No, We Don't Need "Bold, Illiberal Acts by Populist-Right Tribalists"
Authoritarianism is Not a Route to Liberalism.
(Audio version here)
I am currently seeing an increasing and worrying tendency to understand liberalism as a mode of philosophical debate and authoritarianism as a mode of action. This is then used to justify authoritarian actions on the grounds that we are in a state of emergency where we do not have time to sit around talking about things and trying to persuade each other. I think this both a misconception of what liberalism is and a category error.
Both liberal policies and systems of governance and authoritarian ones are underlain by ideas and principles. In order to be able to take action of either kind in a liberal democracy, proponents of them need to convince enough people to support those ideas and principles to obtain a position of leadership. Once there, they have the power to enact liberal policies that protect the individual liberty of citizens from authoritarian imposition or to enact authoritarian policies that deny citizens that individual liberty. To argue that it is somehow quicker and more effective to implement authoritarian policies to achieve a liberal society than to implement liberal ones is incoherent. This cannot be persuasive to liberals to whom it seems clear that the end goal of proponents of it is not a liberal society, but an authoritarian one. It is, in essence, an attempt to convince ‘anti-woke’ liberals to lean into their ‘anti-woke’ position and abandon the freedom-orientated, liberal principles that caused them to be anti-woke in the first place.
No.
This argument was well illustrated by a comment by E. Pierce on my most recent piece, which said,
Just as "classical liberalism" required the use of "illiberal" acts, such as revolutionary wars to overthrow the Ancien Regime, or a Civil War in the USA to stop slavery, what is required now to hack off the gangrenous cancer and mental dysfunction of elite-left "woke" (neo-communism) are bold, illiberal acts by populist-right tribalists.
In another comment, Pierce expanded on this, saying,
Philosophical debates about morals and what is the best ideology are set aside while the real fight between competing social factions proceeds. The ultimate value is on actually winning the physical fight and defeating an evil enemy.
To be clear, the temporary use of ILLIBERAL tactics to defeat evil is standard, normal human nature and history.
The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.
These comments reference our shared ‘anti-wokeness’ as an end goal and appeal to me to reject liberal means of defeating wokeness in favour of authoritarian means. It seeks to get me to see “anti-woke” as my primary objective and argue that illiberal means are better than liberal ones for achieving it. This cannot appeal to me as my primary objective is “liberalism” and the woke are an obstacle to this. So too are illiberal populist-right tribalists. Like all freedom-orientated people, I do not seek a quick fix for being penalised, censored or cancelled for holding, expressing or living by views that run contrary to those of the Critical Social Justice movement. I don’t want to be penalised, censored or cancelled by anyone. I don’t want anybody else to be either, even if I disagree with them very strongly. This is not only authoritarian and so unethical according to liberal principles. Forcing bad ideas into hiding where they fester, get increasingly radical and unhinged due to not being accessible to and counterable by critics in the mainstream while gaining the glamour of being an anti-establishment resistance movement is just a terrible idea if we want to defeat them.
Like so many people right now, Pierce equates liberalism with philosophical debate rather than understanding it as the defence of freedom. This is a category error. One can support freedom in ways ranging from philosophical debate to physically fighting against authoritarianism and one can support any authoritarianism in ways ranging from philosophical debate to a physical fight too. It matters very much what you replace any authoritarian regime with and this will be decided by the principles on which you are fighting it. Misunderstanding this leads Pierce to describe the overthrow of authoritarian feudal regimes and institutions like slavery as 'illiberal.'
The most exemplary liberal revolution was, of course, the American War of Independence, but if we were to understand all arguments for freedom as liberal and all actions of physical resistance taken to obtain freedom as illiberal, it would be thoroughly illiberal. This is nonsense that cannot be accepted by anybody who accepts that liberty sometimes has to be fought for. Historically, the name for people who have understood precisely this has been “liberals.”
I particularly recommend Adam Gopnik’s book, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism for gaining an intuitive sense of the historical influence of liberalism on the development of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) societies. Speaking of the advance of human rights, he writes,
Militant activism was certainly responsible for the achievement of many of these reforms. But it was specifically liberal activism. It wasn’t trying to change everything at once. It was trying to fix what was wrong now. Civil disobedience, women chaining themselves to parliament fences, the bravery of the Chartists in Britain or the Popular Front in France or the Selma marchers—all are part of the story of human self-liberation. But in the end their goals were specific, not utopian, capable of being achieved by democratic means in democratic legislatures, even if only when the cost of not achieving them became too great for the powers already in place.
