The Basic Case for Liberalism

As I write this, we’re just days away from the 2024 presidential election, when the decision on the ballot is very much one of continuing liberalism versus ending it. So I wanted to take a moment to set out what I see as the fundamental case for liberalism being right and good, and anti-liberalism being wrong and harmful.

Start with two simple facts, one about ourselves and one about the world. First, we are diverse. You and I likely have a lot in common, but we have a lot of differences as well. We might be neighbors, but we have different upbringings, different tastes, different hobbies, different careers. Our families are different, as are our faiths and friendships. What makes me happy overlaps with what makes you happy, but is not identical. Further, what makes me happy today, or where I want my life to be today, isn’t identical to what will make me happy a year or ten years from now. Humans are diverse both in relation to each other and, over time, in relation to ourselves.

Second, a world with humans in it will be diverse and changing. Our cultures evolve, as do our economies, our technologies, our ways of living. And within that evolution, we do not find uniformity. It’s not just that the world will be different a hundred years from now from the way it is today, but that everywhere we look, in any given moment in time, we see vast difference.

Because those are facts about the world and ourselves, the way we govern must accept and embrace them. The do otherwise, to deny them or seek to undo them, is to deny or seek to undo reality itself. So good and proper government must enable and support diversity and change. Furthermore, good and proper government, with flourishing as its goal, should be structured to take advantage of diversity and change in ways that improve people’s lives. This means liberalism. Social, because people who can live according to their (evolving) preferences are happier and more fulfilled. Political, because respect for, and defense of, liberty is necessary for people to have the freedom to be diverse and changing. Economic, because markets are how diversity and change not only meet people’s needs, but lead to ever increasing wealth, and so carve out more freedom to lead fulfilling lives.

To oppose liberalism is instead to reject diversity and change. It is to insist that this is the way things must be, and must stay that way, and to use government not to protect diversity and change (and to unleash their productive powers), but to clamp down on them, with coercive force. To oppose liberalism is to take up arms against those basic facts of the world, and thus inevitably leads to misery. Suffering exists in liberalism, because the world is not perfect. But suffering is the fundamental feature of illiberalism, both as a personal perspective and a governing approach.

Thus the basic case for liberalism is simply that diversity and change are inevitable, good, and productive. A system that embraces them promotes happiness and flourishing, while one that denies them does the opposite.