When Liberalism Becomes Illiberal

Two days ago I essayed to discuss Anne Applebaum’s Atlantic essay about the rising tide of radical leftism. The idiot theories of the radical left-- now called, for reasons that escape me, progressive-- have invaded social media and the educational establishment. Leftists have taken to indoctrinate children and just about everyone else in the theoretical blather that constitutes this warmed-over Marxism.

Now, The Economist has weighed in on the subject. Being a superbly serious magazine, it offers a superbly serious discussion of the topic. We note, however, that it commits the same absurd error that Applebaum commits, blaming the rise of academic and media illiberalism on Donald Trump. They should have paid more attention to some remarks by John McWhorter, to the effect that the radical right does not control either the media or the educational establishment or the legal profession or the bureaucracy. Blaming it on Trump makes you look unfair and unbalanced.

One notes also, with some chagrin, that these champions of liberalism seem to believe that liberalism, which used to be the province of the Democratic Party, is the only alternative to illiberalism. Whatever happened to conservative thinking in this intellectual morass? Liberalism promotes freedom, whether in free markets or in free expression. And yet, conservatives also champion freedom, only they distinguish free markets from a free for all. They believe that people should be free to play by the rules but not free to break the rules.

Failing to distinguish between these two freedoms turns the debate into an intellectual hash. Worse yet, conservatism promotes values that would make society cohere, while radical liberalism promotes a form of individuality that causes society to fragment. 

Anyway, the Economist presents its own definition of liberalism and its triumph in the West. 

SOMETHING HAS gone very wrong with Western liberalism. At its heart classical liberalism believes human progress is brought about by debate and reform. The best way to navigate disruptive change in a divided world is through a universal commitment to individual dignity, open markets and limited government. Yet a resurgent China sneers at liberalism for being selfish, decadent and unstable. At home, populists on the right and left rage at liberalism for its supposed elitism and privilege.

Today’s liberalism does not accept anything resembling human behavioral norms. It does not respect custom or norms or standards. In that way, it is more radical than liberal, but it is surely not conservative.

As noted, the magazine takes a mindless swipe at Trump. It’s a good reason not to subscribe:

The most dangerous threat in liberalism’s spiritual home comes from the Trumpian right. Populists denigrate liberal edifices such as science and the rule of law as façades for a plot by the deep state against the people. They subordinate facts and reason to tribal emotion. The enduring falsehood that the presidential election in 2020 was stolen points to where such impulses lead. If people cannot settle their differences using debate and trusted institutions, they resort to force.

Not a word about the liberal left that refused to accept Trump as a legitimate president and that spent four years trying to make it impossible for him to govern. Respect for tradition, for democratic decorum would have told Trump to stop contesting the 2020 election, but the left laid down the predicates during the Trump administration. 

Now, the American left, for failing to respect political norms, has become radicalized. It has been given control over the media and public education. It is flexing its muscles:

The attack from the left is harder to grasp, partly because in America “liberal” has come to include an illiberal left. We describe this week how a new style of politics has recently spread from elite university departments. As young graduates have taken jobs in the upmarket media and in politics, business and education, they have brought with them a horror of feeling “unsafe” and an agenda obsessed with a narrow vision of obtaining justice for oppressed identity groups. They have also brought along tactics to enforce ideological purity, by no-platforming their enemies and cancelling allies who have transgressed—with echoes of the confessional state that dominated Europe before classical liberalism took root at the end of the 18th century.

Clearly, the important point lies in the fact that a cohort of young people, chosen not for merit but for diversity, has come to inhabit the halls of media and pedagogical power. They reject the old standards, the ones that involved merit and achievement, because they never would have been credentialed under those standards. They feel like imposters because they did not earn their way. And they are horrified at the simple fact that most people are in on the con. So, the effort to force the public to grant them even more power and authority lies in their knowledge that they were promoted for reasons that had nothing to do with their achievement.

They do not believe in competition, because they would never have succeeded in fair competition, not in business, not in the professions and not in the media or the academy. At the least, their shrieking about diversity, Shelby Steele has been arguing for decades, makes it appear that they did not earn their way:

Classical liberals believe in setting fair initial conditions and letting events unfold through competition—by, say, eliminating corporate monopolies, opening up guilds, radically reforming taxation and making education accessible with vouchers. Progressives see laissez-faire as a pretence which powerful vested interests use to preserve the status quo. Instead, they believe in imposing “equity”—the outcomes that they deem just. For example, Ibram X. Kendi, a scholar-activist, asserts that any colour-blind policy, including the standardised testing of children, is racist if it ends up increasing average racial differentials, however enlightened the intentions behind it.

Case in point, the feeble minded professor named Ibram X. Kendi.

The Economist continues:

Classical liberals use debate to hash out priorities and trade-offs in a pluralist society and then use elections to settle on a course. The illiberal left believe that the marketplace of ideas is rigged just like all the others. What masquerades as evidence and argument, they say, is really yet another assertion of raw power by the elite.

True enough, some of today’s liberals do champion free speech. We have made a point of presenting their views on this blog. But, those who could never compete in debate must consider that the debating process is rigged:

Progressives of the old school remain champions of free speech. But illiberal progressives think that equity requires the field to be tilted against those who are privileged and reactionary. That means restricting their freedom of speech, using a caste system of victimhood in which those on top must defer to those with a greater claim to restorative justice. It also involves making an example of supposed reactionaries, by punishing them when they say something that is taken to make someone who is less privileged feel unsafe. The results are calling-out, cancellation and no-platforming.

Then the magazine raises the issue of why classical liberalism is struggling around the world. It’s answers are less than satisfying. I will pass on their thoughts and point out that free markets today are being hobbled by activists, by bureaucrats, by regulators and by lawyers. Worse yet, free competition has become a relic in Silicon Valley, where tech oligarch have increasingly shut down debate and discussion, and have assumed monopoly control over products that more and more people are seeing as addictive substances.

In truth, the West is barely competitive in the free market these days. What showed it more clearly than our failure in Afghanistan. While we sent planeloads of feminist scholars to that country to teach its women the sexism behind urinals-- no kidding-- other countries were offering economic development.

If we no longer believe in capitalism, the world is going to look to those who do. If we allow our children to be addicted to videogames, the world is going to look to countries that exercise more authoritarian control over these mental opioids. If we insist that it doesn’t matter whether our military can win or lose, but that it is co-ed, the world will look to countries that have not bought into the radical nonsense.