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Red vs. Blue is such a crude distinction. It always has been. It pulls people into partisan team sports, locks them in affiliation binaries, and pits them against one another in memetic warfare (sometimes street violence.)
It is destroying our souls.
More troublingly, though, left-right politics obscures a more fundamental dynamic: the rise of illiberal culture.
Authoritarianism is ascendant on the left and the right—but no longer just at the extremes. Americans are losing their liberalism (not the partisan platform Limbaugh once croaked about, but rather the doctrine of the American Founders.)
The rules, norms, and moral frameworks of the liberal order allow each of us to pursue our particular life plans while socially cohering in peace. That was the idea, anyway: E pluribus unum. But illiberal culture is paving the way to illiberal politics as authoritarians are in an arms race to dissolve what’s left of the liberal order.
Today, therefore, the critical distinction is not left or right, really. And the sooner we wake up to that, the less likely we’ll be set upon each other, tagged, and herded by authorities.
Those aggressively pushing illiberal doctrines seek to destroy our ideals because they are the basis of a peaceful, pluralistic order.
Just what ideals?
Ten Liberal Ideals
So, what is true liberalism? And why do we need to preserve it?
I offer the following as simple heuristics, mainly because most people adopt heuristics more readily than theories. I refer to “degree” so as not to be accused of being doctrinaire. In other words, we strive for these, even if we fall short.
One can consider oneself liberal by degrees using the following ten dimensions:
1. Nonviolence
Limit state violence or mass compulsion to serve a particular conception of the good.
Such is the essence of liberalism. Whether we appeal to ahimsa in the East or the Harm Principle in the West, we improve upon the ideal of nonviolence through conscious, continuous practice—even in politics.
Applying such to politics limits the ambitions of those who seek to impose their notions of the good through mass compulsion. You can think of this prime value as comprising more familiar freedoms, such as religion, expression, and self-defense. Or more simply, don’t harm people in their peaceful pursuits.
2. Toleration
Tolerate other forms of nonviolent expression or ways of living—as long as they do not injure anyone. (Injury is not hurt feelings, by the way.)
Toleration is a basic virtue in a diverse society. It doesn’t mean we must be forced to associate with one another; it simply means we must respect one another’s life plans because we will most certainly all have different life plans. An ethic of toleration first acknowledges the fact of pluralism—we’re all different and sometimes emphasize different values—then builds on it with the reciprocal practice of live and let live.
Those who abandon that reciprocity are enemies of liberalism. This is the fundamental asymmetry between liberalism and other doctrines.
3. Rule of Law
Support equality before the law or equal application of the law.
We want a society of rules as opposed to a society of rulers. If we’re to live together peacefully within some jurisdiction, the rules must apply equally to everyone. Historically, the extent to which the U.S. government has abandoned equal treatment is the extent to which it has been illiberal. Such always needs to be rectified—certainly in the past, but also today. Just as you can’t fight fire with fire, you cannot fight illiberalism with more illiberalism.
Justice is not a cosmic scoreboard to be equalized by powerful bureaucrats allocating favors, privileges, or intergenerational redress to groups. Liberal justice requires equality before laws that privilege no person or group–whether agents of the state or their supplicants.
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