See my remarks on secular (and corporate) hierarchies elsewhere in this thread.
Classic liberal = political system based on the morality of self-interest AKA rights-protecting government.
Christianity = political systems based on the morality of self-sacrifice AKA dictatorship.
In short, these are fundamentally opposite ideologies.
The US Founders did not have all of this figured out. This is understandable given they were living before we even had electricity, or a Theory of Evolution.
But it is not understandable for "classic liberals" to be spouting religious nonsense in 2024. It would be like if witch doctors commenting on medical blogs, or something.
Liberalism is not based on the morality of self interest or without notions of self sacrifice my dude. It is based on the importance of individual liberty and the relationship between individual liberty and legitimate self government has a strong duty component by those individuals engaged in self governance.
If self interest were always moral and neither personal restraint, duty, nor sacrifice were morally necessary components to liberalism, then no exercise in self government could possibly endure very long and they would all quickly collapse from the friction created by so many incompatible, competing self interests. Thus personal virtues like duty, personal honesty, dignity, self restraint, and aversion to corruption, concepts that can all be characterized in one form or another as self sacrifice, are all essential moral aspects of liberalism that moderate and infringe on self interest and allow an exercise in liberal self government to function and endure. They're not incompatible or fundamentally at odds, and liberalism only works with both.
I think the Libertarian definition of Liberalism truly misses the mark if this author's numerous presumptions are accepted by libertarians. The founders of our country were not against all governments. They were against the prince, and the other hereditary rulers of the English empire. They believed in a form of government in which the people as a collective group were sovereign. And this sovereignty of the people would control the government they created and would create in the future. There was no blessing of capitalism, and the right to wealth through it. There was a right, and inalienable right to life, liberty and happiness. They knew no word such as secularism, but did know that whatever was left when the supreme prince and the priests were displaced from power, would the society and government based on the earthly inalienable rights of the sovereign people to choose their rights, and the obligations all citizens had to each other to secure their basic inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness.
I thoroughly agree with the thrust of this. I think the weak point of Classical Liberalism has been in in not recognizing its limits. Markets are not entirely efficient in the presence of externalities, like CO2 emissions. And some kinds of tax interventions to transfer consumption to those in especially needy circumstances or state of life (age, illness, unemployment) from others and to transfer income from higher earning to lower earning people ARE legitimate state functions.
By failing to recognize these limitations we risk (indeed have seen) having the the baby (liberty) thrown out with the bathwater (the limits).
I write about these tradeoff in a limited number of areas at
Thank you for picking the author up on that. We in Europe who have enjoyed the peace of mind that social safety nets provide know better than to trust the fearmongering about socialism from American politics. Democratic socialism, prevalent in Western Europe, has raised the standard of living for so many. American Libertarians seem to make the leap from socialism to communism to authoritarianism to complete totalitarianism. If power corrupts, who will reign in the megacorporations when they get too big for their boots? Are megacorporations immune to corruption? In a democracy, the government is at least accountable to the public, and the public can strip them of power as they like. But megacorporations are not accountable to the public, they're accountable to the government. And the government can't exert any meaningful influence over them if they are weakened to the point of insignificance.
I think that John Gray has a better grasp of the subject of the enlightenment than Pinker. His review of Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" summarizes the shortcomings of Pinker and by extension some of the shortcomings of this essay. I wouldn't subscribe to some of Gray's own more extravagant and dire thinking on the subject of progress but I think he gets closer to the reality than does Pinker.
To be honest most of what I know about Isaiah Berlin is second hand from other sources. I will be reading his seminal lecture on the two types of liberty later today.
John Gray refers to Berlin throughout every book he has written both positively and negatively. He has written an intellectual biography of Berlin which I have not read yet.
If the center that supports classical liberal principles does not hold in the West, we will descend into decades of bad governance and long term decline. Dictatorsand bad actors will seize power in the vacuum.
This is a marvelous essay that restates much of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued in The Vital Center after World War II. We are in a similar global position today, with authoritarianism on the rise and liberal nations overextended financially. Using the term liberal in place of progressive or leftist or Schlesinger’s term doughfaces” weakens us. I do not believe that classical liberal equals libertarian and I detest having to add classical to the label.
