What’s Wrong with the World

Its seems to me that only those things are rightly called liberal whose attributes fall under the definition of liberalism. However, if you ask people what the definition of liberalism is, they are only able to provide examples of liberalism, not a definition. But it's the definition that determines what the examples are. Therefore, unless one knows what the definition of liberalism is, one can not really know what is liberal and what isn't, but only sense it or feel it.

Moreover, it is through the definition of liberalism that one can determine its antithesis, i.e., that which universally and essentially stands in opposition to it. So, in order to really oppose liberalism, one must know the definition of its antithesis through its own definition.

Therefore, I ask you, Zippy, and the rest of your readers these two questions:

1) What is the definition of liberalism?

2) What is the antithesis of liberalism?

(Hint: The answers have been published in a little book whose title contains the word "Liberalism".)

A left that uses financial panic-mongering should lose massively, and media predominance can even greatly accentuate the popular reaction against them.

I would define as "liberal" someone who holds a political, ethical and anthropological position that holds the individual will to be the foundational attribute of the human person, freedom of choice to be the greatest good, and views the individual as completely autonomous, all interpersonal relations being a matter of personal choice. I get the feeling that Zippy would agree with me, at least in part, based upon his writings. But I don't speak for him, so he will have to confirm that himself.

I see liberalism as most primarily a political movement, to which almost everyone in modern first world countries has some degree of alliegence. This post of mine summarizes it from a certain point of view:

The modern liberal order is premised on the political primacy of freedom and equality over traditional, natural, or otherwise unchosen constraints. Tradition and nature are allowed to play a political role, but only inasmuch as the roles they play are freely chosen. It is not the job of politics, in the modern liberal order, to carry out directly any natural or traditional imperative; but only those imperatives mediated by the actual choices of a free and equal body of supermen-citizens.

Democracy is a natural political configuration for liberalism, particularly with a certain mythology layered on top of it, because as a formal matter every citizen in a democracy holds equal political power and is free to exercise it how he wills. The vote is about this free exercise of equal political power under the liberal mythology of elections.

It isn't strictly necessary for democracy to imply liberalism or vice versa, and they are different kinds of things; but they are close cousins nonetheless. It is in part for this reason that I am a small-r republican, which is to say that I think non-democratic structures of governance involving subsidiarity, checks and balances, and inequalities in authority are far better than democratic structures. Most of this is utter anathema to modern culture, because liberalism is foundational to modern culture; and that ultimately has to change.

"...And as long as 'conservatives' are willing to support liberals like McCain just because he tepidly throws them a few policy bones, conservatism will be not merely neutralized, but will remain complicit in the inexorable march of liberal modernity/postmodernity."

But throwing those few conservative policy bones advanced McCain farther than he would have advanced without them--the more conservative the candidate, the more votes he rakes in, regardless of what the Left's all about. Hence, Obama's 'Christianity' and Biden pick. Obama's no more Christian than Biden is Catholic, but even evil has to cloak itself in the good to appear attractive.

The Left is just where it is by having succeeded in minute victories over time. If McCain's the best we have to work with, shouldn't we, well, work him? Surely, he knows (however liberal he may be) that if he wins the election and wants to stay in office, he would have to comply with conservatives.

Do you honestly belief that McCain is as truly liberal?

But isn't it just obvious that freedom and equality are radically at odds with one another?

I don't think that liberalism is that incoherent. I think that it is all about equality, and that whatever lip-service it pays to freedom is just that: lip-service.

And I think that liberalism's obsession with equality is merely a logical extension of the doctrine of Christian scripture - once one discards all of the metaphysical baggage that pretty much everybody discards nowadays - even though said Christian doctrine makes *no sense at all* unless one accepts said metaphysical baggage...

I guess I should write a post on this.

But isn't it just obvious that freedom and equality are radically at odds with one another?

No. Those of us political scientists associate the regime of equality (democracy) with freedom (defined as doing as one pleases), with the former leading to the latter.

I guess I should write a post on this.

Perhaps you should.

But isn't it just obvious that freedom and equality are radically at odds with one another?

I think I know what Steve means by this, and if he means what I think he means, then I tend to agree with him. But I won't put words in his mouth. When I hear a sentence like this, I think of Michael Levin's really-good-for-the-most-part-with-a-few-weird-bits book _Feminism and Freedom_ in which he argues that feminism is fundamentally opposed to freedom because it tries to bring about equal outcomes between the sexes by fighting against the natural and real inequalities between the sexes.

Steve is right. Freedom and equality do not go well and naturally together. Given human differences, the only way to make people equal is to impose it upon them. If you leave people free, their enormous natural differences will emerge -- along with a corresponding class of elites in every conceivable dimension.

