Lost Liberals

In a column some weeks ago, Bret Stephens argued that “America needs a Liberal Party that represents what we used to be and what we desperately need to become again.” Currently, he writes, the most “basic division in politics isn’t between liberals and conservatives, as the terms used to be understood. It’s between liberals and illiberals.”

By “liberalism,” he’s referring to “the tenets and spirit of liberal democracy,” which, he says, “used to be the more-or-less common ground of American politics, inhabited by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes as much as by Barack Obama and the two Clintons.” These include things like respect for the outcome of elections, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the principle, legally and otherwise, of innocent until proven guilty.

Other aspects are a sensibly regulated free market system, complemented by a social support safety net; deference to personal autonomy but skepticism of identity politics; a commitment to equality of opportunity, not equity in outcomes; faith in the benefits of immigration, free trade, new technology, new ideas, experiments in living; and fidelity to the ideals of the free world in the face of dictators and demagogues.

“The debates,” Stephens elaborates, “that used to divide the parties — the proper scope of government, the mechanics of trade — amounted to parochial quarrels within a shared liberal faith. That faith steadied America in the face of domestic and global challenges from the far right and far left alike.”