I am reminded of Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. He observed how the originals of everything had to be called “unabridged” versions. Perhaps, we are talking about unabridged liberalism and I am an unabridged liberal who’s still admires the Age of Enlightenment, it’s venerable advocates such as Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. Maybe, an unabridged liberal cherishes the free and dynamic societies that resulted . The alternative might be called Reader’s Digest liberalism.
Excellent article. One correction, though. David writes that Trump was indifferent to gay rights. I wonder if he saw Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican convention in which he specially mentioned them and, I think to his surprise, got a fair amount of applause. He paused after the applause and said, "Thank you; I appreciate that." (Or words to that effect.)
You assert that Mr. Trump is "pitting Americans against Americans" and "a new willingness to use State power to hurt opponents." It appears to me that the exact opposite is occurring. The massive lawfare against Trump, the FBI targeting parents in school board meetings and Catholics practicing their religion, the vigorous attempts at censorship through social media companies by the Biden administration, and the DEI culture which incites racism; all are a direct product of the current Democrat administration.
It may appear to you that way, but when the five examples you give are a criminal being held accountable for the crimes he committed by the rule of law, which has already included two juries of his peers, followed by four imaginary right wing fever dream claims that didn’t happen anywhere outside the right wing infotainment silo, your perception of events should not be taken seriously.
I used to be active as a political liberal in Europe but more as social-liberal(tarian). I had contacts with several classical liberal colleagues and thinkers as during the 2010s. One of my usual questions to classical liberals was how a such liberal program could deal with global problems and challenges as regarding climate change, AI and migration. I think that those who promote classical liberalism need also to embrace decentralization as via cryptocurrencies and blockchains in order to promote more freedom and community oriented cooperation between humans.
1. Classic liberalism = rights-protecting government, capitalism and the unprecedented prosperity we enjoy atm.
2. Progressivism = collectivism of a secular nature, largely inspired by Christian morality. It is the opposite of classic liberalism and together with conservatism responsible for all our issues.
3. "fixed prices, suppressed wages, crushed competition, etc" are the consequence of progressive and conservatives, not classic liberals
4. History is an unbroken spread of failure and catastrophe because religious conservative ideas were dominant. Once classic liberal ideas became dominant the standard of living went through the roof. This is because classic liberalism actually aligns with human nature, religion and secular collectivism, like progressivism, does not.
5. Basically, politics is about individualism vs collectivism, or put another way, classic liberalism vs everything else (progressives, conservatives, etc).
Liberalism does not require reinvigorating; it requires politically literate and competent advocates.
Classic liberals are advocates of individual rights and rights-protecting government. This is because these ideas *cannot* lead to fixed prices, suppressed wages, crushed competition, etc. It is the correct political system for human beings as supported by the facts of reality, including human nature.
The listed issues, as all political issues, are caused by rights-violating and collectivist policies.
A lot to agree with here, but I found suddenly jarring this oppositional assertion that appeared in the middle of the quote attributed to Zakaria -- that liberalism is:
"opposed to religion and custom and in favor of science and secularism"
This contradicts and does great violence to much of the discourse in this article.
Free exercise of religion is the first of our Bill of Rights. The equality asserted in our Declaration of Independence is rooted in inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator." Respect for human life, equality, and the foundation of so much of our morality is the precious legacy of Judeo-Christian faith and custom passed down and developed over millenia. Our greatest moral leaders and visionaries who have lifted our liberal democracy to come ever closer to "living out the true meaning" of our noblest creeds -- John Adams, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King -- have been religious men inspired by faith.
No decent liberal would seek to impose their particular religious belief on a fellow citizen. But to say that a liberal must "oppose religion and custom" is tremendous and fundamental error.
Indeed! The Enlightenment Deists -- hinging the self-determination of the individual on "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" -- were not atheists (even halfheartedly), despite a long-standing leftist tendency to imply that they were merely at a way-station along that road.
Moreover, Boaz's analysis (and the Zakaria quote) overlooks (or obscures) the consolidation of secular hierarchies ostensibly based on rationalism or "expertise" -- which have become, by far, the most salient manifestations of Authority in contemporary societies. It doesn't account for the condition observed by Kafka, or for "Brave New World."
Boaz's account also fails to recognize the rise (and entrenchment) of corporate oligarchy as a form of authoritarianism (i.e., concentration of power) that claims legitimacy based on "property rights," and that takes on Orwellian overtones when it invokes terms like "economic freedom" to justify its predations. And (as has repeatedly occurred in the real world) it's not above enhancing or corrupting the power of the State when that suits its purposes.