If you want equality, you must curtail freedom. If you want freedom, you will diminish equality in all but the most abstract ways.

"...If you want equality, you must curtail freedom. If you want freedom, you will diminish equality in all but the most abstract ways."

Could you please clarify what you mean in 'the most abstract ways.' I agree with what you're saying but not clear on what you mean by that phrase.

I have to disagree. I don't think that freedom and equality are at odds with each other, at least insofar as modern liberals see it. Modern liberals see freedom as stemming from rights. Equality is the goal of rights. These rights are both negative and positive.

Negative rights make equality possible by prohibiting any interference with the choices of another insofar as they do not violate the one's own rights. Thus there can be no moral or legal distinction between different chosen goods, because this would necessitate some kind of prohibitive force, even if that force is just a moral one. Since this cannot be done without violating the rights of another to choose their own summum bonum, it cannot be done at all. Thus, for example, we cannot distinguish between marriage and sodomy, because to do so would be to use some moral or legal force to deprive another of what they wished to choose.

But this leads us to the question of why liberalism seems to violate its own principle of allowing others to make the choices they want. Socialism, for example, would seem to violate this position by preventing people from doing what they want with their money by taking it from them and redistributing it. But this is where positive rights enter into the equation. In this view, man is not free as long as he lacks anything that liberals believe necessary for the true exercise of freedom. Thus man must be made free, even if this entails interfering with the lives of others. Indeed, this interference is not seen as a violation of liberalism because the interference is for the purpose of preserving the rights of others. Thus the state can claim all the fruits of your labor as its own, to redistribute as it sees fit, because to deny someone an equal share of wealth is to deny them something necessary for their being able to freely choose the summum bonum they desire, which is, in turn, a violation of their rights. Similarly, the state has a right to reeducate your child in morality because if your child believes that certain choices are objectively wrong, then they might bring to bear moral and cultural forces so as to prevent these "wrong" choices from being chosen, which, again, would be a violation of another's rights.

In short, freedom and equality are, to a liberal, intrinsically linked. Freedom entails the right to act towards and achieve whatever you believe the summum bonum to be. But if this is to be possible, then all choices must be equally valid and all people must be made equal in circumstances. If this does not happen, then some choices would have to be considered wrong or impossible, which would violate freedom. Thus we must posit rights, both positive and negative, that make it invalid to claim some choices to be better than others and to render it impossible for some to live in better circumstances than others.

Now, obviously much of this is contrary to reality. But, in my experience, this has never mattered to a liberal. Indeed, the very fact that it is contrary to reality seems to affirm to them that they are correct and must move their program further along so as to acquire the necessary power to change reality by the force of their will.

Zippy,

I think it has to be more than just a bleeding over from politics into other disciplines. Politics is intrinsically linked to ethics. Indeed, ethics provides the starting point for politics, since one cannot speak of the good held in common by men until one has an idea of the good that is proper to man, nor can one speak of administering justice between the populous and the polity or between the members of the populous until one has some idea of what justice entails in relation to man. Thus liberalism, as far as I can see, must and does possess a number of ethical principles aimed at the individual, ones that are necessary for the running of a liberal polity. Seeing tolerance is a virtue in itself rather than as a matter of prudence is one such personal ethical principle that the liberal state requires of and tries to instill in its citizens.

Similarly, ethical principles, in large part, stem from what one holds man and his proper end to be. Thus all ethical principles are informed by and inform one's philosophical and theological anthropology. Someone who does not believe that man's end is to be united with God by grace, for example, will not have an ethics that relies in any part on grace infusing man with virtues necessary to perfect his action and enable him to achieve this union with God.

So I see all three--politics, ethics and anthropology--as distinct but closely related disciplines, and am thus unable to view liberalism as not having developed, or at least having to develop, a theory of each. Indeed, my reading of liberal philosophers, theologians and political scientists leads me to believe that the liberal transformation of all three disciplines is believed to be necessary for liberalism to succeed at its goals.

Finally, I would posit that a view of man "as a free, equal, autonomous actor, self-created through reason and will" is, by definition, a matter of philosophical anthropology rather than simply politics. If such a view of man is definitively a part of liberalism, then liberalism entails at least one anthropological principle by definition.

Liberalism can be summed up in one statement I believe, non serviam!

Even if we set aside equality it is still paradoxical to take the position that the purpose of governance is abstract freedom, that is, the unconstraining of the will. Governance just is that institution which constrains the field of our exercise of the will.

But I agree with Brendon that freedom and equality go together in liberalism.