Because I have argued that one of the principles of liberalism is favouring reform over revolution, I have also used Gopnik’s arguments to set out the criteria for what makes acts of resistance or revolution liberal.
1) The end goal is liberal (freedom-orientated)
2) It is specific (not “let's burn everything down & start again”)
3) It could be achieved by the democratic processes that represent the will of the people.
4) Those processes aren't available
The American revolution was clearly freedom-orientated and had a specific goal of obtaining independence and sovereignty from the English and then establishing a system of governance based on liberal principles and the consent of the governed. Early Americans could certainly have voted this into existence had they had a democratic system which enabled this, but they didn’t. They were governed from the other side of the Atlantic. The American Revolution was, therefore, a thoroughly liberal one and so are the founding documents produced by it. It is clearly nonsense to argue that the current President of the United States cannot abide by those principles and must act illiberally to defeat the Critical Social Justice movement. He has the power to enact liberal policies that uphold freedom of belief and speech, free trade, the equal rights of all persons under the law and government by the consent of the governed - all pretty anti-woke, no? - and significant power to implement ones that undermine those values. It is essential that patriotic Americans, especially conservatives, are alert and willing to challenge him as and when his administration seeks to flout their country’s founding liberal principles.
The principles of freedom, sovereignty, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the drive to establish a government that works by the consent of the governed were the epitome of liberalism. They needed to exist as principles strongly held and philosophically debated before anybody could enter into a physical fight to establish them as a system of government. Following the enshrinement of these principles into the founding documents of the United States of America, succeeding generations of liberal Americans fought philosophically, politically and physically to more fully realise them. They continue to do so. The fact that liberals have been able, for some time, to fight for liberal principles within the realm of philosophical debate and democratic processes rather than in acts of bloody resistance and war is testament to the effectiveness and strength of liberalism, not an indication of its ineffectiveness and weakness.
When we seek to effect change or reform or conservation, we are always fighting for those changes based on whatever ideas we want to establish or conserve in society whether we do so in philosophical debate or in policy decisions or in physical conflict. Those ideas can be liberal or authoritarian. They do not become more liberal when they are being philosophically debated or more authoritarian when they are being physically fought for. Liberalism is not synonymous with discussion and authoritarianism is not synonymous with action. This is the category error. It leads people to mistake having principles for weakness and opposing authoritarianism with authoritarianism as compatible with liberalism.
Having well thought through principles that one can articulate and apply consistently to political and cultural phenomena is not a luxury belief rooted in “ivory tower” style idealism removed from material reality. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for taking effective action to create the kind of society we want to live in. Without such principles, we cannot possibly be ethically consistent or act in ways that promote our long-term interests. All arguments will be reactive and contextual and rely on motivated reasoning, fallacious reasoning, confirmation bias and appeals to emotionally resonant narratives. It leads us to undermine the structures, systems and expectations we rely on to protect our long-term interests in the service of a short-term aim. “Just ban these ideas.” “Just silence those people.” This is not only unethical in itself, but will also invariably come back to bite proponents of it when the dominant moral orthodoxy is one that sees the ideas and people that need squashing as theirs and them.
The idea that we can defeat one authoritarianism with another in the service of greater longterm freedom and thriving is, therefore, deeply flawed. People typically see this when an authoritarianism is one whose values they do not want to live under. Nearly everybody on the illiberal right trying to convince liberals (on left or right) that illiberalism on the right can fix illiberalism on the left would immediately see the problem with an argument that wokeness can be effectively defeated by the implementation of Sharia Law. It almost certainly could, but as this would not result in a society that they wanted to live in, the proposition is not persuasive. If it were presented to them as a short-term measure after which liberalism would be restored, they’d be likely to ask if the proponent of this also had a nice bridge to sell, by any chance. Any claim that people or parties with the power to enact short-term authoritarian measures to achieve their goals will then willingly relinquish that power and give the power back to the people is surely rooted in propagandistic dishonesty or astounding naivety.
The idea that liberalism can be achieved via illiberalism is demonstrable nonsense. Those who are not striving for the end goal of a liberal society but a different form of authoritarianism should have the courage of their convictions and the intellectual honesty to say so clearly and make their case for that. Then, those of us who genuinely value and wish to conserve and realise more fully the philosophically liberal underpinnings of the liberal democracies that have come to define Western civilisation can straightforwardly defend it against them. Americans can do so patriotically and I really hope they will do so unconfusedly and uncompromisingly.
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
Thanks Helen for your great work.
Well said!