Is Classical Liberalism Finished?
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal tries to connect the dots from Montaigne to AOC
Last week I came across an interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal, “Hope for the Lost Souls of Liberalism” by Barton Swaim. I love when friends send me articles, and this was sent to me only a couple days apart by two very different people. This was enough to catch my attention.
Below I give my thoughts on the piece line by line. Overall I feel the author means well but his point is muddled in some places and naive in others. I entered with great expectations, and loved certain points, but can’t help thinking he might have not totally expressed what he really feels. Let me know what you think.
Liberalism is in trouble. I don’t mean the narrow “liberalism” of the post-1960s Democratic Party, although that’s in trouble, too. I mean liberalism in the wider, classical sense—a view of government and society embracing free markets, representative democracy, individual freedom, strict limits on state power, and religious neutrality.
I’m feeling a sense of foreboding about where this is going. I’m a conservative, but the pearl clutching of country club Republicans is exhausting and counter productive. I do agree that liberalism as defined above is on the wane, but the threat seems to be more direct from illiberal international regimes promoting an authoritarian capitalist hybrid than from an internal debate. Perhaps this contentious domestic debate is a sign that liberalism is alive and well?
Twenty-five years ago, that understanding of liberalism was almost unquestionable. Not anymore. On the left, markets generate inequality, democracy works only when it achieves the right outcomes, individual freedom is uninteresting unless it involves sexual innovation or abortion, the state is everything, and religion doesn’t deserve neutrality. On the right—or anyway the intellectual/populist right—markets destroy traditional moral conventions, democracy is mostly a sham, individual freedom encourages behavioral deviancies, state power is a force for good, and the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion was likely a bad idea.
Partisans will dispute these characterizations, but the liberal order in America (and Europe) is under attack—and not without reason. Political debates in Washington are bereft of good faith, the education system idealizes self-hatred and sexual confusion, and even corporate leaders—who until yesterday could be counted on to champion patriotism and hard work—eagerly recite the maxims of idiots.
There’s good, bad, and ugly sides to the author's thinking.
He’s correct to point out the anti liberal nature of modern leftists and the Democratic Party. They champion democracy so long as they win, have unwarranted faith in big state solutions, and disdain personal liberty unless it has to do with sexuality and minority status.
Ending on a strong note, Swaim articulates how American institutions have become debased. The root causes of this, though not articulated, seem clear: that boomers steeped in 60s radicalism have captured leadership across the country. The irony is that their free spirited rebellion has become the system from which we must now in turn rebel.
The Democratic Party is anti capitalism but pro corporatism, they have in the last twenty years formed alliances with Bureaucratic heads of lumbering legacy corporations and leaders of fashionable coastal industries like media, tech and finance.
Swaim is on shakier ground in the middle when he tries to be even handed.
The modern left is deeply focused on destroying the institutions, from religion and family to local government, that stand between individuals and the federal government while promoting institutions, universities and social media companies that further the central government’s agenda. In more plain language, they favor the broad and national over the specific and local.
This ideology is straight from Karl Marx and was taken to its extreme in Lenin’s Russia and Mao’s China. Overall his points are good, but I feel like he’s just making them to establish credibility to attack the right (this is mainstream media after all)
Writing about the “intellectual/populist right” (never heard that term before) the author describes the mythical straw man conservative often pilloried in the media. The truth is the modern right has never been more centrist.
They have accepted modern monetary theory and deficit spending in a way unthinkable to fiscal hawk Republicans of just ten years ago. Socially, Republicans have accepted gay marriage and abortion, only arguing over what stage they should be performed. They are also increasingly disconnected from organized Christianity. President Trump can be called a lot of things, but religion is not one of them. I have never heard a modern conservative argue for state religion, as Swaim suggests.
The Republican Party is one of the only institutional significant remaining bastions of classical liberalism. I’m not sure what the author’s smoking, but the GOP is totally committed to free markets. Southern Governors have courageously fought illiberal draconian mask and vaccine mandates.
