Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.
Liberalism.org is a new project of the Institute for Humane Studies. We hope you’ve noticed our name: Liberalism.
That’s a choice. We know.
No single word is ever perfect; it’s why books exist. But as a community, we see in liberalism a future that we want to inhabit. With Liberalism.org, we recommit to that future.
Political tendencies come and go, and other ways of envisioning politics can be just as ambitious as liberalism. They can be just as mobilizing. They, too, can revolutionize whole societies. But among them, liberalism stands out for its credible, durable results. When a country turns liberal, civil society flourishes, and things change for the better: Literacy and liberalism reinforce each other. So do liberalism and rising living standards. Liberalism furthers public health and nutrition. In liberalism, religions find peace with each other, and likewise nations. Women and minorities enjoy more choice in their lives. Liberals throw out evil institutions like serfdom and slavery. Science and technology make great advances, and liberal popular culture has always been better than the authoritarian copycats. If we could bottle and sell all that… well, we’d sooner give it away. Unlike a lot of other ideologies, liberalism prizes voluntary, positive-sum encounters—exchanges or gifts that leave all participants better off. We see such encounters and the people within them as the fundamental particles of a social order that’s dispersed, spontaneous, and free.
IHS President Emily Chamlee-Wright has written of the Four Corners of Liberalism—political, economic, epistemic, and cultural. All liberals agree that all four of the corners are important, despite the differences in the big liberal tent. We all know about the differences. You don’t have to remind us. We’re here, under the single word “liberalism,” because what unites us is crucial, and it’s worth insisting upon.
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We liberals embrace constitutional democracy, and we value the related liberties that make democracy credible and meaningful. We prize intellectual freedom, so we value academic, journalistic, and other professional independence from politicians and the political process. Liberals see value in open markets and the innovation and wealth they create, even if we might disagree among ourselves about how open is the optimal amount. All Liberals want to live in a world where markets work, where consumer choice is still meaningful, and where the state is not in the business of picking winners and losers.
As to the cultural stuff, the answer is simple: It’s your life. You’ve only got one, it belongs to you, and we aren’t here to get in the way. A liberal society makes good laws; good laws make good people, and good people make righteously weird and wonderful communities—all without hurting anyone. We’re all different, and we’re all in this together. American culture itself is an assembly of the many, many sub-communities that we build, and its life depends on our constant (re)construction. On matters of culture, liberalism once again doesn’t mean meeting illiberals halfway. It means articulating a vision of a diverse and thriving civil society that’s open to people of all races, every ethnicity, every gender identity, people of all religions, people of no religion, and more.
At Liberalism.org, we aim to find shared problems—and shared solutions that are ready to be implemented at all levels of government. We’ll encourage experts to study and advocate these solutions, perhaps in surprising new partnerships. We’ll uncover the areas of similarity and work constructively on our differences. We trust that the current, illiberal turn in the United States will be temporary, and that the future is undecided. We intend to plan for what comes next.
And let’s face it, this is a time of need. In recent years, load-bearing parts of America’s liberal foundations have been corroded or knocked away. The United States—once the envy of the world—has fallen considerably by international measures of political and economic freedom. Lately, we hear political scientists trying out unfamiliar words for the society we’ve been living in, terms like “hybrid regime,” “personalism,” and “competitive authoritarianism.” More and more, they opt for a word that’s entirely too familiar—fascism.
We think it behooves all liberals to listen.
We hope to revitalize the liberal tradition. We understand liberalism to be under threat today, not just in the United States, but globally. Its defense could not be more urgent. Liberalism underwrites many of the good things that all Americans, and all people of goodwill, take for granted. In response to the growth of illiberalism at home and abroad, we aim to illuminate, preserve, develop, and expand what liberalism brings to the world.
We begin this project at a high water mark for American illiberalism, and for illiberalism worldwide. The president has lately advanced a range of policies that aren’t just illiberal, but from a time before liberalism: Can the executive start a war of conquest? Can he do it at will? Can he levy taxes all by himself? Can he withhold or spend public money in ways Congress didn’t authorize? Does the president advance the national interest when he uses the state to get personally wealthy? What if he wants to take bribes, or give them, or protect other corrupt politicians? Is the president simply above the law?
When the American founders lay dying, they thought they’d given a firm and final no to every one of these questions. The executive must answer only to the will of the people, as expressed in the duly enacted laws of the land, and not to personal interests or flattery. The law of the land is written by the people’s representatives, not by cronies hoping to cash in on their connections. War and taxation are powers that belong with the people’s representatives, and never in the hands of one person alone. Bribery is illegal—or, I suppose, it should be illegal—because bribery turns representative democracy into a lie.
We don’t share everything with the founders, but we do share their conclusions on all of that. And when the executive differs, we agree that he acts like the worst of the pre-liberal kings. In place of a king, liberals have the law. When it comes to making honest money, the steady, relatively predictable action of an impersonal legal system is always the better deal for ordinary people. A market with fair rules for entry and doing business helps society in a general sense by bringing business opportunities and cheaper goods to the masses. There are, of course, lots of different ways to implement a system of written, impersonal, impartial law, and the policy choices that flow from it can be many. But a good legal system always needs the trust and good faith of those who are enforcing and living by it. It’s no good to have a written legal system that everyone knows to be bogus, and yet the system always roars to life whenever an abusive cop needs qualified immunity. That just makes people give up on the law.
On issues like free trade and free immigration, we will continue to take a liberal and principled view. We know that the free movement of goods and people isn’t the threat that some fear. We also look forward to sincere, big-picture discussions on the future of the republic. We invite all Americans to join us.
There’s a fundamental difference here, one that will guide us forward: We at Liberalism.org seek conversations with people who still care about and believe in the idea of public policy as an instrument of the public good. We think the public’s trust is worth winning, and that public concerns are worth taking seriously. We think earnestness pays.
Liberalism.org will draw on both empirical and theoretical work to start productive, public conversations about the future of liberalism, and of America. We’ll feature essays from a lineup of regular writers on culture, philosophy, public policy, and economics. There will be podcasts and videos, and we welcome your article pitches.
The difference between liberal democracy and the alternatives is crucial. We can’t say what the future holds, of course, but the path just ahead is clear enough, and the work is rarely so important. We intend to do what we can, and we invite you to join us.
