A Liberalism Undaunted by First Principles

If there’s one overarching story being told about the political trends of the past decade—about Brexit and Donald Trump, about an ascendant populism in Europe and South Asia, about the growing authoritarian threat of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—it’s this: Liberalism is in decline. The governing philosophy that for much of the 20th century advanced democratic elections, international cooperation, and a robust declaration of inalienable rights is now being undermined or rejected in much of the world. Illiberalism is ascending, and liberals have been caught flat-footed.

Addressing that reality head-on was the chief motivation behind the recent Liberalism for the 21st Century conference held in Washington earlier this month. Organized by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA) as a sort of foil to the National Conservatism Conference, the gathering brought together nearly 300 journalists, academics, and wonks to both discuss attacks on liberalism in the U.S. and abroad and chart a path forward.

Many of the conversations during the two-day conference focused on ways to tackle specific policy challenges—safeguarding elections, strengthening international institutions, addressing climate change—but what struck me most about the gathering was how many in attendance seemed just as eager to explore the theoretical challenges to liberalism and respond to matters of first principles. In doing so, it was impossible not to notice a disconnect between liberalism as painted by its fervent critics and liberalism as envisioned by some of its most committed advocates. 

“Admittedly, the NatCon movement has some very smart philosophers and theorists asking probing questions about liberalism that we need to grapple with,” Shikha Dalmia, a libertarian journalist and the president of ISMA, said during opening remarks. Probing might be an understatement.

The most vocal opponents of liberalism—a theory of governing with roots in the 17th century that emphasizes personal liberty, political accountability, the protection of civil rights, and toleration of various ways of life—have in recent years relentlessly portrayed it not as a steward of liberty but as an enabler of disorder and licentiousness. Liberalism “constantly undermines and disrupts pre-existing practices among the populace,” legal scholar Adrian Vermeule wrote in 2019. It then delivers “the illusion of autonomy in the form of consumerist and sexual license,” concluded the political theorist Patrick Deneen in his book published the same year, Why Liberalism Failed.

Much of the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference seemed intent on reclaiming the definition. For many in attendance, the Vermeules and Deneens of the world both mischaracterize liberalism and misunderstand contemporary culture as a result. “Liberalism is not a utopian ideology that promises to solve every human problem,” observed Dalmia, who was also the conference’s main organizer. Columbia University professor Mark Lilla took things further in a later panel, describing Deneen’s sweeping critique of liberalism as emblematic of the “melodramatic historical dramaturgy” of post-liberalism writ large—a tendency to create a grand narrative of recent history with liberalism as the central villain.

But although these retorts were by no means outliers, it was somewhat surprising that a conference for liberals by liberals did not devolve into perpetual agreement. Everyone in the room was a self-described liberal—in the philosophical sense; attendees and panelists were on both the political right and left—and yet the conference revealed a surprising amount of internal disagreement that’s all too often papered over.

Take an issue like immigration. Ask post-liberal nationalists about the topic and you’re likely to hear concerns about community cohesion and suppressed wages (and, admittedly, more than a few racist dog whistles). To them, the fact that liberals generally defend immigration reflects a division between “somewheres” and “anywheres,” between cosmopolitan elites and those brave enough to assert that “a nation without borders is not a nation.”

Most American liberals today are certainly proponents of immigration. The left-leaning Substack writer Matthew Yglesias, for example, wrote an entire book making a case for increased immigration. Dalmia too previously covered immigration for Reason magazine, often arguing for a similar approach. To them, a more generous immigration policy stems from their belief in the free movement of people and the fruits of diverse societies.

But for others, liberalism is wholly consistent with raising concerns about the secondary effects of immigration—and even with arguing for a more restrictive immigration policy. That was the point William Galston, a fellow at the center-left Brookings Institution and opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal, made during one of the conference’s panels. “We are no longer able to offer a principled defense that we believe in of national borders and the need to secure them,” he said.

I later asked Galston about his answer, wondering how he’d reply to fellow liberals who find immigration restrictions antithetical to liberalism. Although he’s been critical of the more severe immigration proposals of the nationalist right, he didn’t mince words: “The proposition that, if you start talking about limits to immigration, you’ve immediately deserted the liberal camp is profoundly destructive to liberalism as a political creed that needs to gain political support.” 

Beyond that practical, political point, Galston also stressed a theoretical one: The Declaration of Independence itself mentions both “universalist” protections of inalienable human rights and a “particularist” concern over the political bands that a specific people would form with one another. That’s a tension nationalists elide in favor of the latter point, but liberals often downplay the tension too. For much of the 19th century, Galston went on, the idea of “liberal nationalism” would not have been a contradiction in terms.

“You have to do a lot of simplifying, and a lot of forgetting,” he told me, “to get to the conclusion that if you start talking about a nation as a bounded community, bounded geographically, bounded demographically, that you’re suddenly talking in an illiberal language.”

