by liberal japonicus
I’d start off by noting that depending on the way you read the title, you can fit any perspective.
The jumping off point for this is Ezra Klein’s podcast with Helena Rosenblatt, the author of The Lost History of Liberalism. (transcript here)The book is quite interesting and is a general audience book drawn from her academic works, including Thinking with Rousseau : From Machiavelli to Schmitt (co-authored with Paul Schweigert), Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to The Social Contract and Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion. She helps redirect the discussion of liberalism from an Anglocentric view to one related more to Europe. This New York Review of Books piece by David Bell is nice if you don’t have time to read the original, in that he juxtaposes 3 books which echo the same theme. (And I’m finding this site to be helpful getting around paywalls)
So I’m all in, I’m a Europhile and get a bit sick of the Anglo-American centric nature of a lot of political discussion (on one podcast, someone observed how US conservatives go to Europe and marvel at the infrastructure and order and wonder why this sort of order doesn’t happen in the states, oblivious to the fact that the people actually pay for that shit in the form of taxes)
And I’ll try to not make this bash Ezra episode #infinity, but reading Rosenblatt, it’s pretty clear that she is a historian, but towards the end, Klein directly challenges the moral track record of liberalism and suggests that its core philosophy has been deeply intertwined with some of society’s historic and modern problems.
That’s a very glittering answer, but I think a critic of liberalism would say: What good is your liberalism if it can include slavery in its founding constitution? Or in the European case: What good is your liberalism if it is so interwoven with colonialism? There were many people who certainly believed in many liberal ideas we’re talking about here, who made space for both of those practices within their liberalism.
How typical of Klein to haul a historian on to his podcast and have her answer for the things she is trying to describe. ‘In your book about Genghis Khan, why didn’t you denounce him more strongly? Don’t you think he was evil incarnate?’ Christ on a crutch.
In another section, Klein opines:
Another crisis is that individualism has gone very far. And I think the internet and social media and algorithmic media and the fracturing of what we know — and our bonds from each other — and the weakening of civic institutions and religions and labor unions… There is a crisis of individualism that has become, partially, a crisis of meaning. … [Liberalism] also has left it with very little language in which to talk about something that is not just individualism.
Yes, liberalism, totally separate from our capitalist culture and consumerism, neoliberalism and commodification, is all to blame. If liberalism were all that people said it was, why does it let that shit happen?
Rosenblatt doesn’t seem to be prepared for this, but my answer would be that liberalism, like the scientific method, has built in to it a mechanism to question itself. Liberalism arose in a time of slavery and colonialism, patriarchalism and nationalism, yet it has provided. and continues to provide us with the tools to attack those problems. Like the scientific method, the people who are against it simply ape it (yes, I did my own research) to try and generate a conclusion that satisfies their own prejudices.
Steel man that, Klein.
There is a lot to say for the liberalism(s). There are many. There is nothing good to say for the conservatism(s).
Ezra gets taken to the woodshed regularly. Thanks for adding to the pile, lj.
I was confused by Klein insisting that Rawls was “fundamentally unreadable by the public.” Rawls never struck me as being particularly inaccessible or opaque.
I’m also struck by how he insists that Liberalism is elitist. I’m guessing that’s because he was a professor’s kid, and grew up surrounded by people with graduate degrees and an interest in public policy, but he had limited success in school and found his voice as an upstart blogger, and then parlayed that into being a beltway insider. I wonder if he’d have that same view of how elitist liberalism was if he had grown up in a less cosmopolitan place, and less cosmopolitan and educated circles.
I don’t know how much time he’s ever spent actually living in modest, non-cosmopolitan places, and I don’t know if he’s ever truly lived where all of his friends and associates were people of modest means, where the mark of a distinguished education was the completion of a bachelors degree at a state university.
He seems to spend a lot of time in the podcast slipping around in his use of “liberalism” and “liberality,” following along as Rosenblatt explains her research, doing a good job of tracking her arguments and echoing her language, but then taking her more formal and restrictive use of “liberalism” and using things she says to springboard into a much fuzzier, popular conception of the terms without noting (and perhaps not noticing) the shift in register.
I think that’s why his questions feel like gotcha questions. He’s taken a conversation out of its initial context and dropped it into another in an attempt to make it “more accessible.”
I don’t think that liberalism has to be elitist at all, or that a liberal education has to be viewed as individualistic or personal in the atomistic sense. We all have cross-cutting associations, relations, and affections, and we can understand how to share and to compromise and to collaborate.
His discussion of “tolerating intolerance” is another one of those places where I feel like he’s stuck on the idea of there being some flaw in liberalism, or in how liberals practice liberalism, when all that is really being argued is that (wherever possible) we set aside the sort of fundamentalist notions of right and wrong and practice some epistemic humility in matters of belief – mostly as a way to avoid violent conflict and war in our societies.