Brendon:

I certainly agree that, objectively, liberalism is anthropological and ethical in addition to political. But understood on its own terms, it's starting point is a political position which denies taking any substantive position on the anthropological and ethical. Indeed its whole initial effort is to remove anthropological and ethical judgments from the domain of politics and leave them subject to the will of the free and equal superman. "Personally opposed, but..." is not an accidental bit of rhetoric adopted dishonestly for polemical reasons: it is a truthful expression of the liberal's actual understanding of his own position.

But people are always noting how ethical liberalism really is. For example, racism is a sin. Or I have just been debating a bit with two rather extreme liberals who obviously believe that not agreeing to be an organ donor is a sin. Not that they use the word "sin," but they definitely believe it is wrong, to the point that your wishes should be ignored. Racists should be punished. And so forth.

I think the contradictions inherent in liberalism as we are discussing it here are so rampant that there may be no _consistent_ picture of liberalism understood on its own terms, because it just isn't internally consistent.

Lydia,

Liberalism is consistently inconsistent; therein does its internal consistency lie. If it weren't internally consistent in some way it would instantly destroy itself.

You are right, though, that liberalism founds its specious claims on ethics and morality, always. Here again it is found consistent. The whole idea that "you can't legislate morality" is founded on the idea that it is wrong, unethical -- IMMORAL -- to legislate morality, that is, a morality that is inconsistent with the doctrine of liberalism, thus the claim is self-defeating because it's good, right -- MORAL -- to legislate that which is consistent with the doctrine of liberalism. Liberals love to legislate morality, and indeed cannot avoid doing so -- liberal morality -- while in the same breath insisting that we can't, or shouldn't.

Virtually all, if not all (I tend to believe the latter), laws are founded on a moral perspective, someone's moral perspective. Even the most immoral piece of legislation (abortion legalization as an example) is founded on a moral perspective, i.e., that it is wrong (immoral) to deny a woman's right to choose. It is quite literally impossible for moral beings to be or act otherwise.

I think the contradictions inherent in liberalism as we are discussing it here are so rampant that there may be no _consistent_ picture of liberalism understood on its own terms, because it just isn't internally consistent.

It is important to understand these things as real intellectual phenomena, and they can be understood as real though 'localized' intellectual phenomena despite their global incoherence. Modernity is largely a tale of one kind of liberal at war with other kinds of liberals; under extreme duress we've even gotten the national socialists and the communists, which, if not liberals per se, are nonetheless what you get when liberalism is placed under extreme duress and yet refuses to repent. Each kind of liberal disagrees with other kinds, believing him inconsistent with fundamental liberal principles which every person not mired in the stultifying past (only the untermensch could be so mired) ought to obviously adopt. In reality, or course, different kinds of liberals (say the socially libertine free marketer versus the welfare-state prude) are each exhibiting only a localized consistency and adopting their own unprincipled exceptions.

It would be foolish to credit liberalism with things called beliefs. To the extent these things make appearances they are the temporary or vacillating eruptions of emotion and the advertisements of opportunism. So we swing from the 1st Amendment being our most important freedom,[try living without the takings clause of the 5th] to the current expectant drooling over the disinterment of the Fairness Doctrine. No momentary blush nor hint of inconsistency, no hesitancy or embarrassment, much less shame.
Power and it's lust need a fig leaf, other then that, void!

Until the Normal have greater influence in the media a revived Conservatism is a dream.
Even then it would be a shadow of what it could be, so great is the educational challenge, so vast the depths of ignorance.

It would be foolish to credit liberalism with things called beliefs.

Zippy is mostly correct about anthropology, although I would describe it as neutrality rather than denial. Rawls is still the best source for understanding modern liberalism. There are of course variations and offshoots of liberalism, just like within conservatism, but Rawls gives a basic foundation.

Lauren,
Sorry for the delay. I have been traveling.

I mean that, in the abstract, we are equal before the law, and in that way only. But even that equality is, to some real extent, fictitious.

In other words, my point earlier in the thread was that it is impossible to maximize human freedom and human equality simultaneously. Because it is, I generally tend to maximize freedom, though not always. which one ought to prevail in any given circumstance is a matter of prudence and not of any a priori abstract principle. The human situation is infinitely various in its possibilities, and no principle, however well conceived, can either know or take into account all the relevant facts ahead of time.

Brendon's post of 11:42 on 10/25/2008 is an excellent summation of liberalism.

But understood on its own terms, it's starting point is a political position which denies taking any substantive position on the anthropological and ethical. Indeed its whole initial effort is to remove anthropological and ethical judgments from the domain of politics and leave them subject to the will of the free and equal superman. "Personally opposed, but..." is not an accidental bit of rhetoric adopted dishonestly for polemical reasons: it is a truthful expression of the liberal's actual understanding of his own position.