I see no contradiction in that language and the free exercise of religion if you simply read it in context and reconcile that one clause with the entirety of Zakaria's extended block quote. As is stated twice elsewhere therein, liberalism stands against the power of the church. It stands against the powers and customs of institutional religion; the privileges of kings, aristocracy and clergy; and against the powers of the state. This opposition to the exercise of power would include the merger of state power with religion so that the state itself becomes a form of hybrid state-church and thus an expression of institutional religion that liberalism stands against.
Against those exercises of powers and privileges, liberalism favors the rights of individuals, which obviously would include free exercise of religion and related traditions and customs by individuals. You rightly note that no decent liberal would seek to impose their religious beliefs on a fellow citizen, but we must recognize that this would include the imposition of individual or societal religious beliefs, customs, and traditions through the state, which would thereby take on a role of institutional religion. This is also consistent with a full and complete reading of the quote at issue, and is further confirmed by the personal ideologies of some of the men you've identified.
John Adams, whom you rightly cite as an example of a religious man whose liberalism was tied to and inspired by his faith, was a congregationalist whose beliefs in liberalism included a staunch opposition to established churches and institutional religion, including the strict Puritan traditions from which his ancestors descended. His faith inspired and informed his liberalism in that he looked to religion as a source of personal virtue and morality, and believed in the importance of man's personal morality and virtue to his ability to practice the public virtue that was essential to man's capability to practice self government. Without them, self government was not long possible.
While the source of his beliefs on personal virtue and morality were rooted in his religious faith, they had more to do with the personal conduct and restraint of the men actually engaged in the practice of self governance, and the way they exercised political power. In other words, it was about maintaining a moral and virtuous relationship between the men exercising the powers of government and the people the government served, rather than a judgment on the morality and virtuousness of particular government policies or actions. The form of morality and virtue that concerned Adams involved things like the nature the duties owed by a government to its people, and the personal honesty, dignity, and aversion to corruption possessed and practiced by the men engaged in the acts of self governance or entrusted to serve as the people's representatives. The personal morality and virtue of men in this context ensured that the exercise of state power by these men served the public, rather than their own personal interests, and restrained the goverment and respected the rights of individuals.
The virtue and morality central to Adams liberalism wasn't about using state power to sanction, enforce, or condemn certain customs, practices, or traditions, or whether such a use of state power was morally required by religious customs or tradition. Rather, the latter is precisely to type of old power structures that liberalism had been developed to stand against. Its important not to confuse or conflate these concepts of morality and virtue when discussing the relationship between liberalism and religion, or else you end up with something that looks a lot like the modern American right and the problems posed on their end from state enforced culture war morality, which this re-commitment to liberalism is supposedly intended to address.
Opposition to organized religion shouldn't be conflated with opposition to religion itself (or to the ethics or beliefs pertaining to one's faith). The problem with organized religion isn't with religious belief. The problem is merely with the "organized" part (and its political ramifications).
That's the problem with claiming that liberalism is "opposed to religion." It's a VERY important distinction!
I'm not saying its a trivial distinction. I'm saying it doesn't say what you interpret it to say and is entirely correct when read in full context as referring to religion as part of the old traditional power structures that liberalism stands against in favor of the rights and liberties of individuals.
It should be read to mean that liberalism stands against religion expressed in institutional form whatever form it may take, meaning not only the organized and established traditional churches and clergy or Europe, but also against the merger of state power and religion that would a source of combined institutional power to infringe on individual liberty.
Liberalism is not opposed to the free exercise of religion, nor to contours in individual faith, belief, religion, traditions, values, or customs, and the expression of this exercise on the community level, which would be akin to the congregationalism of founders like John Adams. But it is opposed to imposing these concepts on other people through the use of institutional state power.
For all you might want to read into it, the quote characterizes liberalism simply as "opposed to religion." Taking the words (and that concept) at face value (regardless of context), Peter Smith's comments on this thread amply demonstrate where such a simplistic (or sloppy) formulation all-too-readily leads. It's a slippery slope.
Please see my initial response to GF's original post for a more comlete elucidation of this problem -- and of its further ramifications.
