Liberalism has been so successful in promoting a wide range of different ideas that its own name has gotten pretty murky. Many people think it means supporting a welfare state, championing the voices of people usually pushed to the side, and generally showing sympathy for anyone or anything that can’t defend itself. Other people think it means being a stupid hippie crybaby. Still others lump liberalism together with belonging to a specific political party, and others argue it’s just another word for capitalism. But the classic meaning is that a liberal tries to establish a social order that gives people the freedom to live however they think best without getting in each other’s way. Fundamentally, it is the defense of pluralism, or the broad toleration of different visions of what’s good. It’s this sense of liberalism that I think we shouldn’t give up on just yet.
A recent blogpost by philosopher Liam Kofi Bright explains why he isn’t a liberal. (And a similarly forceful critique is offered by Christopher Horner here on 3QD.) Bright argues that humans just can’t maintain a sharp distinction between what’s private and what’s public: our own visions of the good life inevitably will pollute our politics (and so pluralism is unstable). Second, and relatedly, he argues the very idea is incoherent, and a governing institution necessarily shutters some visions of a human life as no longer open for business. He also argues that liberalism historically has been the vision advanced by white plutocrats, and it carries their worldview in its DNA, particularly under the banners of private property and rapacious capitalism.
Huenemanniac 