Zippy, despite our differences on the mechanics of current economics and economic policy, this is an excellent post which deserves further elaboration. Are you familiar with Patrick Deneen at Georgetown? He had a very similar point in his entry entitled "Legislating Morality."

Albert:

Thanks. I expect that beneath the economic disagreements is just a disagreement about what would have happened without Paulson's intervention. FWIW, I'm against the proposed 'stimulus packages' and all the manipulative Keynsian nonsense people hope to use to make the building recession shallower or whatever, since I think it just distorts markets and makes things worse. In my view the Paulson plan was literally about survival: about the difference between returning the 'reality tv' population to the nineteenth century in a matter of months, or not.

Anyway, I shouldn't hijack my own thread. I've read Patrick Deneen before; I'll check out the post.

Because, after all, Liberalism is by far the more pressing concern in the Election as compared to the heart-rending desperate Screams, the piercing disconsolate Cries of Children who are aborted!

Thus, "Don't Vote" accordingly and May the High Priest of Moloch Win!

"And since liberalism is this culture's default ideology, liberals are only rarely called upon to do so."

Cyrus, default ideology might be an understatement. The Liberal Tradition is 400 plus years old and a derivative of Christianity. Instead of Christ and His troubling Cross, it offers and has delivered, dazzling material, social, economic, scientific and political progress of an unimaginable and epic scale. These historic successes coupled with the fact that Liberalism's impulses and goals are enshrouded in language parodying the Gospels, make refuting its premises and resisting its direction.

Dissent is made all the more difficult as Proceduralism replaces human prejudice, discernment, personal judgment and common sense with purely rational and neutral standards. The pursuit of unlimited Freedom and perfect Equality take on the surface appearance of reasonable goals, not dangerous and deadly fictions.

Until conservatives are willing to revisit and reject their own inherited assumptions, Liberalism will hurdle towards a godless dystopia that ends either in the lobby of an assisted suicide center, or prostrate before a Caliph.

Zippy, regarding your response to my post let me say I think you misread me.
To say that people lack bedrock beliefs, left undefined for the moment, is not to say you underestimate them. If anything you would take them more seriously as opponents for want of scruples and for the vistas of cynical opportunism they create for themselves.
This regardless of any skills in the area of tactics and public manipulation.

But so be it, mass democracy and a deliberately degraded culture work strongly against the body of principles and customs that would weaken the thrusts of statism and license. So with Antisthenes I would offer that "one must prepare oneself a fortress in one's own impregnable thoughts". Because it ain't going to be pretty.

Liberalism lacks "bedrock beliefs"? Complete self-emancipation within a totally egalitarian, economically advanced, operationally atheistic state seems a very formidable and popular. So much so, its partisans triumphantly claim the The End of History is near. Points of contention and internal inconsistencies are endemic to every “system” or heresy, but no cause to dismiss liberals of either the left or right variety as less than convinced in their error.

Zippy, I think I agreed that the consequences of federal inaction would have been devastating. But in my, perhaps misguided, mind, it would have been analogous to (though not as severe) suffering through the devastation of an Obama administration if that meant gaining wisdom the hard way.
Cheers, and thanks for your graciousness and your work.
Albert

Kevin, it is a commonplace to point out that the struggle {barf} for equality, as in "egalitarian" is all about power without which this dream, or nightmare, cannot be realized.
Note your use of "totally" and it's implications for, let us say, millions of people. Power is the main course, the rest is fries on the side. This is as true for the stringers, bench warmers, and spear carriers for this eternal threat as for those at the top, something about vicarious enjoyment.

A list of the contradictions ought not to be necessary, however I did offer an example of one, the liberals rock solid love for the 1st Amendment, about to be flushed to oblivion.
Were the great Willmoore Kendall still alive, who recognized that love as no more than a weapon, he would say "just so and no surprise".

I do go on to long, allow me to bow out. The lust for power and how it undergirds so much of history and so often with smiling visage ought not to require much review.

JohnT,
I agree that the pursuit of an ideal state of equality and freedom belies a desire for power. Yet, I also think Liberalism's eschatology is sincerely held by many True Believers who prefer the less violent suasion of speech codes, social pressure and financial penalties to the brute force inevitably required in creating Heaven on Earth. Some will even grow teary-eyed as Home Land Security blights the countryside with re-education camps.

"I also think Liberalism's eschatology is sincerely held by many True Believers who prefer the less violent suasion of speech codes, social pressure and financial penalties to the brute force inevitably required in creating Heaven on Earth."

Upon encountering resistance soft totalitarianism will inevitably grow harder. As Flannery O'Connor said, tenderness without Christ, the source of tenderness, leads to the gas chambers.

In his Apologia, John Henry Newman describes Liberalism in 18 propositions. It is startling to see how many are today accepted without question.