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Why are liberal societies still admirable despite their flaws, for providing refuge, limiting power, and enabling new opportunities?

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 20, 2024

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00:00:00 - There have been a lot of debates about liberalism in the public arena over the past five to seven years, and a lot of skepticism about liberalism has come up from various quarters, from left and right parts of the political spectrum. And in truth, I was originally drawn into political philosophy by my own doubts about parts of theories of liberalism. But, it seemed to me that in recent years, some of the objections to liberal societies have been stated in a particularly dramatic form. And real deep doubts are gathering about,

00:00:38 - Doubts seemed to go too far. So, you know, in the wake of 1989 when communism, seemed to have fallen, and it seemed that liberal democracy might be really the only gay in town there were, there was a kind of confidence, maybe an overconfidence and parts of liberal, societies, especially markets and the spread of markets. And at that point, it was helpful to have skepticism about liberalism in the public arena,

00:01:12 - But, but today we're in a different place. it seems to me that the doubts have been overstated, and that in public debate, we've actually lost track of what have historically been some of the, motivating virtues of liberalism. And, so in this piece, the liberalism of refuge, I try to put forward at least one interpretation of a kind of moral vision that liberals should stand up

00:01:41 - and that I think has been forgotten. I begin the piece, by saying that in recent discussion, it does seem as though, autopsy, and demonology have become the main sort of genres of writing about liberalism. Here's what I mean, autopsy, that's diagnosing, why liberalism failed, which was the name of an important book by political theorist, Patrick Danin, that came out at a number of years ago. And there've been more writings in that vein.

00:02:12 - that liberal societies have really already produced their own demise. And the only question is, is how to diagnose the, the causes of that. So that's autopsy. And then I mentioned demonology, too. There's another way of writing about liberalism, which has become more and more common, which is to see this entity, this ism liberalism as somehow the cause of all our political and even moral problems.

00:02:45 - defined in a very loose way or, or not at all. There's a tendency, in writing about politics to find isms these abstract entities and give them an enormous Power and agency and history. And that really is what, you know, much earlier, ways of thinking did with, with demons. Demons were abstract entities that you could not really see or define, but that were the source of,

00:03:15 - And liberalism, along with other isms, capitalism, racism, et cetera, are often seen to be these, enormously powerful forces. I'm not denying that there are phenomena, that are described by these words, but with liberalism in particular, the debate has become unhelpful, I think. And I notice in the piece that actually the word liberalism with the ism attached was first coined by, opponents

00:03:50 - especially in Spain, it seems, but, but quickly spreading elsewhere, who wanted to characterize liberal beliefs in individual autonomy and consent. And representative government as a kind of heresy soms were also heresies. and, critics, from the Catholic Church and elsewhere labeled, liberal societies as a, as a new kind of heresy.

00:04:21 - that goes on between these terms often instead of, isolating more substantive issues. and, and this notion of refuge, which maybe we can come to now, is, is one through line that I think helps to explain some of the features of liberal societies that otherwise seem puzzling or frustrating to us. The fundamental starting point, or liberals historically, has been the insight that most

00:04:54 - in societies who are ambitious power seeking. These are the individuals that the, Renaissance writer Machiavelli, refer to as princes or aspiring princes. We're all subject to them to their battles for glory and power and influence. Some of them go into politics, some of them go into business. And the question is, how can we reduce our vulnerability

00:05:23 - And the liberal insight is that, forms of government and society are best if they create refuge from the very people that they empower. So a few examples from the history of political thought. monarchies obviously empower royal families, kings, queens princess. but you can't have a liberal monarchy. Certain theorists argued if in your society with a monarch, you also had other nobles or parliaments

00:05:58 - that maybe couldn't challenge the monarch or complete sovereignty over the society, but they could offer a degree of, of protection and shelter from, efforts by the monarchs to impose their view. And so Montesquieu was one philosopher who made this distinction and, and distinguished, despotic regimes from monarchical regimes by suggesting that, a kind of liberal monarchy could exist so long

00:06:30 - of, of royal power. Similarly, a case has been made about democracies. So in democracies, the people, or really the individuals who have claimed to represent the people to speak for them are empowered. And of course, we want them to be empowered. That's the meaning of a democracy. So that popular will can be put into law, but, but still a democracy can be more or less liberal, depending on whether there are,

00:06:59 - instantiation of the popular will. So one group might win an election, one party might win an election, but what happens to all those people, often a large part of the society that voted against that party? To what extent should they be subject to the particular program of the winners? Well, to some extent, we wanna say that's why we have elections, but in liberal democracies, we often, we also think that there are, limits to the authority that,

00:07:31 - a duly elected government should have, that there are rights, for example, that should be protected against any government no matter how, how, much the majority supported it in the last election. And so a liberal democracy offers associations, divisions of power, checks and balances, a a vital civil society. All those features of liberal societies can be understood as, as efforts to offer a kind of refuge to people,

00:08:03 - So all that is just about internal refugees. That is, refuge is almost a sort of metaphor. The idea is that when you're in a liberal society, your whole life is not fully subject, to the reigning power seekers. Now, because offering refuge is a part of liberal societies, it often makes sense. I suggest to, for those societies to err on the side of offering refuge to, those fleeing

00:08:37 - Now, I don't make that the criteria whether a society is liberal. It's, it's more of a, a, a tendency, that is, if you see the moral core of liberal societies as this offer of refuge so that people can live, unmolested by political power as much as possible, then you'll likely be more sympathetic to the plight of refugees who are fleeing the reverse situation elsewhere.