Modern republicans have a lot of great ideas and are the last defenders of liberalism, they need to act like it.
Up until Trump, the Republicans were sleeping on the job while Democrats captured most levers of power in our institutions. Now Republicans are still too idealistic about the fairness of our democratic process. Elections are not fair when one party controls the entire flow of information. Negative stories about Biden, from his cognitive abilities to crackhead Hunter’s laptop, were unapologetically covered up by social and mainstream media. The cover up happened in a context of constant false narratives published about Trump, from kids in cages to the endless Russia Hoax.
I don’t have the answer, but if Republicans can’t take on the media and tech, our democracy will be destroyed. Citizens will vote, but be denied the information necessary to make a real choice. This is the real crisis of democracy.
I have read many critiques of liberalism, but none so original as “Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment” by Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say the book doesn’t so much criticize liberalism as explain why it’s neither the cause of our problems nor their solution.
Mr. and Mrs. Storey, 46 and 45 respectively, teach political philosophy and run the Tocqueville Program at Furman University; for the present academic year they’re also visiting scholars at the American Enterprise Institute. On a recent visit to Furman’s campus, I met them in Mrs. Storey’s book-laden but very tidy office. (Disclosure: My daughter is a student at Furman, although she avoids the subject of political philosophy on the not unreasonable grounds that “politics stresses me out.”)
Now the opinion piece transitions into a bit of a book review. I recognized we are getting a little Meta with a review of a review, but I will soldier on anyway. So far I am guessing the Storeys are “conservative” never Trump academics. We shall see…
At the core of their book is the reflection that educated people in modern liberal democracies are very comfortable with proximate arguments and not at all with ultimate ones—in other words, that moderns can debate means but not ends.
What do they mean by “ends”? “I teach Plato’s ‘Gorgias,’ ” Mr. Storey says. “Socrates is arguing with Callicles about what the best way of life is. And so I will ask my students: What’s the best way of life? Just like that. The standard response is: What are you talking about? They look at me as if to say: You can’t ask that question!”
So it is, he thinks, in liberal societies generally: We’re allowed to debate all questions but ultimate ones. “We’re assuming we can’t have an answer to these questions, without even asking them.” In the classroom, he says, both he and his wife “try to shift students from a stance of dogmatic skepticism, in which they assume before the inquiry begins that you can’t ask ultimate questions, to a place of zetetic or seeking skepticism, in which you recognize that, despite all your doubts and apprehensions, you have to at least ask questions about God and the good and the nature of the universe.”
I’m not sure about these particular students, but I feel like we are asking big questions like never before.
From 1990-2016 we lived entirely in Francis Fukuyama’s End of History with the triumph of liberal Democratic capitalism. In this period no one questioned anything about the liberal project. The Cold War ended and for a time the battle between capitalism and communism seemed settled. Shrinking the role of government was also accepted as a good by both parties, with the Democrats under Clinton changed course in a moderate direction.
Now, however, everything about our society is up for debate.
At a governmental level, the rise of China has questioned the assumption that political liberty is necessary for capitalism to flourish. This is at the heart of the threat to classical liberalism, because it undermines a lot of the rationale for individual freedom. The left is internalizing this message and is using its soft power control over tech and media to end freedom of speech. Vaccine passports are also most likely a back door to national IDs and a Chinese style social Credit system.
On an institutional level, seismic shifts are occurring. Online education will change how people learn and acquire credentials. The reality is most information is available for free online, why do we need universities other than as a certifying agency for neoliberal elite? Business has shifted away from capital intensive projects like actually making things to more scalable digital endeavours. Increasingly platforms are becoming important. Ideas are exchanged through private social media channels. There is no public square anymore to hang up your thesis, a Modern Martin Luther would simply be deplatformed. All of these events are part of a major ongoing debate right now at a level we could not have dreamed of 10 years ago.
