An Election, Uneasiness, and Our Anti-Liberal Moment

Whoever wins this election, the outcome could be dangerous for America. We live in an anti-liberal moment.

Whoever wins this election, the outcome could be dangerous for America. We live in an anti-liberal moment.

Liberal in this instance doesn’t mean twentieth-century center-left politics. I mean “liberal” here in the sense of the Enlightenment ideas around which American democracy is based—democracy, free speech, rule by the people, social equality, and a middle-class society. There are left-liberals, who during the twentieth century we usually just called liberals to distinguish them from right-liberals—mainly free marketers, libertarians, and other parts of the so-called center-right. In reality, however, all of them were liberals. Anyone who agrees with America’s Founders that free people should self-govern and rule themselves is a kind of liberal. Most of America’s right and left in recent memory were both fundamentally liberals.

This, however, is the liberalism that’s in decline. These ideas, which made America into America, were our foundation throughout history. After two centuries of mostly unrivaled intellectual dominance, anti-liberal impulses are now coursing through our nation putting these American ideals at risk.

Despite what you might hear, this isn’t happening because a few bad people are trying to destroy democracy to institute an authoritarianism dictatorship. I’m not saying there aren’t people in America with terrible ideas working to undercut everything about America we love, but that’s not new. There have always been such people, and there will always be, but most of the time they get laughed out of the room and driven off the stage. Unfortunately, they now have an awful lot of potential supporters among the people.

That’s what makes this election concerning, and it affects both parties and both the intellectual right and left.

I think we’re ultimately going to be fine. I don’t believe America is about to fall. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t acknowledge that for the first time in my life it’s something I actually have to think about and question. No matter how we vote, there’s a real possibility of someone using that vote to advance ideas contrary to America’s foundation. What has me most worried is many liberals simply do not get it.

The problem has to do with meaning.

A CRISIS OF MEANING

In the twentieth century, we got accustomed to reducing everything to economics.

The great ideological battle of the last age was between democratic market capitalism and communism, a fight that we rhetorically reduced to two rival economic systems. We got used to talking about politics in terms of means of production, mechanisms of prosperity, tools for innovation, and which institutions should control making the things we need and distributing the rewards. Within Western democracies, we mirrored this battle between our domestic left and right. This was fine because there was no real disagreement over larger philosophical questions of government. Everyone took for granted ideas like democracy, personal liberty, and freedom of speech, so there was nothing much else to talk about. Great philosophical questions about how to organize society and where we should find our purpose were not contested. The only divide was over the best way to produce material prosperity.

This led us to forget that politics is not primarily about economics, but meaning and dignity.

People certainly want enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, and means to protect their families. After those basic needs are met, however, they also want dignity and a sense of purpose. After a basic sense of comfort is reached, that’s what the money after all is mostly for—not survival or comfort but social status, a sense of safety, and the means to pursue one’s dreams. That’s why people across to world regularly choose struggle and war and revolutions that will utterly destroy the prosperity of their nations. As we repeatedly see, others things matter more to people than just prosperity.

Liberals therefore got used to selling their ideas around prosperity and progress. Liberal societies are richer, they produce more, they innovate more, and they’re more efficient. These things are true and they’re great bonuses, but they’re not the reason people choose to live in liberal societies. The real case for liberal societies is they allow each of us to decide who we want to be. We decide what we will do. We choose our careers, our lifestyles, and who is important to us. We can do and say and be whatever  we want. The purpose of democratic republics, personal liberty, market economies, and freedom of speech, are not just to make us safer and materially more comfortable. They’re compelling because they give us the freedom to define our own source of meaning. If you’re a thinker, a rebel, an entrepreneur, or an aspiring world beater, this is the kind of society you want. To you, any other kind of society would seem a prison.

However, not everyone is like this. To some, a liberal life can feel quite bleak and meaningless.

Those of us who find liberal societies an exciting adventure often forget they’re also a burden. Having to shape your own source of meaning is sort of like getting thrown into the deep end of life. It’s easy to get caught up in a situation in which there’s no meaning to your life at all. You have a job you dislike. You live in an apartment by yourself, or with your partner, and rarely see anyone outside work. You sit on the couch and watch Netflix. You’re not exactly struggling, but you see other people on Instagram having fabulous lives doing amazing things that seem out of reach for you. You’re on a treadmill producing and consuming but never really living. What for some people feels like infinite opportunity and freedom to others feels like an existence lost at sea.

These disappointed people look for meaning somewhere else. There are two other places outside liberalism humans have classically found meaning in their life.

Some people find meaning in a sense of duty. Many people hunger for responsibilities and a role others count on. They want to live within a structure knowing where they fit, what is expected from them, and that what they do will matter. They want a set of rules everybody understands, and a web of relationships everybody can fall back on, to know what they do has meaning. This is the small town community, religious structure, the comfort of a common culture, and the patriotism of a nation. Liberals dismiss these desires as backwards traditionalism, a prison trapping people into someone else’s idea of the good. They can be for some. For others, however, these constraints are welcome duties. They’re opportunities thrust upon you to play a role that matters.