The real spirit of Enlightenment toleration lies in being willing to die for one’s beliefs while also being not to kill in order to triumph over those who do not hold or practice those same beliefs. It doesn’t work if that second clause is ignored.
I don’t think that’s being idealistic or utopian, more (as Kim Stanley Robinson puts it) anti-anti-utopian.
Bull .
Just for openers, conservatism is a check on fads with shaky to no basis in the real world. Even a little thought will easily get you a couple of cases where somebody (liberal or otherwise) identified a real problem. Came up with a solution that sounded good. And, when it was tried, found that a) it wasn’t implementable, or b) it was going to cost multiples of what was forecast, or c) in practice it either failed to solve the problem or even made it worse, or etc. It’s easy to say “Well, hindsight is 20/20 and in retrospect….” But often a little more hesitation would have shown up the problems.
Juso be clear, conservatives can come up with bad solutions too. The difference, as I see it, is that their slow and gradual inclinations reduce the chances of falling all the way off the cliff without having time to stop.
I realize it can be infuriating to have someone pour cold water on your brilliant plan to solve a very real problem. And sometimes those opposing you really are doing so for the worst reasons. But sometimes the concerns that motivate the folks objecting involve real shortcomings in your brilliant plan. Hard as that can be to swallow.
My guess is that bobbyp is talking about history while wj is talking about philosophy.
This discussion could easily veer into “Has communism or capitalism killed more people?” territory. (Remember those? What fun!)
Big topics with variable boundaries and focuses.
The only “real problems” conservatives identify are those that might trim their position in society or their power. It is a philosphy of arrogance.
Riddle me this. I’m a conservative. I think we have a real and serious problem in this country due to the extreme skew in the distribution of wealth. It needs to be fixed. So, how might calling for fixing that be arrogance? I suppose Those People (in this case, the extremely rich) might consider a solution to impact their power and position. But how is this problem, or its solution impacting mine?
One other point. You will find, if you trouble to talk to them, that a lot of middle class and working class people are pretty conservative. I would say that you are sort-of correct that they are concerned that changes might impact their power and position. Specifically that their economic position is fragile, and it wouldn’t take much of a change to hurt them badly. That’s why the focus on the price of gas or of groceries. I’m not seeing the arrogance involved there.
To hsh’s point, I believe that has been true historically as well. See Marx (or Trotsky) on the petit bourgeoisie. Or the griping, amoung liberals today, about the working class voting “against their inrerests.” If you realize that, in their view, any change is a threat to their economic survival until proven otherwise, it’s clear that being conservative is in their interest as they see them. They may be wrong But taking chances on changes, especially big changes, is a luxury they don’t feel they can afford.
I’m a conservative.
I think we have come to the conclusion long ago that you do not really fit that term anymore 😉
Allow me to note my amusement at how quickly a post on a problematic critique of liberalism has prompted argument over conservatism.
In German libertarian is usually translated as (wirtschafts-)liberal, the term ‘libertär’ exists but is not in common use. The FDP (Free Democratic Party) has always oscillated between both positions (known as sozialliberal and wirtschaftsliberal). Its seemingly permanent switch to the latter (‘Party of the Well-to-do’) played a major part in its decline and the Green Party has essentially taken over as the dominant socially liberal party*. One reason is the death of the old guard that maintained the liberal values and defended them against the libertarian wing that also began to show sympathies towards the nominal Austrian equivalent which drifted more and more to the Far Right. In Germany that role has been taken over by the AfD. The FDP is currently on life support an no improvement is in sight.
*Like many others I changed my allegiance from yellow-and-blue (FDP) to Green as a result.
Still going through a lot of this, but I was interested in nous being struck by the idea that Liberalism is elitist. I have noticed that this has become an increasingly common rhetorical trope of the right; they saw how damaging the accusation of elitism was to the public, and have arrived at a way to accuse liberals of it. e.g. Only liberals have no problem with immigration, because they are not directly affected by the consequences on public services etc, whereas “the working man” is.
Apart from that, but still on liberalism, Ian Leslie has a podcast of his interview with Cass Sunstein on “What the Beatles and Dylan tell us about Liberalism”. It’s 50 minutes long, with no transcript, but since the first 18 minutes are about Dylan’s relation to it, I got hooked in. I didn’t agree with everything Sunstein said, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
https://www.ian-leslie.com/
“Gallup data from 2024 shows ideological self-identification relatively stable overall: roughly 37% of Americans identify as conservative, 34% as moderate, and 25% as liberal. However, parties have become far more ideologically sorted: a record 77% of Republicans identify as conservative (including 24% “very conservative”), while a record 55% of Democrats identify as liberal (19% “very liberal”). Moderates have declined over decades, and affective polarization (dislike or viewing the other party as immoral or a threat) has reached record highs, with mutual hostility rising sharply since the 1990s and especially the 2010s.”