00:09:09 - by the strength of some powerful, criticisms of liberalism, especially the idea that it, liberal societies prioritize individual choice in a way that can leave us, prone to, a kind of loneliness, feeling alone in a way that can dissolve traditional communities religions. there's a, a communitarian concern about liberal societies

00:09:39 - I think, however, however, this concern has been inflated in recent times to suggest that the mere presence of refuge, or to put it differently, the mere option to leave a particular community, a particular marriage even, or other human relationships, the mere option to leave, which liberal societies prioritize so that no one is trapped in oppressive situations.

00:10:13 - itself dissolves, community and tradition and leaves us atomized individuals powerless against governments and unhappy. And I think that overstates the argument. you know, in the history of political thought, the, the analogy to marriage has been important. So that liberal theorists sometimes were those who often made the case for allowing divorce.

00:10:44 - for the multiplication of different religions, different sects of religions, so that you could leave one church and, and, and try another. Now, the extreme version of that, that we surf superficially between different religions and as a result just become unserious without the benefits of attachment community in any particular religion. That does seem negative for many people, but it's just not the case historically

00:11:15 - that liberal societies always have produced that kind of superficial surfing, as though all of life were a shopping mall and we were, coasting through, and just choosing consumer goods. People do seem to produce new communities, new religious sects, new relationships, that can sustain them ethically. It was important to John Locke, kind of the pa pa, patron saint of, of liberals, of liberal philosophers.

00:11:50 - so easily got out of their usual forms. That's his way of saying that even when you open the door to making changes in society, or to leaving your current community for a better one, most people most of the time prefer to stay where they are. They are tied to their families, to their lives, to their work. It really takes, in the phrase that Locke used and that the Declaration of Independence in the United States uses a long train

00:12:21 - to leave behind their communities. And I think we, we underestimate the power of, of these human ties when we, worry that liberal society simply by allowing people to escape, oppress oppressive circumstances, open the door to a, a dangerous and unfulfilling superficiality. Liberal societies are associated with, spread of markets and with capitalism, and we all know that capitalism

00:12:55 - and a few hands to enormous inequalities. I don't think liberals should deny that. I think the notion of refuge that I'm putting forward offers us a criterion that we can use to judge when capitalism is working well and when it's not. And, and the key point here is to recognize that markets were historically introduced and remain, a political, technology.

00:13:26 - to make, human value value mobile that is to liberate value from land, which is where, and futile times most value was trapped, really, so that whoever controlled the land, controlled the value markets, make mobile, make mobile value, and therefore allow people to flee one, one place to another.

00:13:58 - of a society to be upset. In fact, this is what some, the complaint about markets seem to, threaten the stability of traditional communities. That's true. But they also, in the course of doing that, allow people, to flee who whoever's in charge in those particular communities. Now, if we keep that political function of markets in mind, we can see that sometimes markets offer a sort

00:14:28 - And other times, if they are instead producing new oppressively, enormous accumulations of power, then they're not really fulfilling that political function. And they should be, you know, polies should be broken up. Corporations should be split up. So this way of looking at markets, I think, is actually productive and reminds us of their political function and offers a criterion that we can use to judge when markets are working well politically

00:15:00 - to the problem that liberals are always, focused on, which is, the undue accumulation of power in a way that people can't escape from. I am the piece by talking about using a kind of old fashioned word nobility, to describe this perspective. And I do that on purpose because in many of the debates about liberalism, one can detect that one deep concern about liberal societies is that they seem to offer nothing really high to aim for

00:15:30 - us on our own self-interest, that they make us, materialistic and selfish. We are concerned just with our own comforts, and, and with stability. There's a bit of truth to that. But I do think that focusing on the offer of refuge, can, can be a counterweight, to those concerns. Many of the critics of liberalism focus on our, our seeking of refuge, that we are fearful creatures

00:16:04 - just wanting safety and comfort. But I think we should also focus on, on the o other side, the offer of refuge that liberal societies make. Offering refuge is something actually quite, magnanimous and it requires you to have a certain degree of stability. but it requires you almost to overflow, and capacity so that you have some of yourself and your resources to offer to others. And, and that's an almost aristocratic magnanimous point

00:16:37 - when they offer refuge. And I point out near the end of the piece, how how common that language of offering asylum or refuge was amongst those who founded the United States. I mean, there are towns and, and, Texas and elsewhere in the United States named, asylum, the notion of refuge was important to George Washington, who's favorite biblical verse. spoke of the hope that we would all be able to sit,

00:17:10 - and that the country would offer to groups that had not found that sort of safety, just that kind of hope. as he wrote in a famous note to the, the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, for example. I do hope that focusing on the offer of refuge can provide liberals with something high and noble and beautiful, really to rally around,

00:17:42 - a synonym for self-interest.

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