Freedom and Its Foes, Cont.

Advocates of liberal democracy should be bold. (They have a lot to be bold about.)

A scene at the University of Arizona in Tucson, complete with orange trees, February 2023 (Photo by the author)

If someone asked you to write a short blogpost about freedom, what would you say? I was handed that very assignment. For the past 30 years, I have written countless words about freedom, in articles and books. Can these words be distilled into a little post? Not really, but my effort is here.

I have linked to a page within a new website, Re:freedom, which is a project of the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona. I am a journalist-in-residence at the center, and so is Johanna Maska, who has also contributed a post (found at the same link as mine).

What a happy affiliation, mine and Johanna’s with the Freedom Center. I think she and I will be doing a regular podcast too.

Readers here at Onward and Upward know what kind of society I favor: the one envisioned by the American founders. An Enlightenment society, a liberal democracy, featuring the rule of law, limited government, individual rights, pluralism, and so on.

Ordered liberty, is what we’re talking about. A climate, or environment, or atmosphere, of ordered liberty.

This kind of society—an open society—has always had its enemies. (You recall the title of Karl Popper’s famous book: “The Open Society and Its Enemies.”) For most of my life, I was familiar with enemies on the left: Marxists and their like. In recent years, I have become more familiar than ever with enemies on the right.

I began to meet young people who were “post-liberals.” They thought the American founding had been a big mistake—a wrong turn in history. Indeed, the Enlightenment itself had been a wrong turn!

Some of these guys, and gals, favored “integralism.” I had never heard the term (until the late 2010s). This is, fundamentally, dictatorship by church (although its advocates would probably not put it this way to you, at least at first).

I heard buzz-phrases: “radical individualism,” “atomization,” an “epidemic of loneliness.” People like me were accused of being responsible for these afflictions, and of being against “the common good.”

You have perhaps heard this general song.

What is “the common good,” by the way? Some of us think that freedom is a common good, in addition to a plain old good. A free society is a common good.

People who live in such a society are very lucky. People who live in an unfree society are very unlucky (unless they are at the very top, lording it over everyone else).

Who decides what “the common good” is? Chances are, not you. It will be someone else doing the deciding, or a committee (a commissariat?). No doubt, there are good, earnest people who speak of “the common good.” Still, I would advise: beware.

“Common good” can mean: “Do as I say.” “Do as I command.” “Obey.”

“Don’t live your life as you see fit. Live your life as I see fit.”

This has been the cry, or claim, of authoritarians from time immemorial: “Do as I say, because it is for the common good.”

In a podcast with me in 2022, Harvey C. Mansfield, the government prof at Harvard, said, “Illiberalism lives on both the left and the right, at the extremes. There will always be people who object to individual rights and who want to put the ‘common’ first. The extreme of this is communism.”

Mansfield pronounced this last word “common-ism,” to illustrate his point.

In communism, or common-ism, “individual rights are totally submerged in the ‘common good,’” Mansfield continued.

Hardly anything is more benign-sounding than “common good.” And it is perfectly right to be mindful of the welfare of one’s neighbor. But, again: beware, look sharp.

Now to “radical individualism,” “atomization,” loneliness …

In an atmosphere of ordered liberty—in a Tocquevillean democracy, if you will—there are endless opportunities to form and to join voluntary associations. To build communities. Little platoons, or big platoons, as far as the eye can see. A sprawling, diverse, rich civil society.

In an atmosphere of ordered liberty, you don’t have to be alone for one second, if you don’t want to be. You never have to bowl alone. You can belong to 20 leagues, if you can find the time.

But here’s the rub: You must let other people alone. You must let them live their own lives, even as you live yours. And this, many (most?) people are unwilling to do. People are more authoritarian than is comfortable to believe.

In the free society I favor, you can live as socially, as collectively, as you want. Join a commune, if you like. It’s none of my business (as long as you’re not hurting anyone else). But the thing is: you can’t force other people into your commune.

Deal? The discomforting truth is, a lot of people have trouble agreeing. Oh, they may think they agree, or want to agree. But the drive to make other people conform is very strong.

For years in the Senate, Marco Rubio was a Reagan conservative—a shining example of one. Then he became something else (and he is now of course President Trump’s secretary of state).

In 2018, as Rubio was consummating his transformation, he gave a speech denouncing “the radical you’re-on-your-own individualism promoted by our government and by our society in the last 30 years.”

I commented,

Um … has our government, and our society, promoted such an individualism over the last 30 years? Not the government or society I have watched.

But it was the words “you’re on your own” that really grabbed me. That’s what Barack Obama used to say. When he was deriding, and caricaturing, conservative philosophy, he’d say, “You’re on your own!” That was what we conservatives were telling people, according to the Obama caricature.

I blasted him for this many times. And now to hear the same words out of the mouth of Marco Rubio? There could not be a clearer sign of the times.

Yes.

A little more from that article of mine:

Actually, Google tells me that Democrats have been using the “You’re on your own” slander for ages (and I have been blasting them for those ages). In 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton did it to President George W. Bush. What he was calling an “ownership society,” she said, was really an “on-your-own society.” (I blasted her here.)

Just a bit more:

I never heard a better answer to “You’re on your own” than one given by W. himself, after he left office. This was in 2013, when he was inaugurating his presidential center in Dallas. All the living ex-presidents were there, and their wives (so this included Mrs. Clinton). President and Michelle Obama were there too.

And in front of one and all, Bush said, “Independence from the state does not mean isolation from each other. A free society thrives when neighbors help neighbors, and the strong protect the weak, and public policies promote private compassion.”

One good Bush deserves another. I like what his father said in 1988, when accepting the Republican presidential nomination. He was describing what he called his “philosophy,” or outlook:

At the bright center is the individual. And radiating out from him or her is the family, the essential unit of closeness and of love. …

From the individual to the family to the community, and then on out to the town, to the church and the school, and, still echoing out, to the county, the state, and the nation—each doing only what it does well and no more. And I believe that power must always be kept close to the individual …

There is a great deal more to say about this subject. When is there not? But, before signing off today, I’ll say this: Advocates of liberal democracy need more confidence, more energy—more oomph. Even a bit of swagger. They should not cringe or shrink or cower. Our opponents are very loud, very bold. Maybe we should be half as loud or bold?

“The era of liberal democracy is over,” Viktor Orbán proclaimed in 2018. In recent weeks, Secretary of State Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and others in that camp have rushed over to Hungary to campaign for Orbán—to get him a sixth term.

If the era of liberal democracy is over, then we must usher in a new era of liberal democracy, renewed. We have nothing to apologize for. We have an excellent way of life to promote. Liberal democracy has given the world the freest, fairest, most humane societies it has ever known.

It is a record to be proud of—and to extend.