There was a similar dynamic at play over another one of liberalism’s key tensions. For its critics on the right, liberalism unduly prizes procedural neutrality and personal autonomy. In doing so, it mistakes human values or longings, and it is ultimately unable to defend moral right and wrong from progressive excess. The result is that liberalism offers, in the words of the traditionalist Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari, the “false promise of freedom without limits” and a public square “against the authority of tradition” rather than one ordered “to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

Yet when asked about his understanding of liberalism, none other than Francis Fukuyama offered a response that eschewed illiberal expectations. The political theorist—who in his landmark 1992 book The End of History posited that Western liberal democracy would be “the final form of human government”—did not extol neutrality but rather made a moral pronouncement: Liberalism is about dignity. “Liberals believe that all human beings, universally, have dignity; that they are owed a certain minimal degree of respect; and that there are no subgroups of human beings that have a higher status than other groups,” he said in the conference’s closing panel. “That’s a foundational belief.”

But what happens, I later asked him, when a bedrock liberal principle appears to clash with the dignity of a person? Landmark Supreme Court cases have protected the right of Nazis to march in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and of Westboro Baptist Church followers to protest the funeral of a deceased soldier. Aren’t these examples of neutrality run amok, keeping us from making moral pronouncements we should feel comfortable making? (Will liberalism really fall apart if we tell the Nazis that they can’t march there?)

To my surprise, Fukuyama thought these concerns had merit. Though he didn’t explicitly say that the court wrongly decided either of the aforementioned cases, he did grant that the “absolutism” of American law and practice is an outlier compared to other liberal democracies, and even that liberalism errs when it becomes unduly preoccupied with “abstract rules.” But if not abstract rules, then, what should guide a liberal’s moral reasoning? “Actual moral thinking is very much embedded in cultures and traditions,” Fukuyama said. “Those cultures cannot dictate what morality is. But realistically, you have to take those into account when you’re assessing things morally.”

Like Galston, Fukuyama’s response eluded a simplistic post-liberal characterization. And as with immigration, plenty of liberals at the conference would flatly reject the possibility that moral preoccupations—about dignity, for example—could trump a procedural guarantee like those protected by the First Amendment. New York Times columnist and former senior editor at The Dispatch David French, for example, has been a steadfast advocate of viewpoint neutrality on campus, social media, and American jurisprudence. “Handle bad speech with better speech,” he wrote in 2019. “Counter bad speakers in the marketplace of ideas, not through the heavy hand of government censorship.”

The Liberalism for the 21st Century conference did not try to resolve these admittedly notable disagreements. On the contrary, it highlighted that even those who embrace the liberal label and worry about the rise of illiberalism have different approaches and points of emphasis. Multiculturalist liberals and feminist liberals do not always agree or reach a clear solution. Neither do libertarian liberals or more egalitarian liberals.

But by the same token, the varieties of liberalism on display at the conference suggest the philosophy is far more varied than post-liberal critics have granted. While the latter present liberalism as an ideology that’s devoid of local or national attachments or unconcerned with advancing a vision of “the good,” the liberals in attendance had clearly thought seriously about these questions.

Yet even if it’s mistaken to portray liberalism as monolithic or as myopically obsessed with autonomy or neutrality, a key question remains: If liberals disagree among themselves about these and other consequential matters, what ultimately unites them?

For Dalmia, part of the answer is a shared concern over “majoritarian grievances” being stoked by antiliberals worldwide. To her, liberalism is founded in a “commitment to personal liberty, toleration, pluralism, political equality, and the rule of law that holds everyone, even the most powerful person on earth, accountable.” Liberals might disagree on some consequential matters, but they agree that the pursuit of a good society cannot excuse tossing what she referred to as “the fundamental architecture of liberalism”—i.e., constitutional checks and balances, minority protections, etc.—to the wayside. 

And moreover, Dalmia stressed another quality that she believed set those attending the conference apart: a willingness to call out their own side. Rather than fueling ever more polarization by focusing solely on the flaws of political opponents, Dalmia told me that she sought to bring together “reformists within their own political camp.”

With those goals in mind, the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference envisioned what a liberal realignment might look like—at least for some of the most engaged participants in these debates. It modeled how liberals across the ideological spectrum might table old left/right divides to focus on the more pressing threat of illiberalism worldwide.

The conference also subverted post-liberal clichés in this other way: Though certainly global in scope, it showed a clear commitment to America. “It’s very important for liberals to recapture that sense of nation,” Fukuyama said as the conference drew to a close. The conference intentionally focused most on the threats coming from the authoritarian right, but it also drew a contrast with the pessimism about America coming from left-leaning critics of liberalism. Harvard University’s Keidrick Roy, for example, argued that black leaders throughout American history had often been “grounded in the liberal principles of the U.S. founding documents” to advance racial progress.

And while he recognized America’s often embarrassing past on questions of race, Galston nevertheless asserted a liberal confidence that American institutions and ideals at our disposal could help us fend off challenges moving forward. Even when our actions and practices undermine those ideals, for Galston, “the practice can be redeemed by the principle.”