US Political Ideology Evolution
a record 77% of Republicans identify as conservative (including 24% “very conservative”), while a record 55% of Democrats identify as liberal
conservatism is easy for the man-on-the-street to define:
“I’m against unnecessary changes!”
ok, cool.
the trick is that “unnecessary” can be shaped to fit any situation. but it mostly means “things those liberals want”, because IRL you can’t have political philosophy without partisan politics and “conservative” leaders (aka Republicans) are happy to tell their followers which changes are necessary and which aren’t (today we love Russia! yay!)
there’s no “principle” in “team”
but there isn’t a similar succinct definition of liberalism. and that makes it hard for people to know if the label applies. ask me if i’m a liberal and i’m going to ask you what your definition of the term is – are you a Republican pollster trying to link me to a caricature of a policy, are you talking about “classical liberals”, are you talking about mainstream Dem policies, social liberals?
I pulled the quote below from here:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-lost-history-of-liberalism-from-ancient-rome-to-the-twenty-first-century-helena-rosenblatt/8e3cdd2b1a16d8ea?ean=9780691170701&next=t&next=t&affiliate=312
One thing I’m thinking about is the concept of checks and balances. Is that a liberal idea or is it a conservative idea? I can see it both ways.
It’s like the photo of the segmented paper plate illuminated from the side where your mind switches from seeing the bottom of the plate to seeing the top of the plate and back and forth however many times.
You eventually get to a point of being able to control which way you’re seeing it.
I think we have come to the conclusion long ago that you do not really fit that term anymore
Say rather that the term has been hijacked by reactionaries. But just because you slap a sign on a gerbil** saying “Lioness” doesn’t make it one.
EDT. Dare I phrase it that I identify as a conservative? 🤪
** The analogy is to their intellect, not the level of threat they pose.
To some extent, this depends on just how you define “elite.” Obviously, if you define it as ultra-rich, it’s nonsense to claim they are generally liberal, although individuals may be. But if you define it as sufficiently financially secure as to not be especially risk-averse, it’s a much better fit.
That’s what allows the far right to make such effective use of it: it’s got enough plausibility to resonate with the substantial portion of the population which does not have the luxury of taking a chance on change being an improvement. Given how complex economic interactions are, it’s challenging for even professional economists to predict what a particular change will have as second order effects. The general public is going to have to take a lot on faith.
Many of my more liberal friends are solidly middle-class hippy-ish artists. I wouldn’t even go so far as “sufficiently financially secure as to not be especially risk-averse.”
CharlesWT’s Poe-driven conglomeration of US voters does illustrate why it is that it’s so hard to have a meaningful political discussion about voters political beliefs – stick everyone on a right/left continuum, label either end (conservative/liberal), have the voters sort themselves to one side or the other. As I’ve said before, this makes no effort to define or anchor a political center, and it flattens out the philosophical differences between voters on either half, such that both Harris and Sanders can be called “very liberal” and GWB can be called liberal by those on the right half, while Klobuchar can be called a centrist by those on the left half.
And since these polls get recycled, the pollsters can talk about the percentage changes between groups, but don’t account for how or why people identify where they do on the conservative/liberal spectrum.
None of it gives us meaningful language for talking about how we should govern ourselves, or for locating the potential agreements and deep-rooted disagreements between factions.
All stuff that I have said before.
One place where I do agree with Graham Platner is where he draws a distinction between classes in the US by saying that the real divide is between those who live off of their wages/salaries, and those who live off of their wealth/investments, with the former being “working class” regardless of any other trappings of social status.
I’m pretty sure that Klein would call me part of the elite. I have a Ph.D.. I teach at an R1 University. I live in a very wealthy city. Most of my friends and associates are academics and professionals.
But I grew up poor in a rural area. I am adjunct faculty. I am a union member. I show up to march with the cooks and groundskeepers when their union is on strike because I know that my own ability to pay my rent is tied to their ability to negotiate better conditions for themselves, and because I know that the university would gladly exploit us both if they thought they could get away with it. Neither of us are getting ahead. We are both struggling not to be left behind.
I am a fortunate worker. I have (for now) a pension that I could draw on were I to retire. My wife and I have a larger savings than most Americans, and we could leave our very prosperous city and go somewhere else less prosperous and cosmopolitan and buy a house outright, and live comfortably. That’s a lot of privilege compared both to the unions I’ve marched with and to the majority of other adjunct faculty who have no benefits, no retirement, and not much pay to show for all their contributions to the common good. I have a fair amount of job autonomy. I’m an elite – by plebeian standards.
But none of those things are going to take away the contingency of my living circumstances. One medical emergency could still wipe away all of that privilege and put me on the street without a home.
