Nostalgic Post-Liberal Fantasies Won’t Save Us
A response to Natasha Burge
(Audio version here)
In a piece last month, “The Liberal Delusion: When Freedom Devours its Roots”
took square aim at “the dominant political philosophy of the modern Western world:” liberalism. Writing in the context of the US from a post-liberal position, Burge acknowledges that America was built on liberal principles and that both Democrats and Republicans have operated within a liberal frame. She identifies a core principle of liberalism that “the government’s role is to protect personal rights without pushing any particular moral vision.” It is this that she takes issue with. Burge believes that the government should push a particular moral vision and a conservative one.My concerns with Burge’s argument are three-fold. Firstly, it nostalgically posits a ‘before time’ in which there was cultural cohesion and everything was lovely and seeks to get back to that. Secondly, while criticising ‘wokeness’ fairly accurately and arguing for a need to see it out and institutionalise a ‘common good’, she fails to acknowledge that wokeness was an attempt to institutionalise a common good and that this went down very badly or make a case for why her ‘common good conservatism’ will not run into the same problems. Thirdly, while arguing that her vision is not a return to authoritarianism, it does, in fact, read very much like a return to authoritarianism complete with a long march through the institutions and government overreach.
Burge argues that, “Liberalism began in a culturally cohesive, morally grounded soil.” No, it didn’t. If such a society had ever existed, it would be very unlikely that liberalism would be inspired to emerge in it. Liberalism is ultimately a system of conflict resolution and the drive for it emerges when there are people with different and conflicting ideas trying to live together. Burge adds, “When you live in a homogenous society with a robust set of shared values, it is difficult to imagine that society itself could ever come so undone” but gives no evidence that any such society has ever existed. One primary reason that America was founded on liberal principles with a strong focus on secularism is because of the influence of Christian Puritans fleeing persecution from other Christians in England and particularly state-based Christianity. They wanted to make as sure as possible that this did not happen again because it has throughout Christian history.
Burge’s concern is that liberalism leads to fragmentation but there are 45,000 denominations of Christianity. My area of study was Christianity in England from 1300-1700. There was no ‘homogenous society with a robust set of shared values” during this period despite there being a state-based Christianity everybody was required to adhere to. It is very easy to imagine how such a society could come undone because one can simply study the factional infighting on religious, political and dynastic grounds that occurred within this timeframe. This is likely to make one entirely reset one’s grading curve for what constitutes a ‘culture war.” For Burge to convincingly claim that such a harmonious society existed but was undone because “liberalism is a powerful acid,” she would need to provide evidence of such a culturally cohesive society in which there was less factionalism and violence than there has been in modern western liberal democracies. Burge writes of ‘liberalism’s rejection of shared truth’ but liberals are not people who reject shared truth. We are people who recognise that humans do not do shared truth. We thus advocate a system of governance in which they can co-exist and resolve conflict without bloodshed.
Burge is correct to say that wokeness that took advantage of liberalism’s old language of rights to push through a new moral regime that justified coercion and control. However, this was always a specifically moral regime that sought to move past liberalism, even if it did not use the term ‘post-liberalism’. The Critical Theories that underlie the Critical Social Justice (woke) movement took strongest aim at liberalism, arguing it to be a failing or at least outdated approach to advancing progress on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality etc. Liberalism, they claimed correctly, sought to remove social significance from identity and overcome prejudice and discrimination by normalising treating people as individuals. This, they argued incorrectly, was inadequate and identity politics rooted in postmodern theory would be much more effective. This was stated most explicitly within Critical Race Theory:
[C]ritical race scholars are discontented with liberalism as a framework for addressing America’s racial problems. Many liberals believe in color blindness and neutral principles of constitutional law. They believe in equality, especially equal treatment for all persons, regardless of their different histories or current situations.
The Critical Social Justice scholars and activists intended to move beyond liberalism to establish their own vision of a common good within institutions, government and culture. They wanted to create a common worldview and shared values based on the acceptance of the systems of power, oppression and privilege that Burge accurately describes and correctly identifies as a problem. They were a problem because they were not grounded in reality, they sought to coerce everybody else into affirming their own worldview using governmental, institutional and cultural pressure and they consequently undermined their own cause while doing a great deal of harm to individual liberty before causing an almighty illiberal ‘anti-woke’ backlash.
Burge’s post-liberal vision rooted in Christianity is liable to run into the same conflict with reality. Perhaps God exists and wants humans to do certain things but there’s no good reason to think so and many Americans don’t. Of those who do, many are patriotic and uphold the liberal principles of their Declaration of Independence and Constitution and oppose authoritarian imposition of their faith. Burge’s vision involves the same goal of pushing her “common good” into government, institutions and culture and presents the same kind of threat to individual liberty. It is consequently very likely to provoke the same kind of resentment, resistance and, ultimately, backlash. People really do not like being required to conform to somebody else’s vision of shared values and a common good and told what to think and say and how to live their lives. Americans are particularly unlikely to respond well to this.
Burge may say that her vision is not a return to authoritarianism but she does wish to redefine ‘freedom’ from ‘the absence of restraint’ to ‘the presence of purpose.’ I suspect that most people would rather continue to understand freedom as the absence of restraint and remain free to decide their own purpose. She argues that “a good society forms people, rather than merely freeing them,” but I’d suggest that if the experience of wokeness has shown us anything, it is that people don’t want to be ‘formed’ into somebody else’s ideological vision and will fight quite hard for ‘mere’ freedom from that. Burge’s aim to tend to the ”foundational flourishing of the nation by disincentivizing the corrosive and incentivizing the good” sounds distinctly ominous. It is hard to think of any authoritarian regime that did not believe itself to be doing that. Burge describes a drive among Americans for “homes centered on faith, communities rebuilding what was lost, lives reoriented toward meaning.” That is all very well, but when she says, “What we need now is for that quiet blooming to ripple outward into our institutions and into our government,” we are certainly into authoritarian territory.
Ultimately, Burge’s post-liberal conservative “common good” is based on a nostalgic fantasy of cultural cohesion that never existed. She fails to see the clear parallel between her vision and that of the “woke”: both seek to impose a single moral framework through institutional capture and government power. If the overreach of wokeness taught us anything, it is that people will fiercely resist being moulded into someone else’s idea of the good, however virtuous its advocates believe it to be. Liberalism is not a corrosive acid that undid a harmonious, homogenous society with a robust set of shared values. It arose precisely because humans are disagreeable and combative with a tendency to factionalise and need a way to negotiate conflict without bloodshed. Liberalism is messy because humans are messy. Its alternatives do not lead to unity and peace; they lead to coercion, backlash and, far too often, violence. Real authoritarianism has definitely been tried before. It has never ended well.
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I always see a clearer picture when I read your essays .
Excellent! I’ve been trying to understand the argument of the post-liberal right, and while I see some good points in their criticisms of “liberalism” as they define it, and while I too can see the need for a return to “ common sense policies,” it gives me the heebie-jeebies when they start talking about”institutions” and “government.” “Liberalism is messy because human beings are messy.” That’s a good tattoo right there.