The quote is the entire block, not one clause, and even when reduced down to that one line it says opposed to religion and in favor of secularism. Again, both these words describe the way liberalism relates to the exercise of power and they have to be read together. Liberalism opposes the exercise of religious power and requires it be exercised in a secular manner, which does not mean religion is not permitted or cannot provide a moral foundation for secular government power or virtue. Peter Smith is absolutely wrong about liberalism's incompatibility with religious belief, but you are resisting the actual meaning of the words here as well, and neither position is productive.
Agreed that Peter Smith's hostility toward religious belief is wrong-headed, and a (helpfully clear) example of intolerance that is infecting the illiberal left.
Also agreed that there is a problem on the illiberal right with calls for using the powers of government to impose "Christian" policies by law.
I disagree with the suggestion that a line should be drawn between individual religious belief (acceptable) and "organized religion" (which liberals should oppose). Religious practice in a community of faith has great value -- and inherently involves "organization." I would submit that the line we should care about is between civic life and the state. The state must pass no law infringing on the free exercise of religion, and no religion may be established as a compulsory otthodoxy on the free citizens of our liberal democracy. Those are the liberal principles adopted by our Constitution. I cherish them and support the call for a rebirth of our essential liberal values in America.
I see both the illiberalism espoused by Peter Smith (i.e. religion is bad and should be actively opposed) and the right-wing illiberalism of "Christian nationalists" as equally wrong-headed and undesirable.
I take your point re context, but again, please see my initial response to the OP -- regarding secular hierarchies (and corporate oligarchy), which (compared with religion) currently pose a far greater threat to (and have more immediate impact on) personal freedom in our everyday lives.
FWIW, as a gay male (who finds nothing "queer" about same-sex attraction), I'm not nearly as afraid of a preposterous caricature like "Gilead" as I am of a reality that every day looks more and more like Brave New World.
(As it is, I have to mind my every word far more carefully in Berkeley than I do in Texas. I'm happy that we're rid of "sodomy" laws -- but meanwhile [amid all the hideous drag queens touted as exemplary of the so-called "LGBTQIA+ community"] where are the cute guys?)
"Gender-affirming care"? "Behavioral health"? Online tracking? GPS as surveillance? And that's before we've even begun to contend with AI!
The Religious Right is merely a decoy (useful to those running a protection racket, playing on fear). Meanwhile, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," as the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
As I lament to my cat: "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore."
To top it off -- as things are looking right now -- the anti-religion folks might well be teaming up with the rednecks when they come for the Jews. And if you think anti-Zionist or otherwise-dissident Jews are exempt, consider the history of the Lodz ghetto. As luck would have it, my father got out of Lodz (arriving in NY) in 1934. Dad was an agnostic -- but he died (in Florida) with the Sh'ma on his lips.
All this might begin to suggest some of the background for my own sensibilities. ln other words, I recognize your nuance, but the reality is even more nuanced than that. :-)
"This contradicts and does great violence to much of the discourse in this article."
No, it doesn't. It is crucial. Religion has got to go and the backsliding towards religion is responsible for today's many issues and our move away from liberalism.
"Free exercise of religion is the first of our Bill of Rights. The equality asserted in our Declaration of Independence is rooted in inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator.""
That's because the documents were written before even the Theory of Evolution and would not be in any such document if it was written by actual classic liberals today.
"Respect for human life, equality, and the foundation of so much of our morality is the precious legacy of Judeo-Christian faith and custom passed down and developed over millenia."
This is laughably false as even a superficial look at history and the ideas of religions in general will show you. There is not even such a thing as "Judeo-Christian" since Christianity is the source of antisemitism as we know it.
"Our greatest moral leaders..."
But it's the morality of Christianity that is the issue, even more so than the supernatural nonsense. If one thinks morality consists of self-sacrifice, then what do you need liberal values and rights for? Just walk into the gulag like your morality demands.
Liberal values are for the anti-religious. It's a requirement for those selfishly focused on their life on this earth and those who reject the idea of human sacrifices and any afterlife. That's why concepts like individual rights are important. We need this for prosperous life on earth. We do not need liberal values if we can just go by arbitrary commandments and sacrifice is our moral purpose. That's a society that wants a dictatorship.
This is the hardest part of the whole issue. Until the confusion around ethics is cleared up, there will be no classic liberal resurgence.
