Name and recover the liberal ideal – Orange County Register – Daily Gaming Worlld

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On New Years Day 2000, Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan challenged his classic Liberal colleagues to save the soul of liberalism. People need something they aspire to and fight for, he wrote. If the liberal ideal is not there, there will be a void and other ideas will supplant it.

Twenty years later, Buchanans fears seem premonitory. The contempt for liberalism grows at both ends of the ideological spectrum the nationalist right and the progressive left. Non-liberal ideas and attitudes have infiltrated the mainstream, rejecting not only market liberalism, but even more fundamental principles, such as respect for the autonomy and dignity of the individual. At one extreme, we see the resurgence of white nationalism; on the other, the renunciation of the principles of the first amendment.

Now is the time for all Liberals to take up Buchanans challenge: to save the soul of liberalism by taking over the Liberal ideal.

The first step is to name it. The liberal ideal is good society: a pluralistic and tolerant society in which intellectual and economic progress is the norm, and where individuals and communities thrive in a context of openness, peaceful and voluntary cooperation and respect mutual.

It is this liberal ideal that animated the American foundation, without doubt the first great liberal experience. This is why in his book The Conservative Sensibility, George Will writes that American conservatives are the guardians of this tradition. They seek, recalls Will, to preserve the founding principles, the obvious truth that all men are created equal and that the role of government is to guarantee the rights which flow from this truth. Wills conservatism, in other words, is a liberal conservatism that invites openness and the whirlwind and fluidity of modern life people, ideas and capital flowing here and there.

The second step is to remind ourselves and others that liberalism is the greatest achievement in the modern world. As Deirdre McCloskey argues in his trilogy Bourgeois virtues and his recent Why liberalism works, since 1776, liberalism has produced more and more free people, wave after wave, including, slaves, lower-class voters, mavericks, women, Catholics, Jews, Irish, unionists, colonialists, African Americans, immigrants, socialists, pacifists, women again, gays, people with disabilities, and especially the poor, most of whom were coming down

Liberalism, says McCloskey, is the mother of great enrichment the 3000% increase in material abundance over the past 250 years. Much more than pragmatic materialism, the Great Enrichment is a story about the highest values of liberalism. The dignity and respect of the ordinary person the person who offered his products to other ordinary people at a reasonable price was the catalyst that harnessed the creativity, ingenuity and productive capacity of humanity .

Combined with other liberal principles such as the rule of law, private property rights and the broad enjoyment of civil liberties, the liberal sensitivity of equality and dignity has left considerably improved conditions, a lifespan longer and more space for economic, scientific and cultural experimentation in its wake.

But to recover the liberal ideal, we must also take its detractors seriously. Contemporary critics of the left and the right will point out that Liberalisms stated commitment to equality before the law tends to favor those who already have power. Material abundance, they say, creates new forms of oppression. Patrick Deneen, for example, argues that far from liberating women, the global market has subjected us to much more inclusive slavery, leaving a degraded culture in its path.

Social scientists and liberal commentators are undoubtedly forming their counter arguments in their heads. No, we admit, we havent reached the liberal ideal yet, but with every step forward the abolition of slavery, civil rights, womens rights and gay rights movements the liberal ideal guided our steps. And while the market presents challenges, it also creates viable exit options for those looking to escape the grip of traditional expectations.

But if we Liberals leave this mental conversation, we will not succeed in meeting Buchanans challenge. Critics of liberalism throw a vision a vision of a society that is stable, controlled, just and certain. What is our response?

Liberals whether we identify ourselves as center-left, classic liberals or conservatives must rediscover the spirit of liberalism. We can do this, in part, by practice: by valuing the discourse on the snark of the echo chamber, the search for the truth on tribalism, the scholarship on partisanship. Along the way, we also need to draw attention to the wonders of liberalism the human fulfillment that is made possible whenever liberal principles have taken root wherever they have taken hold.

Most importantly, we must recognize that the Liberal project is incomplete. Working towards the liberal ideal towards a world that embraces openness and individual freedom and rejects nativism and authoritarianism from strong men is the most important work we can do. To paraphrase another Nobel laureate, F.A. Hayek, we must once again make building a liberal society an intellectual adventure; an act of courage.

Emily Chamlee-Wright is President of the Institute for Humane Studies.

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Name and recover the liberal ideal - Orange County Register - Daily Gaming Worlld