Scott Sumner offers an argument that Liberalism can be a vaccine against authoritarianism. I am inclined to believe that dedicated liberals cannot be authoritarian because authoritarianism is illegal. It is not so much that liberalism is a vaccine, but it is definitely true that someone who endorses wholesaler illiberalism loses the liberal label in the process.
However, that is a bicker. Sumner’s exploration of what makes liberalism robust against the attraction of authoritarianism is worth it.
Sumner uses Nazis and Maoists, barely defined to illustrate. Sumner not only talks about German Nazis of the early 20th century and Maoists from the mid -20th century in China, but those movements as we are thinking about them now, knowing the worst of what they did. In that sense, not everyone who voted for the NSDAP in 1932 or 1933 was a Nazi in the way he means it.
Sumner argues that a strong dedication to someone’s principles and the cause of freedom would have excluded the support for one of these extreme parties.
However, “freedom” as a standard is not enough. Almost everyone many non-liberal-zal claim a dedication to freedom and believe that some limitations follow from that concept. Liberal freedom does not include the freedom to steal what you want, and we think that’s fine because we are liberals. We see this defense of individuals against each other as valid.
Collective versions of freedom are concerned with defending the favorite group against possible disruption by individuals. This view of freedom is also concerned with protection against external intervention and criticism – the ability of the collective to suppress the individual must be protected. Anne Applebaum point to That this is what the modern China means by ‘sovereignty’ and what Russia argues for when the international ‘multipolarity’ requires.
Liberals are also not immune to endorse what is not yet, but will prove to be authoritarianism. Liberals have never endorsed Nazism or Maoism as we think of them now, defined by the worst things they have led. But some liberals apologized for Hitler and Mao in their time, and I suspect that many liberals voted on the NSDAP. At least, some liberals trusted or hoped that Hitler would not do the worst things he had ever argued, hoping that he would put an end to communism. Good people make mistakes, even really terrible mistakes.
There is a debate in liberalism that freedoms matter. Here the limitation of Sumner’s examples of authoritarianism can cover up more than it helps. Liberals do not entertain support for slavery and can write from the project that everyone does. It is less clear for classical liberals, whether we can automatically write from liberalism those who oppose or neglect the expansion of political rights, for example to women of gilding age or black Americans in the era of civil rights. It is less clear for welfare liberals that we can write from the Liberalism New Deal Democrats whose respect for economic freedom was so low.
To the extent that some liberals have been willing to ignore or put some rights for individuals because of the groups they inhabit, those liberals have found it easier to see a common cause with non-liberals that are nevertheless worried For example, about ownership rights on political rights (among traditional liberals) or political rights to ownership rights (among the liberals of well -being).
This should not be seen as a call for more purity in classifying liberals. It is not that every liberal that did not demanded trans -rights in the 1990s would have gone with Hitler. It only acknowledges that liberals are not immune when it comes to a turn in the direction of authoritarianism.
Liberalism is not only freedom. The rhetoric of freedom and institutions that protect the freedom of only some people cannot inoculate us. Liberalism strives for inclusive freedom and institutions that protect everyone. Liberalism universalismNot only the emphasis on freedom is necessary when looking for an effective predictor of a person’s ability to withstand authoritarianism.