It's classic liberal values OR Christian values. You can't have both and only one leads to civilization and prosperity.
The Gulag was created (and/or perpetuated) by atheists.
The Gulag is an example of taking Christian morality to its logical conclusion.
Communists were some of the most serious Christians we've seen since the Dark Ages. Just not on a superficial level that most people look at it.
But Nazi's were actual Christians, on every level, and they invented the Death Camp, as part of continuing the ancient Christian antisemitic pogroms in Europe, so don't get hung up on just the word "gulag."
"But Nazi's were actual Christians"? ...except for those Nazis that considered themselves Nietzscheans.
In the end, all of this just goes to show that ANY belief system (including atheist formulations!) can be corrupted. See my remarks on secular (and corporate) hierarchies elsewhere in this thread.
To be clear:
Classic liberal = political system based on the morality of self-interest AKA rights-protecting government.
Christianity = political systems based on the morality of self-sacrifice AKA dictatorship.
In short, these are fundamentally opposite ideologies.
The US Founders did not have all of this figured out. This is understandable given they were living before we even had electricity, or a Theory of Evolution.
But it is not understandable for "classic liberals" to be spouting religious nonsense in 2024. It would be like if witch doctors commenting on medical blogs, or something.
"Witch doctors commenting on medical blogs"? Many hospitals now employ doulas.
"The morality of self-interest" depends upon how one defines the Self. Epistemology is not a science. Dogma is dogma. You're not exempt.
Liberalism is not based on the morality of self interest or without notions of self sacrifice my dude. It is based on the importance of individual liberty and the relationship between individual liberty and legitimate self government has a strong duty component by those individuals engaged in self governance.
If self interest were always moral and neither personal restraint, duty, nor sacrifice were morally necessary components to liberalism, then no exercise in self government could possibly endure very long and they would all quickly collapse from the friction created by so many incompatible, competing self interests. Thus personal virtues like duty, personal honesty, dignity, self restraint, and aversion to corruption, concepts that can all be characterized in one form or another as self sacrifice, are all essential moral aspects of liberalism that moderate and infringe on self interest and allow an exercise in liberal self government to function and endure. They're not incompatible or fundamentally at odds, and liberalism only works with both.
If you put human nature in place of religion and custom does it recover what he means?
I think the Libertarian definition of Liberalism truly misses the mark if this author's numerous presumptions are accepted by libertarians. The founders of our country were not against all governments. They were against the prince, and the other hereditary rulers of the English empire. They believed in a form of government in which the people as a collective group were sovereign. And this sovereignty of the people would control the government they created and would create in the future. There was no blessing of capitalism, and the right to wealth through it. There was a right, and inalienable right to life, liberty and happiness. They knew no word such as secularism, but did know that whatever was left when the supreme prince and the priests were displaced from power, would the society and government based on the earthly inalienable rights of the sovereign people to choose their rights, and the obligations all citizens had to each other to secure their basic inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness.
I thoroughly agree with the thrust of this. I think the weak point of Classical Liberalism has been in in not recognizing its limits. Markets are not entirely efficient in the presence of externalities, like CO2 emissions. And some kinds of tax interventions to transfer consumption to those in especially needy circumstances or state of life (age, illness, unemployment) from others and to transfer income from higher earning to lower earning people ARE legitimate state functions.
By failing to recognize these limitations we risk (indeed have seen) having the the baby (liberty) thrown out with the bathwater (the limits).
I write about these tradeoff in a limited number of areas at
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/
Thank you for picking the author up on that. We in Europe who have enjoyed the peace of mind that social safety nets provide know better than to trust the fearmongering about socialism from American politics. Democratic socialism, prevalent in Western Europe, has raised the standard of living for so many. American Libertarians seem to make the leap from socialism to communism to authoritarianism to complete totalitarianism. If power corrupts, who will reign in the megacorporations when they get too big for their boots? Are megacorporations immune to corruption? In a democracy, the government is at least accountable to the public, and the public can strip them of power as they like. But megacorporations are not accountable to the public, they're accountable to the government. And the government can't exert any meaningful influence over them if they are weakened to the point of insignificance.
