So what, exactly, are we seeking to defend? What is the character of a liberal democracy? What does it mean for a society to be liberal, rather than for a person to subscribe to liberal principles, such as the ones Paul laid out almost four years ago?
This is the eight post (recall here (I); here (II); here (III); here (IV); here (V); here (VI); here (VII) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, here, here; and here) on the current crisis of liberalism (which I date to 2008/9).
One of the few glimmers of hope during the current crisis of liberalism, is that since the rise of Trump, to simplify greatly (spare me your outrage), property-loving classical liberals and justice/redistribution-loving centrist (say, Rawlsian) liberals have rediscovered that liberalism is a lot more than meets the eye. And for a few years now, Liberal Currents has been leading the way in bringing youthful talent together to think through what liberalism might mean concretely, as worth living, into the future. (Let's hope that they fly a few years under the radar of The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine as the next big thing; we need their insouciance to cashing in for a while longer!)
Gurri is the 'Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Currents,' and it says something of the experimental and open spirit that after four years he revisits the principles he wishes to stand for. The first few paragraphs of the piece I quoted deserve your attention, even if you have no time for what follows (so go read it). As friend of Liberal Currents, I hope I am allowed to say, 'we wouldn't be liberals if we didn't disagree over the exact meaning of liberalism'. So, today, I would like to say something about the nature of liberal society, and the values or, in Gurri's terms, virtues in it.
In addition to the passage quoted above, there is another paragraph (that partially repeats the one I quoted) that I disagree with:
A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. And a liberal democracy in which liberal values are not broadly shared by the electorate is unlikely to remain a liberal democracy for long, nor to retain its democracy much longer than that.
So, versions of Gurri's position are extremely popular in Europe among well meaning friends of liberal democracy. It is also popular among not-so-well-meaning islamo-phobes and xenophobes. And often it is not entirely easy to distinguish the two. But the position is associated with what is called 'civic republicanism,' or (in debates over immigration/refugees) ‘civic integrationist discourse’* and so-called 'homo-nationalism'. (Gurri's position need not reduce to any of these.) Unfortunately, civic republicanism promotes, in practice, conformity and becomes a stick to make the vulnerable and inarticulate play by the rules of intolerant majorities.
Notice, too, that Gurri's position is much stronger than the Rawlsian overlapping consensus of political liberalism (and public reason), which is, at least in principle, compatible with many citizens holding many private illiberal positions.
My view is that there is little empirical evidence for the two empirical presuppositions Gurri relies on, viz. (i) a liberal society (or, while not the same thing, liberal democracy) cannot survive unless liberal values are broadly held by the electorate; (ii) A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. (I call this the 'Athenian insight' -- not because Athens was liberal, it was not --, but because it trusted its citizens with education in right norms/values/virtues.) While I welcome the existence of widespread support for liberal values and virtues (broadly conceived), there is non-trivial historical experience against both. For example, in the early years of the German federal republic, there was little fondness for liberal democracy among the population, and, while there were a few ORDO, Christian Democratic and Social democratic anti-Nazis, the state was staffed by a generation of (largely unrepentant) ex-Nazi functionaries (see chapter 5 of The Denazification of Germany: A History 1945-1950).
Of the two, there is a grain of (conceptual) truth in (ii). For, on (ii) what BLM has revealed is that the liberal state, even in its core judicial/political function, is staffed by quite a few functionaries who are uncommitted to liberalism (even if we have just learned that federal judges are committed to legal principles and, perhaps, defending elections as a means of picking rulers). That's compatible with designing institutions in such a way that what these functionaries are committed to serves to protect lots of other things we care about in liberal society (property, adhering to traffic rules, etc.).+ Even in bread and butter liberal democracies a sizeable chunk of the electorate is attracted to authoritarian political practices. I first learned this from David Art's Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011), but I now work in a department where my comparative colleagues are world experts on this.**
But leaving aside the empirical facts of the matter. I also think -- and this has a Mill-ian sensibility (J.S. Mill not the father), but I get it from Walter Lippmann -- the survival of a non-totalizing liberalism requires the regular confrontation with robust and thoughtful illiberal values and views within our political system, that is, in which illiberal parties and commitments/ideologies/forms of life are present to maintain, even enervate liberalism’s own vitality as a living creed and, thereby, the vitality of the whole political system. So, on my view of Lippmann (see here), in near defeat (ca 1938), liberalism simultaneously comes to endorse its own fundamental commitments and a commitment to a kind of unreasonable pluralism.
For, the recurring challenge of both liberal emancipatory mass movements (some of which are not initially understood as liberal at all) and illiberal experiments, practices, and ideologies that helps us epistemically and politically, to figure out what we stand for, what we care about, what constitutively 'we' are (as society, polity, etc.). And this means that an open society will have to accommodate (as Kukathas has argued in Liberal Archipelago) many illiberal voluntary associations (and even parties).
Obviously, Gurri and others are right that there is a tipping point beyond which the absence of commitment to liberalism among citizens and/or staffers makes it very vulnerable to putsches, usurpation, demagogues, and revolution (etc.). But where that point is is hard to foresee, and involves complex coordination, mobilization, and signaling among citizens. And I also do not deny that two-party duopolies (as the US is) become dangerously unstable if (a strategically important element of) one party rejects fundamentally or gradually the liberal experiment.
I do not deny (recall this post on Popper) that Liberalism, more than most other political ideologies, internalizes the idea that there are considerable uncertainties it ought not wish to eliminate. And, perhaps, we need providential hope that our liberal faith, which has been tested again this week (and may be tested the next few weeks again), will never be extinguished. But even amidst despair, we can strive while our enemies are emboldened to postpone and push back our possible defeat.
*My terrific PhD student Lea Klarenbeek has done excellent work on this
+I dislike arguments about Weimar. But I think this is a different kind of example (and not Weimar).
**Some of them may well agree with Gurri on what is needed!
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