“I really call myself a classical liberal more than a conservative.”
Protests like the above have become common as of late from certain quadrants of the self-proclaimed, free-thinking “Intellectual Dark Web,” a loose confederacy of free speech absolutists that includes figures like the atheist writer Sam Harris and Peter Thiel sidekick Eric Weinstein. The “classical liberal” label has until now mostly been the domain of libertarian types and conservatives on the never-Trump end of the spectrum,
such as Bill Kristol and much of the National Review staff, who are eager to root themselves in a tradition that connects the Founding Fathers to conservative philosophical icon Edmund Burke. Its recent surge in popularity, however, has come from twin phenomena—those conservatives’ intensifying desire to distance themselves from a Trump-ified Republican Party, and the term’s discovery by that new clique of anti-PC voices placing themselves in opposition to the supposedly illiberal campus left.
The label has a sort of musty intellectual authority to the lay person—“classical” is right in the name—and in the partisan chop of the Trump era it’s an appealing rope ladder, thrown down from the helicopter by a team of powdered-wigged Whigs who offer an escape from the never-ending battle between Trump and the #Resistance.
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The tradition of the use of the term “classical liberal” within conservative circles dates back to (and is largely because of) the movement’s youth. The movement conservatism that still flickers at the heart of the Trump-era Republican Party was born just within the last 70 years, roughly, whereas the tradition of liberalism as understood by most of the world outside America, and as embraced by these conservatives—unfettered free markets, the rule of law, civil liberties (with qualifications, frequently)—is defined by the work of 17th and 18th century heavyweights such as Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith.
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Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, a portentous year in more ways than the obvious. The Scot’s book, which formed the basis of the free-market capitalist system as we understand it today, also featured the most prominent use to its date of the newly coined modifier “liberal.” “Liberal” policies, in Smith’s conception and that of his contemporaneous predecessors, stemmed from the Enlightenment concept of “liberty”—"Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way,” as he wrote in “The Wealth of Nations.”
The idea caught on. The debate, however, over to whom that liberty is extended or denied, and under what circumstances, was no less robust at the idea’s inception than it is today.
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To the Intellectual Dark Web types who provide much of the energy behind the concept’s current resurgence, such civilizational arguments have been mere speed bumps on the way to a pure ideology of individualism and unlimited free speech—with emphasis on the latter. Internet talk show host Dave Rubin, who sells T-shirts emblazoned with the “classical liberal” label, has monologued in favor of “true tolerance of opinion and thought… a live and let live attitude.” He goes on to inveigh against the supposed illiberalism of the modern left, a unifying thread among those who have recently identified themselves as classical liberals from Jordan Peterson to Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who introduced the concept of the “Intellectual Dark Web” to a skeptical public. Their argument is that opposition to speech that in past decades would have faced less public opposition—advocating against the validity of transgender identities, for example, or that there are inherent intellectual differences between ethnic races—is tantamount to censorship.
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So, then: a classical liberal can, or should, be spendthrift, hawkish on the social safety net, and willing to defend to the death the right to voice an unpopular opinion, whether they agree with it or not. For those who lived through the so-called “libertarian moment,” where brash and uncompromising liberty-lovers like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Michigan Rep. Justin Amash were projected to lead the Republican Party into a new era of relevancy, this might all be starting to sound slightly familiar. Whither the libertarians, and what separates them from their intellectual twins in classical liberalism? Why flock to a new, more ambiguous label, and leave another on the table with its own readymade political infrastructure?
Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University, suggested that the “libertarian moment” may have exerted its toll on the movement’s brand. “[The term libertarian] has the baggage of being slightly dogmatic, whereas the ‘liberal’ expression does not,” Klein said in an interview. “I’m not for discarding the word libertarian, but classical liberalism is like a nuanced libertarianism.”
“Ron Paul had his big resurgence during the Bush era, then Rand kind of seized on it and shed all the nasty stuff, and embraced this more contemporary thing… trying to bring on more non-engaged types,” echoed Goldberg. “The libertarian fanboys of Ron Paul were sort of like the Bernie Bros.”
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...omeback-218667
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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
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