I don’t know if I am a liberal or a progressive. It depends entirely on who you ask, and on the subject or distinction in question. But in practice that difference is irrelevant because whatever you call me, I’m going to be advocating for the same things – we need to take care of our world if we hope to take care of ourselves, and we need to help those in need first before we start to add to our own comfort and luxury.
If you can afford to be a “hippy-ish artist” you’re plenty financially secure. Otherwise, you’d be washing dishes or whatever else was necessary to stay alive, not takung the risk of spending you time and energy going art.**. The “solidly middle class” is the clue.
** I realize that I’m interpreting “hippy-ish artist” as someone who isn’t actually making lots of money by producing great art.
wj – That’s what allows the far right to make such effective use of it: it’s got enough plausibility to resonate with the substantial portion of the population which does not have the luxury of taking a chance on change being an improvement.
The thing is, when a problem like Climate Change comes along, nobody gets to choose “no change.” Change is going to come for us all because “no change” is exactly what is threatening our existence. The only truly conservative position is to choose the path of change that has the greatest margin of safety going forward for the greatest number of people, prioritizing those most at-risk over those who are least at-risk.
I have yet to see a single “conservative” political group do anything of the sort.
nous: your self-description makes it very clear how so much of the rightwing “liberal elite” description is pure, superficial and bad-faith argumentation. They saw it was damaging when applied to them, and decided to have a go at turning the tables. Because, of course, one couldn’t have liberal opinions based on anything like principle! Why, the very concept is absurd….
ah, “elite”.
conservatives’ favorite way of pretending intelligence, education and experience are something that one should avoid.
i still have a shirt with this on it.
If you can afford to be a “hippy-ish artist” you’re plenty financially secure.
says wj while scrambling to reassert his conservative bona fides.
My first major was music and I still know plenty of ‘hippy-ish artist’ types and I assure you, they are not ‘financially secure’. Maybe things have changed and I just went to school with a group that had no financial sense, but all of them are a medical blip away from bankruptcy (I think 99% of the population is a medical emergency away from bankruptcy, but for these folks, it isn’t something that you’d need to call the Mayo clinic, it might be something much more mundane, like a blown out knee or some other mundane thing) And they would probably take as much umbrage at being told they shouldn’t worry about their financials, cause they are ‘plenty financial secure’ (I tend to think that ‘plenty’ is what poker players call a tell…)
My hippy-ish artist friends might say “I can’t really afford to be a worker drone” when asked why they don’t dump their artistic shit and go all in on some other career, assuming they would still speak to me after I assure them they are ‘plenty financial secure’
I’m reminded of Phillip K. Dick’s observation about poverty
People are under the illusion that poverty teaches you things. They think it builds character. It does nothing of the sort. It only teaches you to be very careful about counting. You count pennies, you count slices of bread, you count how many days until the first of the month. It narrows the mind; it doesn’t broaden it.
That observation comes at a time when Dick was probably at his most productive, so were he still with use, he might also have some questions about this.
wj knows my friends better than I do. It’s kind of weird. Or maybe I’m just stupid and have no idea how anything works.
Yet another conservative bona fide: conservatives know people better than they know themselves.
Hey, there’s another target (other than liberals) for the ire of an influential portion of the right: women! I want to see the Venn diagram. Gift link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/06/conservative-masculinism-misogyny/686939/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCQm4fwz1z7Y-btjq1gZjNas&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
We have a close friend who isn’t a hippie, but is barely getting by as a freelance writer on a combination of family help (artists, but successful enough to get through a crisis) and living in a rent subsidized art co-op. He’s doing no better than an Lyft driver or a dishwasher, but his health would not support either of those hustles for long.
Honestly, 90% of the artists I know are either in a relationship with a more stably employed SO, or working their asses off to find work because they can average the same income as a dishwasher/gig worker so long as the commissions come through. It’s feast and famine rather than ramen and prayers, but it maintains their independence and is less hard on their faith in their fellow humans than retail/restaurant work.
Thinking again of liberalism, Rousseau had a similar attitude towards artists – no one should produce art unless everyone’s practical needs were met first. Me, I’m more in the William Morris camp – art enriches life and should be supported, and public art is a public good.
Too many conservatives believe there is no such a thing as a public good. I think they are stunted humans.
So it goes.
Yet another liberal bona fide: liberals know what people want and need better than they know themselves.
Compare and contrast.
Fixed that for you.
But yes, those who believe that are stunded human beings. Also, I would suggest, more than a little willfully ignorant (and/or massively stupid).
Certainly a True Scotsman would support the public good… 😉
GftNC, Why do you think they bothered to make up a word (“masculinism”) when “massive insecurity” was available?
There may be a few misogynists coming from somewhere else. But most of the ones I encounter or read about seem to be almost panicy in their insecurity.