Thoughts: on liberalism

It’s become increasingly clear that in a lot of countries, the right has pretty much abandoned any ambition of still believing in “fairness” or “equality under the law” – perfectly willing to openly enrich themselves and their friends using government powers or declare entire groups of people as lower-class. There is a popular quote by musician Frank Wilhoit that goes:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Which, in my opinion, seems to describe the behavior of a lot of groups this day. Some might call them “fascist” or “reactionary”, but I find these terms to be very charged and tough to define, so I prefer to call them “illiberal”. (It helps that a lot of politicians do not see being labeled “illiberal” as an insult the same way they see being called “fascist”.)

Recently, I stumbled upon the full comment that the quote derives from:

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

And, at least on a greater historical level, I think this works very well.

Most of humanity’s recorded history was spent between knocking down the idea of “the king can do no wrong” piece by piece and various kings/dictators trying to build some justifications behind it. At first, it used to be “the king was appointed by god” or even “the king is a descendant of god”, then it was “the king is the only one uniquely skilled to handle the task” (helped by the fact that, being born into an environment of wealth and power, any future monarchs would have gotten an education way beyond what a peasant or citizen would get).

The modern-day version of conservatism no longer believes in nobility as a superior class of people, but still expresses the idea that “the right ruler”, armed with the correct ideas and not restrained by any opposition, is the way to bring the nation stability and prosperity.

Most attempts at building something totally new have not achieved their goal, often because they compromised on the anti-conservative idea in some way.

The United States has struggled (and is struggling) to reach its lofty ideals of “shining city on a hill” for many reasons, but at least one of them is because the founders were too unwilling to also get rid of the contradiction of having a nation where it’s “self-evident” that “all men are created equal”, yet where slavery were to also exist. Looking at the U.S. Constitution and its related laws very clearly shows a history of idealistic promises broken by compromises, then being either fixed or broken further by other pieces of legislation. I occasionally think about how the U.S. historically had very open immigration laws, and the current mess it’s in today has only practically started with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Likewise, the Soviet Union fell into authoritarianism largely because its creators likewise didn’t consider (or outright dismissed the idea) that by establishing the Bolsheviks as a special “vanguard party”, they just created the foundations for a new exclusionary ruling class. Same can be said for other nominally-socialist governments – especially given that in the vast majority of cases where one transitions away from such “socialism”, the end result tends to resemble a right-wing oligarchy instead of any kind of progressive government.

And, of course, any fascist/nationalist/illiberal parties pretty much start off from the idea that “certain” people are inherently less worth, or more threatening, than others, and thus should be bound, yet not protected.

Much like Tolkien’s “the One Ring” or any other evil artifact from fiction, the conservative proposition rears its ugly head every once in a while, enticing aspiring leaders on both left and right with the idea that perhaps they will be able to build the perfect society if they identify the right problems/enemies and build the right coalition – and it always ends up being a lie, as without democratic oversight, factions from within the ruling group keep battling for power and making things worse for everyone, including the “preferred” people.

Personally, I hope that, one day, we will be able to finally kill “the conservative proposition” as an idea, to make it as unspeakable and as disgusting in the eyes of the general public as the idea of bringing back slavery is right now – to have a society where every politican or government official is perfectly aware that they serve their constituents (including opposing voters and non-voters), that any power they get is counterbalanced by their responsibilities and they are morally obligated to wield that power only in the public interest.

This is what I generally mean when I call myself a “liberal”. Which specific economic model the society runs on, how it distributes the overall wealth and resources, which services it offers to the general public – these are all things that can be derived later, based on the specifics of that society.

It’s also important to not forget that any kind of political rights and freedoms are only functional if they can be meaningfully exercised by everyone. If election day is not a holiday, that functionally restricts who can vote. If campaign financing is largely dependent on wealthy donors, that restricts who can meaningfully run for government, et cetera.

The way I see it, the general idea boils down to three ideas:

• All human beings are to be treated as if they have a set of inherent rights and freedoms, which can only be limited or revoked in specifically predefined circumstances, typically to prevent a person incapable of making a conscious decision from harming themself (e.g. age limits on smoking, driving, gambling, sex) or to prevent harm to others (e.g. all the safety regulations, bans on public smoking due to second-hand smoke or drunk driving, most laws against theft, assault, murder and other violent crimes),
• No individual or group can be treated as “more worthy” or “less worthy” by the government based on their inherent characteristics (race, gender, religion, etc.),
• Everything else should be decided through a democratic process, in which every capable individual should be represented and has a right to participate.

No single country, even very liberal ones, fulfill these completely. I wouldn’t expect them to be completely achievable, not least because these make no distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and I can imagine a system that allows any resident (including non-citizens) to vote on all levels would be very easy to abuse, especially in places where elections have really small margins.

There is also the distinction between blindly treating things as equal by law and attempts to actually enforce equality between groups that, historically or currently, have been suffering from discrimination (such as “affirmative action” in the U.S.) – I see it as just another dimension of welfare, aimed at granting a specific group the ability to meaningfully exercise a right that they are practically restricted from.

Having said that, these gaps between the ideals and reality are also where illiberal and anti-democratic ideas tend to come out of, and as long as they aren’t fixable, they should be heavily restricted, and any attempt to expand them to be treated as extremely suspicious.

Despite still being based on a liberal conception of individual rights, I believe that this set of beliefs also encompasses a lot of left-wing ideas. For instance, a law that forces any sufficiently large business to be run in a democratic manner (functionally making it a worker co-op) would not be incompatible with them, as:

1. a lot of countries with federated structures already have laws requiring not just the top-level govenment be democratic, but also all lower-level governments,
2. one’s place of work does, in fact, happen to impose a significant set of restrictions on the worker’s personal freedoms, such as restricting where they can meaningfully live or what they can say, even outside of their working hours, especially in “right-to-work” places.

Likewise, while I do not believe in a total ban on gambling or “prediction markets”, I do believe that at a point where journalists are being harassed over statements that go against people’s bets or sports leagues have to deal with streakers interrupting games because people bet on whether a streaker will interrupt a game, some kind of law that requests publicly-held bets on future events to require the explicit consent of individuals participating in the event seems absolutely necessary.