A classically liberal society needs a degree of social cohesion. When the polity seems chaotic, citizens will become more likely to be seduced by illiberal ideas that promise quick fixes to bring order. Classical political theorists, for instance, noted that when license brought radical disorder, tyranny was likely to follow. History abounds with examples of that dictum’s truth, the French Revolution’s midwifing of Napoleon being the most famous example from modernity.
Even in a less disordered democratic world, citizens will become more prone to persuasion by demagogues. They also will be wary of new experiments in freedom for fear of more chaos. That is one reason that classical liberalism distinguishes its philosophy of governance from more extreme forms of libertarianism that hold liberty compatible with anarchy or a weak state. Classical liberals want instead a constrained state, but one capable of providing good to the public, like the enforcement of law that prevents turmoil, because liberty can flourish only under order.
The ideal of ordered liberty in turn shows why sensible friends of liberty make cause with those conservatives whose priority may be order rather than liberty but also see order not as an end itself but as a means of promoting human flourishing. Fusionism is the most recent effort to seal that essential alliance.
Our Disordered Nation
2023 was a bad year for social cohesion and the forces of fusionism, and hence, for classical liberalism. We can begin with the chaos at the border. Illegal crossings this year are on course to reach an all-time high, surpassing the last two years which set previous benchmarks. The impunity with which foreigners come to live in our nation illegally disturbs the body politic, because maintenance of borders is one of the most visible duties of a sovereign state.
More concretely, this year many cities became full of people who are not integrated in the community, often have limited skills for an advanced economy, and lack the extended and overlapping network of family and friends that help stabilize the polity. One of the hallmarks of political disorder is to change settled opinion. In 2023, citizens in cities that have prided themselves as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants turned against these policies. Disorder in one’s backyard is vastly different from that viewed from afar.
But it is not only illegal immigration that is besetting our great left-liberal metropolises. Indeed, each has become unhappy in its own way. For instance, Chicago—where I live—is one of the places with elevated levels of immigration yet with a progressive government so incompetent that it has yet figured out a way to house them through the winter. San Fransico’s disorder is caused by policies that have allowed homeless people, many of whom are mentally ill, to squat in some prime downtown locations. Portland is dealing with the disorder that came from legalizing hard drugs. And in many cities, crime is diffusing over even formerly safe places in the cities. Even if murders are flat or a little lower than the elevated levels after the George Floyd riots, carjackings and other forms of robbery are up in many places, giving rise to a pervasive feeling of insecurity.
Most of the recent problems are a direct result of left-liberal policies. Progressivism, with its tendency to downplay the enforcement of laws (be they against crime or immigration), is a force for chaos. Now one might imagine that democracy will force a correction, as citizens who formerly voted for progressive politicians wise up and demand new strategies. But the working of democracy faces obstacles because of disorder in our political parties. Policy changes become more difficult when political parties are in thrall to their most extreme elements.
For instance, even though closing our open border would improve the President’s chance of reelection, and the need to advance his foreign policy objective gives him cover to compromise with Republicans, he has not yet been able to persuade the progressive wing of his party to make a deal. And even if there is a deal, it is unclear whether his administration will enforce its new laws, since it has not enforced the old ones.
The chaos in the Republican Party has even worse effects because that party has historically been more dependable in pursuing classical liberal goals. House Republicans brought about the first defenestration of a Speaker from their own party in American history. That act increased the public’s sense that government is dysfunctional. Moreover, it retarded one of the House Republicans’ main goals, passing individual appropriation bills under the regular order of legislative procedures—passage by each house, followed by conference committees, and finalized by joint passage. The alternative is to pass a continuing resolution, in which it is more difficult to change priorities from the status quo. The perverse effect of the Freedom Caucus—the most conservative faction in the Republican party—has been to push policy to the left. By refusing to compromise and therefore making it impossible for the House to act, they often empower the Democratic Senate to wield greater power over policy by being the first mover.
Our Disordered Universities
If our nation is having trouble with tangible chaos, our universities are facing intellectual chaos because of the application of their ideological orthodoxies. A key function of a university in a classical liberal society is to promote epistemic openness and to foster serious discussion on the most difficult and complex issues of the day. But many of our universities have been failing in this duty in multiple ways. They have Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity bureaucracies that create an official orthodoxy in which some groups are more favored than others. In the humanities and social sciences, their departments often create a narrow band of conversation on topics of interest to the left-liberalism of identity politics that effectively discriminate against conservatives. And they do this while congratulating themselves on the even-handed welcoming of all views.
The recent hearing of three university presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT revealed the hypocrisy of university leaders who could not say that their institutions would punish calls for genocide against Jews, when they do sanction more anodyne statements when they offend the politically correct. As one Congressman summed up, “In what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech but a belief that sex is biological, and binary isn’t.”
The disorder in our nation is also abetting the disorder abroad in ways large and small.
As with the chaos caused by progressive policy, one might hope that the revelations of hypocrisy may create pressure for reform—in the universities’ case toward more principled standards. But again, it is very unclear that this result will follow. Indeed, apparently the president of Penn was fired for resisting a move by trustees to adopt a less speech-friendly code of conduct for the campus. The president of Harvard, who got her job by calling for more DEI on campus, continues in power. More generally, the controversy may lead only to more speech restrictions—where speech offensive to Jews is simply added to the identity-inspired list of things that cannot be said.
This result will not advance classical liberalism because it will do nothing to make campuses like Penn more epistemically open. It will merely show that university administrators need to take into account a wider group of constituencies in making their political calculations on what speech should be sanctioned.
The more hopeful movement for an epistemically open university comes from the state universities that face pressure from state legislatures and are thus curbing the power of DEI on campus and setting up new centers and colleges that are structured so they will not discriminate against conservatives and classical liberals. Nevertheless, the most important universities are elite private ones. They transmit their lack of consistent principles to the most important actors outside their walls. And thus, their moral disorder becomes society’s.
Our Disordered World
A world at peace is conducive to classical liberalism. War grows the state and turns citizens to harsh measures to protect security. But the paradox for a classical liberal society is that to prevent war, it must support measures for national strength that will deter war. The United States, as the world’s hegemon, remains the most important force for global deterrence, when it has the right leadership.
In 2023, the world became even less safe. While there were high hopes that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would push the invading Russian troops back, these efforts fizzled. The brutal attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians reflected a failure by the United States and Israel to deter Hamas’ patron Iran. And communist China continued to make increasingly belligerent noises about taking over democratic Taiwan, another reflection of the perceived weakness of the United States. Because of the debacle involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and eagerness to negotiate with Iran, the Biden administration has hardly reflected the strength necessary for deterrence.
The disorder in our nation is also abetting the disorder abroad in ways large and small. When the United States faced the threat of Soviet communism, it bound the West together through fundamental free trade agreements, principally the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Now President Biden has balked even at agreements that would smooth trade in digital data by banning discrimination based on nationality, which would help American companies. That draft agreement was scuttled by the extreme economic left of his party.
Worse still is the inability of Congress and the administration yet to provide support for Ukraine through a grand bargain trading funds for Ukraine for greater security for the border. Here the extremes of both parties are responsible. But if Russia is perceived as having won the war, America’s capacity for the global deterrence of disorder will almost disappear, encouraging other nations to create conflicts around the world.
Thus, in 2024, the greatest need for classical liberalism is for the return of peace and security both here and abroad. Liberty can flourish only when the order under law is restored.