I think that John Gray has a better grasp of the subject of the enlightenment than Pinker. His review of Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" summarizes the shortcomings of Pinker and by extension some of the shortcomings of this essay. I wouldn't subscribe to some of Gray's own more extravagant and dire thinking on the subject of progress but I think he gets closer to the reality than does Pinker.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2018/02/enlightenment-now-the-case-for-reason-science-humanism-and-progress-review-steven-pinker
Thanks for the link! Gray's dissection of Pinker is indeed interesting and incisive. Nonetheless, I wonder what he'd make of Isaiah Berlin.
To be honest most of what I know about Isaiah Berlin is second hand from other sources. I will be reading his seminal lecture on the two types of liberty later today.
John Gray refers to Berlin throughout every book he has written both positively and negatively. He has written an intellectual biography of Berlin which I have not read yet.
Cheers! https://www.amazon.com/Isaiah-Berlin-Interpretation-His-Thought/dp/0691157421
Interesting, indeed! I was thinking of Berlin's notion of pluralism as a means of addressing the question of "positive freedom."
If the center that supports classical liberal principles does not hold in the West, we will descend into decades of bad governance and long term decline. Dictatorsand bad actors will seize power in the vacuum.
This is a marvelous essay that restates much of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued in The Vital Center after World War II. We are in a similar global position today, with authoritarianism on the rise and liberal nations overextended financially. Using the term liberal in place of progressive or leftist or Schlesinger’s term doughfaces” weakens us. I do not believe that classical liberal equals libertarian and I detest having to add classical to the label.
I am reminded of Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. He observed how the originals of everything had to be called “unabridged” versions. Perhaps, we are talking about unabridged liberalism and I am an unabridged liberal who’s still admires the Age of Enlightenment, it’s venerable advocates such as Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. Maybe, an unabridged liberal cherishes the free and dynamic societies that resulted . The alternative might be called Reader’s Digest liberalism.
Excellent article. One correction, though. David writes that Trump was indifferent to gay rights. I wonder if he saw Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican convention in which he specially mentioned them and, I think to his surprise, got a fair amount of applause. He paused after the applause and said, "Thank you; I appreciate that." (Or words to that effect.)
You assert that Mr. Trump is "pitting Americans against Americans" and "a new willingness to use State power to hurt opponents." It appears to me that the exact opposite is occurring. The massive lawfare against Trump, the FBI targeting parents in school board meetings and Catholics practicing their religion, the vigorous attempts at censorship through social media companies by the Biden administration, and the DEI culture which incites racism; all are a direct product of the current Democrat administration.
It may appear to you that way, but when the five examples you give are a criminal being held accountable for the crimes he committed by the rule of law, which has already included two juries of his peers, followed by four imaginary right wing fever dream claims that didn’t happen anywhere outside the right wing infotainment silo, your perception of events should not be taken seriously.
I used to be active as a political liberal in Europe but more as social-liberal(tarian). I had contacts with several classical liberal colleagues and thinkers as during the 2010s. One of my usual questions to classical liberals was how a such liberal program could deal with global problems and challenges as regarding climate change, AI and migration. I think that those who promote classical liberalism need also to embrace decentralization as via cryptocurrencies and blockchains in order to promote more freedom and community oriented cooperation between humans.
Excellent analysis!
you put it rather less depressingly than Chris Hedges' "Death of the Liberal Class". thanks!
1. Classic liberalism = rights-protecting government, capitalism and the unprecedented prosperity we enjoy atm.
2. Progressivism = collectivism of a secular nature, largely inspired by Christian morality. It is the opposite of classic liberalism and together with conservatism responsible for all our issues.
3. "fixed prices, suppressed wages, crushed competition, etc" are the consequence of progressive and conservatives, not classic liberals
4. History is an unbroken spread of failure and catastrophe because religious conservative ideas were dominant. Once classic liberal ideas became dominant the standard of living went through the roof. This is because classic liberalism actually aligns with human nature, religion and secular collectivism, like progressivism, does not.
5. Basically, politics is about individualism vs collectivism, or put another way, classic liberalism vs everything else (progressives, conservatives, etc).
Liberalism does not require reinvigorating; it requires politically literate and competent advocates.
Classic liberals are advocates of individual rights and rights-protecting government. This is because these ideas *cannot* lead to fixed prices, suppressed wages, crushed competition, etc. It is the correct political system for human beings as supported by the facts of reality, including human nature.
The listed issues, as all political issues, are caused by rights-violating and collectivist policies.