Other people find meaning in sacrifice. It’s strange to liberals, but some people don’t want a life of easy affluence. They find it alienating. They get meaning out of sacrificing for others. To stand on your own and triumph feels to them like selfishness and ego. Innovation feels like getting ahead and taking from everyone else. This is the meaning of the commune, the longhouse, the volunteer, the community in which everyone pitches in and helps everybody else, making everyone feel cared for and important. Liberals often misunderstand this kind of meaning as about providing. If others struggle, why not just produce more? Why not create new technology and be more efficient to solve their problems? For some, however, such solutions defeat the point. The point isn’t really meeting a need. The point is the sacrifice. It’s the giving and sharing and community that gives them meaning.

This is what I think is going on in both the left and the right. There’s a lot of energy on the right coming from people looking for meaning in duty. They see old structures falling away. They see their communities with networks of relationships disappearing and breaking up. Liberals tell them this disintegration is freedom and that to complain is backwards, selfish, and a sign of evil intent. Similar energy on the left is coming from people looking for meaning in sacrifice. They want the opportunity to sacrifice and give. If they can’t sacrifice something for others, they feel their lives are empty. They want to enlist America in great dramatic sacrifices for others in order to feel like they’re taking part of a community that matters. Liberals see these sacrifices as inefficient, self-destructive, and often pointless. Why don’t we just produce more, redistribute better, and innovate?

I don’t think people who want some duty thrust upon them are fascists. I don’t think people who hunger to sacrifice are communists. I do, however, think they could push us away from liberalism and toward authoritarianism as they seek to satisfy their hunger for meaning that liberalism isn’t meeting.

LIBERALISM’S FAILURES

The mix of democracy, personal liberty, and markets has unleashed unprecedented productivity and human flourishing. It has created material prosperity, innovation and progress, and the freedom to achieve and thrive. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best any society has yet managed to do anywhere on earth. This is the sort of society I want. I would find the constraints any other kind of society imposes on individuals a burden and a prison. America got it right.

A lot of other Americans right now, however, would trade all that for something meaningful. They would trade the freedom and prosperity of liberalism for the certainty of a stable community of people they knew with a role for them that mattered. They would eagerly take up any duty and burden alongside their brothers. This is what being a soldier, a father, and a wise community pillar is all about. Others would trade it for the opportunity to sacrifice. They would give up their possessions and opportunities to help others in the expectation that when they need help it will be returned. This is what being a teacher, a mother, or a caregiver is all about.

These things aren’t incompatible with liberalism. There used to be places in America where this kind of meaning was not just available but thrust upon you. Underneath this dynamic nation were a network of small and stable communities in which roles and responsibilities were set. Underneath the melting pot, there was a common national culture. Underneath the great corporations were corner shops and local doctors and local businesses. Instead of a national online conversation there were church picnics, and community centers, and local parks, and bowling leagues.

While these things are not incompatible with liberal societies, however, they’re also not required by liberalism, or even valued by many liberals. While liberalism has supplied a comfortable and stable life for most Americans, it has done a poor job of late of supplying many Americans with a sense of meaning. Not everybody finds meaning in radical opportunity. Not everyone wants to define meaning for themself. A lot of people are trapped in lives they do not believe really matters. This is why I’m wary of this election, no matter who wins it.

If people can’t find meaning in America, they’ll change America so they can. They’ll get angry and frustrated and go into the political realm to force the change they desire. As their numbers grow, both parties increasingly will entertain non-liberal ideas. Right liberals and left liberals both will give way to “allies” who are not liberals or allies. Eventually, misguided leaders will eagerly comply, liberals will lose, and the consensus they take for granted will collapse as large portions of America cheer along. This is what I think is going on. It’s why so many Americans are happy, if not eager, to tear America apart and turn their back on basic liberal commitments they no longer value. They’re doing it for the same reason people will gladly march into a revolution or a war they know will throw them into pain and poverty. It gives them hope of finding purpose.

The truth, of course, is if they succeed they won’t get what they want. Forcing duty only makes people happy when it’s freely chosen. Forcing sacrifice only works when it it’s freely chosen too. It’s wonderful to find meaning in these things, but to create a society around forcing them will bring you neither meaning nor happiness. People have tried in thousands of years of experiments of designing human societies and it has never once worked before, which is why we invented liberalism in the first place.

Fixing this is not complicated, although it will be hard. Liberals need to make liberalism work for more Americans, and working does not just mean giving them more stuff. It means giving them more meaningful lives. I always come back to the idea of the American Dream—the dream of a nation of social equals who can compete on a level playing field to become whatever they want to become. It’s a vision of an America not just of production and efficiency and growth. It’s a vision of an America in which everyone can live good lives that matter. The American Dream promises not just a job and a car but a rich life in which you truly have a chance to live any way you choose and find whatever it is you want.

The mistake is thinking this is all driven by bad people, or cartoon villains in a shadowy conspiracy. If it were, it wouldn’t be difficult to defeat this anti-liberal moment. In reality, it’s too often pushed by good people with good intentions and real concerns who happen to see little value in the liberal vision of America. That’s what makes it so concerning. I believe America will ultimately be fine, and I think most Americans are good. But if things do go wrong, this is why it happened.

What do you think of our anti-liberal moment? Join the conversation in the comments.