“Liberalism” classically (and distinct from its American meaning) refers to a set of ideals: individual human dignity; free expression; free trade; democracy, with limits on power; and a rules-based world order; all grounded in seeking objective truth.
This originated out of the Enlightenment, and then three great revolutions — the American, the French, and the Industrial. Its great advocate was thinker John Stuart Mill (1806-73). And these liberal principles built, out of WWII’s wreckage, a modern world enabling unprecedented widespread human flourishing.
What’s not to like? Yet so many people today turn their backs on all this, sneer at it, even condemn it. The world’s lately been going off the rails — led indeed by what once was liberalism’s greatest global avatar — America.
Centrists of the World Unite! is a recent book by Adrian Wooldridge, reviewed in The Economist(self-described there as “liberalism’s house journal”). Wooldridge traces liberalism’s history, and how its precepts have gotten perverted. “Left-wingers,” writes the review, “are so eager to settle group injustices (against black people for instance) that they have turned against meritocracy — one of the most powerful ideas of the modern era.” While “market fundamentalists” embody what once seemed a caricature of “unfettered capitalism,” disregarding any societal harms.
More fundamentally, what I see is people taking for granted the benefits of the liberal world order, and forgetting how we got them. Thus quick to throw all that away to serve short-sighted interests. For example, squeamishness toward Russia’s assault on the non-aggression principle that had prevented major-power war since 1945.
Free trade is another such casualty, sacrificed for misguidedly chimerical aims. (Like re-industrializing America.) Previously, reduced trade barriers, and resulting global economic growth, had caused extreme poverty to plunge, over just a few decades, to a small fraction of its prior level. But now not just “free trade” but “economic growth” too are dirty words. Sure they have downsides; but the vast benefits are disregarded.
Seventeenth century thinker Thomas Hobbes spotlighted the “social contract” — surrendering some power to the state so it can protect us from depredations by others. But state power itself can entail depredation, hence the importance of democracy, making rulers accountable.
Yet this too people are often oblivious about. Surveys show many just don’t value democracy. And they’re too susceptible to the allure of “strength,” imagining strongman rule a good thing. It never is. But that’s a key reason we got Trump. (Many still see him mainly as a “strong leader.” Yeah, strongly bad.)
Not only is power entrusted to strongmen, but often to ones particularly prone to abuse it. Trump again. American voters either didn’t think character mattered, or couldn’t evaluate it. Electing such a person certainly traduced basic liberal ideals.
Their rejection is also fueled by tribalistic anti-immigrant prejudice. In fact societies are improved by newcomers and the fresh diversity they bring; but xenophobia is exploited by “populist” political forces.
Another (not unrelated) factor always dogging liberalism is religion. At odds with the liberal live-and-let-live ethos. The Economist also recently called some of the populist right (the “trad bros”) a “counter-revolution” against the Enlightenment “to reassert a Christian social order.”
So liberalism may appeal to human intellects — but not instincts.
Behind all this too is the crumbling of factual truth. The internet was supposed to make us better informed. Instead it fills many with crap — and blinded toward such glaring realities as Trump’s base character.
Is there any hope? Hungary’s recent election offers some, showing that enlightened voting is possible. Prime Minister Viktor Orban had openly boasted of building an “illiberal democracy” — an oxymoron. Millions of American Trump cultists actually rallied to this sick slogan. But Hungarians decisively rejected it
Is peak madness perchance now behind us?