On an individual level, the pandemic has caused many people to rethink what is important to them. Something like 40% of millennials are considering quitting their jobs to find more work life balance. The Japanese salaryman style corporate existence will no longer be accepted. The casino economy also no longer compensates “reliable workers” and instead rewards allstars. Figuring out what is the best life is at the heart of ancient philosophy, and for the first time since the end of World War Two people are engaging with it.
Liberalism began in the 16th and 17th centuries as a response to the violent political struggles of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation—the so-called wars of religion. European philosophers and political leaders sought a political worldview in which a man was able to hold his own views and practice his own religion without reference to the mythology of the dominant culture around him. To oversimplify the ideal: In public he would behave as a loyal citizen; in private he could affirm or deny transubstantiation or decide he cared little either way.
This is an interesting point about the beginning of modern thinking. We must also remember that this was at the dawn of publishing, so people had access to far more varied views than before. Let’s not overstep the mark however, 17th century Europe was still very sharks and jets over religion.
It is true that at this time we see the rise of the individual which is increasingly modern.
The beginnings of liberalism are most clearly evident in the philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704). But Locke’s writings aren’t famously readable, and the Storeys begin their book with Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). Montaigne was no philosopher, and that is the point: He was a wonderful essayist but didn’t strive for universal truth. The Storeys call the Montaignian ideal “immanent contentment”: an outlook that values satisfaction in the moment and has little interest in the grand principles along which society might be reordered. Montaigne, in this view, is the prototypical liberal.
As attractive as the liberal worldview is, the Storeys think, it has ceased to satisfy. “Liberalism isn’t popular among a lot of younger people,” Mrs. Storey says, “because it was designed to solve a different anthropological problem from the ones we’re facing. We were different people when we came up with our liberal institutions to solve the strife of war and persecution.” The political institutions of liberalism, she says, were designed for people who “were already strongly committed to churches, localities, professions and families. But when private lives have broken down—families dissolved, localities less important, religious life absent—liberalism’s framework institutions no longer make sense.” Young people in particular, she says, aren’t interested in the “prosaic” Montaignian life: “It just isn’t enough for them. It has no transcendence. They’re going to go beyond it.”
Montaigne’s essays are an interesting starting point for understanding liberalism. He was the first writer to look inward and consider his own experiences as important.
leaving politics to pursue life as a gentleman farmer and man of letters might be an early version of work life balance. Millennials should love Montaigne, he is a lifestyle guru/influencers/blogger in the 17th Century. His ideas about what constitutes a good life are more inline with the slow movement of the last decades than his own time and fit neatly with how many are choosing to see life post Coronavirus. If you consider this sort of individualism the hallmark of liberalism then it's alive and well.
Now we go on an awkward transition to talking about collective institutions that support liberalism. I thought we just learned liberalism was about the individual? The author is right to point out that these institutions are essential for our way of life, but it feels like a cop out that he does not explicitly mention the democrats role in destroying them.
I think young people are interested in all of this, I think the disinterested party are selfish baby boomers. Millennials and Zoomers are desperate for a sense of community and belonging. It’s up to conservatives to create outlets for these admirable feelings and not give up this ground to radicals like AOC.
Many critiques of liberalism and modernity quickly become critiques of the free market. It’s a tempting solution because the market is something you can change or rearrange by force of law. The Storeys don’t take that view. “The problems we’re facing right now are not fundamentally economic problems,” he says. “They’re fundamentally educational and philosophical problems. The way forward is a multigenerational project, and it’s going to begin in schools.”
Economics is indeed not the problem, we live in by far the most prosperous time in human history. You can tell a lot about society by which public intellectuals are popular. During the financial crisis economists like Nouriel Roubini held sway. Today we listen to psychologists like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. Our problems come from within.
Another way to explain the plight of 21st-century liberalism, the Storeys argue, is that it has become bereft of “forms.” Tocqueville used that term in “Democracy in America” but didn’t define it. He meant traditions, social conventions, taboos. Aristocratic societies rely heavily on forms; each person, high or low, understands the expectations his role places on him and responds accordingly. Democratic societies tend to spurn forms. Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, preferred democracy but worried that democratic citizens might forget forms altogether.
