Searching for a Robust Liberal Order – Samuel Gregg

Postliberal right often portrays outspoken support for things like liberal constitutionalism, market economies, religious toleration, and rule of law as disguising an underlying reluctance to embrace thick concepts of the good or even a preferential option for moral relativism.

On the left and sections of the right, the same liberal commitments are viewed as masking various forms of economic injustice.

Russell Greene stresses that liberalism’s acquisition of unfortunate associations that postliberals have capitalized upon.

Liberal idealists reluctant to admit that too many “mediating institutions are hopelessly compromised, lack political diversity, and have been weaponized by woke ideologues” The way to deal with such illiberalism is to have “elected governments intervene to enforce political neutrality and non-discrimination” Michael Kauffman : Some classical liberals have been too sanguine about the cultural rot that pervades so many private institutions.

But there are good reasons why we should be skeptical about looking to the state to overcome such problems.

Hayek: Classical liberals give impression of virtue as ephemeral at best, as inhibiting social experimentation, or as providing postliberals with an excuse to extend state intervention even further into society and the economy.

Other classical liberals, like Lord Acton and Alexis de Tocqueville , don't believe a people without virtue would remain free for long.

Without virtue, preserving free societies from the illiberalisms of left and right will, in the long-run, be near-impossible.