Seminar recap 12/15
The assault on liberalism: how threatening? why now?
At Monday’s seminar for subscribers, I asked the question “why now?”, by which I meant why should we be especially worried about the threats to liberalism now. The discussion went in a somewhat different direction than I expected. Instead of rounding up the usual suspects that might be causing discord, we talked a lot about China as an external cause and elite competition as an internal cause.
I started with the question of whether liberalism faced worse threats in the past. I suggested that the period 1914-1945 was a difficult period for liberalism. Call this the WW period.
If we have become less intelligent, that is a problem. But if we have gotten in the habit of lying, that is a worse problem. Scott Newman’s essay on ambitious students at Princeton University pretending to hold politically correct beliefs was referred to several times in our discussion.
In the WW period, the West may have been unwise, or naive, but we were not putting ourselves under systematic pressure to tell lies. The threat came from external enemies (Nazism, Communism), but the internal forces of illiberalism were not as powerful.
Both the WW period and the present were preceded by major changes in technology and the economy. Heavy industrialization changed the economic landscape, and radio changed the media landscape. The computer revolution has changed the economic landscape, and the Internet has changed the media landscape.
In the WW period, leaders lacked the courage to stop Hitler in 1935-1938. Today, we have leaders who lack the courage to address China’s treatment of the Uighurs. For that matter, we did not have the courage to stop China’s suppression of Hong Kong. At home, many leaders on the center-left seem to be afraid of progressive activists.
In Congress, so many now have safe seats that they are not held accountable through elections. This makes the institution less responsive than it was historically.
China could be affecting our current situation in several ways. First, it is a model that is evidence against the thesis that liberal institutions are necessary for economic growth. Second, it is making efforts to subvert our domestic political and cultural environment. Third, the “China shock” has contributed to the demoralization of a segment of middle America. It increased the divide in fortunes between college educated and middle America.
Perhaps middle America never had a deep appreciation for liberal values like free speech and free trade, but they had a sense that America was a country where they could thrive and earn respect. Many have lost that sense.
Meanwhile, younger members of the elite class are battling the Boomers, and part of that fight is over liberal values. The accusation is that those are values of, by, and for white males.
While this battle between the old-fashioned liberal elites and newer “Woke” elites takes place, neither the marginalized nor middle America feels like they have a dog in the race. Hispanic-Americans do not like the term “Latinx.” Middle America does not like Romney Republicanism.
Why was America less divided in the 1950s? Elites and ordinary people seemed to be less far apart. Did labor unions strengthen Middle America? Were business leaders less ruthless and less isolated?
I like to talk about the difference between George Romney and Mitt Romney. George, who rose to become head of a leading auto manufacturer, was not highly educated and could relate to factory workers and car dealers. Mitt went to Harvard for business and law.
In the 1950s, elites were not as uniformly college-educated and left-leaning as they are today. Most business leaders and many journalists had no college education. Although academia was to the left of the country, many professors were conservative, as were many religious leaders (and religious leaders mattered more in those days).
Today, the elites are all “symbol analysts,” to use Robert Reich’s term. They deal in intangibles, while those who work with tangible stuff are lower down the totem pole. This class divide is different from what prevailed in the WW period.
What Tyler Cowen calls “matching technology” has gotten better. It is easier for you to connect with people who share your values and interests, so it is easier to live in a bubble.
Also, fewer people come from families with more than one or two children. In a larger family, the differences across siblings can be large, and you have to learn to get along in spite of those differences.
In a subsequent post, I will elaborate on my ideas about the dynamics among those who remain devoted to liberal values, those who have adopted the radical social justice agenda, and middle America.
"it [China] is making efforts to subvert our domestic political and cultural environment."
In the U.S. I tend to think of China's influence as a symptom of weaker institutions - but not the cause.
Academic thought has evolved over the past 50 years - and leads to a view that existing common culture is deeply flawed and each individual is uniquely talented.
The political stagnancy of the past 20-30 years is also a contributing factor to this institutional weakness. There have been plenty of poor policy choices over the past 20-30 years in the U.S. but you wouldn't know it based on the ease at which incumbents win re-election. Tactically its as if our politicians in the U.S. have learned that by focusing on cultural wedge issues and exploiting tribalism versus running on positive, definite, platforms they can remain in office indefinitely. The worst outcomes for them would be to actually solve a problem and lose an issue to run against.
Yuval Levin's formative/performative binary, when applied to media - especially with the maturation of technology platforms over the past 15 years - helps explain some of the erosion of even a pretense of journalistic integrity in many of the major media outlets.
I don't have the answer to "why now" but I lean towards a view that it is, at minimum, a culmination of what happens when colleges teach people to be less confident about their culture but more confident in their own abilities, an unaccountable political class and the loss of legitimate gatekeepers.
This is really interesting, but I suggest some more thought needs to be put into "In the WW period, the West may have been unwise, or naive, but we were not putting ourselves under systematic pressure to tell lies. The threat came from external enemies (Nazism, Communism), but the internal forces of illiberalism were not as powerful."
Nazism and Communism were both very much products of the liberal West, and shouldn't be considered as "external". In fact, that they began as more or less "internal" reaction and developed into their own competing ideology seems like the a key determinant of liberalism.
Is there a liberal road to stamping out a dangerous competing ideology, or is that anathema?