It’s a mistake to ignore modern forms because they are more subtle. Leaders in today’ America follow an incredibly complex pattern of style and mannerism cues that have evolved from 60s counter culture.
Displaying openness through eclectic taste is key. A modern elite is not likely to have an opera box, but enjoys a Kombucha after a vinyasa flow yoga session, then go to a trendy Moroccan cafe before streaming a British crime documentary on Netflix. While these are not costly, they have a self selective audience. The form is to know about them. Middle and lower middle class people can’t keep up.
The same goes for language around race and gender. Complex customs here are used to identify rubes who are not up to date. These forums of dialogue allow elites to discriminate against people they see “as not a good cultural fit”. That is, corporate speak for the lower class.
Fashion is another area of complex forms. Dressing casually is a way of showing you’re the boss, that no one has power over you. In today's world, powerful people wear T Shirts, but not any old T-shirts. A white T for $125 from James Perse is different from a $10 dollar gas station white T. Only servants wear suits, so paradoxically being dressed up is not a signifier of aristocratic status.
These forms are very real, and you have to live in coastal urban America to understand them. They are the final evolution of the hippy take over.
Mr. and Mrs. Storey want to resist the march toward formlessness. “In the classroom,” he says, “I always wear a tie when I teach. I call my students Mister this and Miss that. The reason we do that isn’t to make people feel uncomfortable; it’s to create proper distance between teacher and student. I’m saying to them: I’m putting my tie on because I respect you and respect the subject we’re studying. I’m going to speak to you in a very formal way, like an adult, and I’m going to ask you to rise up and be an adult.”
I like their intentions with this, but it’s a misguided effort. As we spoke about, wearing a suit and tie indicates you’re a servant, not someone to be respected. They would be better off in designer athleisure to signify their independence. Formality is a sign of modern subservience.
The loss of forms in modern democratic societies, the Storeys contend, cultivates a kind of chronic restlessness and anxiety. Without forms—without conventions and attendant expectations, without institutional connections defining our relationships—“every decision becomes an existential crisis,” Mrs. Storey says. “You’re a free-floating atom. You have to guess what the proper response is to any circumstance.”
If these free-floating atoms aren’t bound to institutions and conventions, many are governed by our nationalized political mayhem.
The problem is that middle class people are totally incapable of penetrating modern elite forms. 30 years ago you just put on the uniform of a suit and speak with correct English and you were all set. Poor people and minorities pay the price in today's world.
People do feel free floating but not for a lack of forms. Many structures that would have given them meaning have been destroyed by Democrats and the social welfare state. Conservatives need to recognize this and provide a new vision, we must be the antidote to mayhem.
Are young people terrorized by the protean demands of influencers and Twitter mobs? “There’s a nervousness in the classroom when we talk about political topics that I didn’t notice four or five years ago,” Mr. Storey says. “Students now come of age in a fully different world in which saying the wrong thing—or even not saying the right thing—can destroy you. One of our students was chased off a certain social media platform, I forget which one, because there was a rally around some cause célèbre and he just didn’t say anything. He was denounced for saying nothing.”
Mr. Storey adds that “Tocqueville described 200 years ago the tyranny of the majority over thought, in which people are constantly taking their intellectual bearings from what they think they’re expected to believe.”
Individual liberty cannot be upheld without free speech. We tend to regard free speech in terms of government censorship. This lens made sense for the founding father who were focused on repression of the British crown.
The professors’ students are correct to be afraid because they face violence as retaliation for speech, just not from the government. Universities and Social Media companies use the values of liberalism against society, claiming as private institutions they can control speech on their platforms. They control the public space, so effectively they control free speech. Tyranny of a small minority is leading to the downfall of basic human rights.
