George Will asks in this new book, “The Conservative Sensibility,” the following question: What is it, exactly, that conservatives seek to conserve? His “concise but deceptively simple answer” is that American conservatives seek to conserve the American Founding and the liberalism that infused it. Liberalism is also the subject of a new Martin Wolf column in the Financial Times, which begins with this definition of the term: Liberalism is not a precise philosophy, it is an attitude. All liberals share a belief in individual human agency. They trust in the capacity of human beings to decide things for themselves. This belief has radical implications. It implies the right to make their own plans, to express their own opinions and to participate in public life. These attitudes were realized in the system we call “liberal democracy”. Liberals share a belief that agency depends on possession of economic and political rights. Institutions are needed to protect those rights — independent legal systems, above all. But agency also depends on markets to co-ordinate independent economic actors, free media to allow the spread of opinions, and political parties to organize politics. Behind these institutions are values and behaviors: the distinction between private gain and public purpose needed to curb corruption; a sense of citizenship; and belief in toleration. Another term is “democratic capitalism,” which I like since it acknowledges the interdependence and shared success of economic and political freedom. They sure seem to work well together, as this chart from Wolf’s column suggests: [graph omitted] Wolf adds that, “Liberalism is not a utopian project, it is a work in perpetual progress.” Indeed, utopianism is the enemy of liberalism. As Chelsea Follett of the Cato Institute’s Human Progress project wrote last year: “A realistic picture of the human condition should compare the imperfect present with a much more imperfect past rather than with an imagined utopia in the future, as well as acknowledge the truly incredible progress that humanity has already made. Unfortunately, instead of viewing the present as a vast improvement on the past, many people see the present as failing to live up to some sort of ideal world and deny the progress that has been achieved.” Maybe there is an alternative, but the ones that actually exist aren’t great: [graph omitted]
iberalism is not a precise philosophy, it is an attitude. All liberals share a belief in individual human agency. They trust in the capacity of human beings to decide things for themselves. realized in the system we call “liberal democracy”. Liberalism is not a utopian project, it is a work in perpetual progress A realistic picture of the human condition should compare the imperfect present with a much more imperfect past rather than with an imagined utopia in the future, as well as acknowledge the truly incredible progress that humanity has already made. Unfortunately, instead of viewing the present as a vast improvement on the past, many people see the present as failing to live up to some sort of ideal world and deny the progress that has been achieved. Maybe there is an alternative, but the ones that actually exist aren’t great