I am fascinated by hinge moments in history. I like to cast my imagination into the minds of key players at a point when they know the stakes are high, but the outcome is radically uncertain. In hinge moments, courageous defenders of a cause have no idea how it will all turn out, or how their efforts will be remembered by later generations.
It is our habit to think of America’s declaration of its independence from Britain as the beginning of a journey destined to succeed. It was nothing of the sort. Loyalists were not enemies, at least not at first. They were friends and neighbors—people whose doubts must have given patriots pause about the righteousness of their cause. The founders argued bitterly, not only about means, but about whether the cause itself could survive. Long stretches passed when alliances were fragile, military victory seemed remote, and the future of a self-governing republic was an open question, not a promised end.
So it was with Lincoln. He governed through years when the Union appeared more likely to fracture permanently than to be preserved. Though morally clear about slavery’s injustice, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation knowing it might worsen the very rupture he was sworn to prevent. And so too with the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. famously expressed his confidence that the arc of the moral universe would eventually bend toward justice. But he knew that it wouldn’t bend itself. And as white backlash became increasingly fierce, he worried that white moderates would passively stand by as racial hatred defined the course of America’s future, rather than liberty, equality, and justice.
Hinge moments are those when the stakes are high, the future is radically undetermined, and capable but flawed human beings have to act decisively—even when the better world we’re aiming to achieve doesn’t give up its instructions easily.
We are living through such a moment now.
We certainly know the stakes are high. The constitutional principles required by a free, liberal, and democratic society are under direct assault from people who took an oath to protect and defend them. Executive power is exercised as though constraint were optional. Congress, rather than jealously guarding its Article I responsibilities, too often proves complicit in the very overreach it is meant to check. In the name of urgency, the administration has bent or bypassed core due process protections that are essential to the legitimate use of authority. Federal law enforcement agencies have frequently manufactured the “urgency” themselves. We’ve become accustomed to daily violations of the democratic norms that once quietly governed political behavior. When adherence to the rule of law is treated as an obstacle rather than an obligation, when brutality is normalized, the future of a self-governing republic is no longer a settled inheritance. It is once again an open question.
But in the midst of these ascendant threats also lies an opportunity: the building of a robustly liberal future. And it can be all the more resilient for its recent trials.
Through all the present chaos, we’re relearning some important lessons. We’re learning that we can’t take constitutional guarantees, such as our First Amendment freedoms of the press, of speech, expression, and assembly, for granted. Those paying close attention are learning that failure to defend such freedoms plays into the hands of political opportunists eager to turn the tables. We are gaining a deeper appreciation for federalism, for the free flow of trade, and for an independent judiciary and Federal Reserve.
I say this with eyes wide open. While we’re learning, it’s not at all clear that the right lessons will be sticky enough to secure a liberal future. No matter who prevails in upcoming political contests, players at either extreme of the ideological divide will relish the expanded executive authority they’ve inherited. And after years of discord and disruption, an exhausted public may find counterintuitive the liberal principles that invite innovation, economic dynamism, and cultural change.
In other words, the opportunity to build a liberal future is real, but that future will not build itself. Liberal principles must be defended, yes—but also applied. That means strengthening constitutional guardrails against concentrated power. It means applying liberal policy insights to remove the barriers that make ordinary life harder than it needs to be. It means renewing liberal values of decency and integrity in public life, habits of mind that have us welcoming new insights and discoveries, and the moral intuitions that lead to open and open-hearted civic spaces, in which a robust liberal pluralism can thrive.
Such work requires spaces where a broad liberal coalition can find one another and collaborate in the shared conviction that every person is the dignified equal of every other. This is not sentiment. A universal recognition of human dignity is the moral core of the liberal project. Constitutional governance, market dynamism, intellectual openness, and a vibrant cultural and civic life all rest upon it.
This coalition will surface tensions. It will argue. It will test its own assumptions. That contestation is a feature, not a bug. After all, it’s contestation—in our intellectual pursuits, and in our political, commercial, and civic lives—that allows a liberal society to experiment, learn, and adapt.
As the president of the Institute for Humane Studies, I am proud that IHS is home to Liberalism.org. In launching this magazine, we’re making a wager that a serious, principled liberal coalition can bend the hinge away from strongmen, away from unconstrained power, and toward liberty, equality, and justice.
Whether as a reader, contributor, or supporter, you are part of the community that wins that future. And for that, I could not be more grateful.