Universities, Media, and Tech companies are controlled by democrats, questioning their doctrine will see the students punished. How can you expect them to be free thinkers when everything from their career to their friendships are on the line for even a marginally contrarian view?
The Storeys met at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where they studied under the conservative intellectuals Leon and Amy Kass. Like their teachers, who were also married (Mrs. Kass died in 2015), the Storeys have an almost parental affection for their students. Although they are broadly sympathetic with French and American conservatism—you could guess that much by Mr. Storey’s tie-wearing and use of honorifics—students of wildly divergent political allegiances consider them favorites.
The couple’s conservatism consists above all in the belief that “old, wise books,” as he puts it, have something to teach us. “Old, wise books.” That, in essence, is their answer to the newspaperman’s inevitable question: So what are we going to do about this mess? Or, to put it differently: If liberalism was designed for people ensconced in a labyrinth of institutions, and the citizens of 21st-century democracies are no longer such people, what do we do with liberalism?
Now we get to learn more about the Storeys, they seem to be old school conservatives in the William F. Buckley mold. They are unapologetically elitist, reveling in the pretenses of a bygone era. Probably more often than not they get into arguments at dinner parties over the definition of liberalism.
I am very sympathetic to this viewpoint. My biggest issue with conservative populists is that they have no appreciation for aesthetics or beauty or traditional forms outside politics. Not to put too fine a point on it, but many Middle American conservatives live in an ugly world. People can do what they want, but it’s a mistake to force all conservatives into this mundane mold.
I also readily agree with the focus on classical books. We have much to learn from the ancients and it’s a shame this is lost on a new generation of students.
I guess I question the mess they see. We are changing as a people and a country with two sides of a debate about the future. My thinking is they, because of their love of form, are feeling compelled to side with Democrats. Democrats have the correct manners and appearance, they are well coiffed and spoken. Beyond the superficial, people like the Storeys should realize that the democrats have nothing in common in terms of world view.
Other rightward-leaning critiques of liberalism—I think especially of Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” (2018)—fault the liberal order itself for the hedonistic perversities, economic inequalities and cultural oppressiveness they see in modern American culture. Mr. and Mrs. Storey steer a different course. In their book they credit the liberal order with a “profound awareness of the manifold and conflicting dimensions of human life and of the consequent challenges of self-government.” Their hope, Mr. Storey says, “is that the liberal institutions that have done so much good for our country can weather the current wave of disorder.”
The task for today, in their view, isn’t to dynamite liberalism, on the one hand, or to encourage its pathologies, on the other. It is, as Mrs. Storey says, “to recover the preconditions of liberalism’s success.” To do that “is going to require returning to preliberal sources—the resources of classical thought, Christian thought and Jewish thought, and the communal practices that turn those traditions into ways of life. These ways of thinking aim to cultivate order in the soul in a way that liberal thought does not.”
All this talk of order and souls puts me in mind of Plato’s “Republic.” I haven’t read it in 30 years but I remember that Plato wanted to draw a connection between order in the soul and order in the city, or polis. On a shelf in Mrs. Storey’s office I spy a copy of the University of Chicago intellectual Allan Bloom’s famous translation of the “Republic,” so perhaps I’m on to something. Perhaps the Storeys’ point can be put as simply as this: You can’t fix the city as long as the souls are a mess.
The opinion piece ends on a high note because it focuses on the role of the individual. If there's one take away, liberal institutions will struggle to function as long as individuals struggle.
It’s a challenging time for the individual. People are alone, estranged from family and love and without the support of religion. Deaths of despair are on the rise and life expectancy is going down. Despite what the government does, and probably because of it, these crises just continue to get worse and worse.
I agree that we as a society can pull through. Montaigne is a great place to start. His cocktail of Hellenistic philosophies challenges us to find joy in small things. Maybe we don’t need to focus on the “big questions” but should instead focus on living a classically good life. What improves the world directly around us while making us happy? If we can answer these questions individually for ourselves perhaps we can improve society as a whole. None of this, however, can be imposed from the top down.