More musings on classical liberalism
And Take Back Our School conversations with Betsy DeVos and three activist mothers
In my last Substack post, I spent some time discussing what properly constitutes classical liberal values. This generated a number of offline conversations, and several people recommended I read Francis Fukuyama’s new book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, which covers similar ground. So I did. Fukuyama, a renowned political philosopher, is most famous (infamous?) for his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, where he argued that, with the end of the Cold War, humanity had reached an “end-point of mankind's ideological evolution”, with, “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Fukuyama’s new book is meant to be partly a defense of classical liberal principles, but more importantly, a critique of how both the left and the right has, in recent years, abandoned these principles, resulting in, “a fracturing of our civil society and increasing peril to our democracy.”
Disappointingly, Liberalism and Its Discontents is not the work of a first-rate intellect. However, it is instructive in illustrating some very common misconceptions about classical liberalism and about America’s founding principles, misconceptions that seem to permeate the center-left to center-right ivory tower.
I want to start by quoting from the book jacket, which I think encapsulates four fundamental mistakes.
“Classical liberalism is in a state of crises. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, liberalism is a system for governing diverse societies that is grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law. It emphasizes the rights of individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness free from encroachment by government.”
“…the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals have made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives have focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision.”
Fukuyama’s first mistake is to state that liberalism is a “system of governing.” It is not. It is a “philosophy” of governing. I realize this may sound like mere semantics, but the distinction is important, and it is one that I tried to make in my last Substack article. Too many pundits and commentators believe, like Fukuyama appears to, that democracy itself is the fundamental goal of liberalism, and the mission most worth fighting for. America’s founders correctly understood that democracy is simply the means to preserve the liberal principles of individual freedom. When a government no longer fosters and supports those liberal principles, a nation’s citizens have a fundamental right to criticize its government and demand change. This is indeed the situation we currently find ourselves.
Fukuyama is correct that democracy is in peril, and correct that both the left and right share fault. Both sides have supported the enormous growth of the unaccountable and undemocratic administrative state. Both sides have promoted the power of the federal government at the expense of state and local jurisdictions. Both sides have engaged in gerrymandering and taken advantage of the obscene amount of non-transparent money that has transformed political campaigns. And both sides have supported and subsidized monopolistic tech companies that have decimated local journalism, and destroyed our ability to engage in civil debate.
While the blame for the danger to democracy is shared, the danger to liberalism is much more from the left, and this is Fukuyama’s second mistake. As I have written many times, the woke progressive wing, which has captured the Democratic party and nearly every important institution of our country, is decidedly and openly illiberal. It attacks the central theme of the Enlightenment - objectivity - the belief that there is truth, and that truth is discoverable through reason, logic and the scientific method. It attacks the core foundation of liberalism, which is individual rights and individual freedom in favor of collectivist and group rights. It attacks free speech and free association, family and religion. It attacks meritocracy and the basic utilitarian idea that when government does act, the good of the many must outweigh the good of the few.
Fukuyama’s third mistake, shared by many, is that liberalism is “grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law.” This should read that liberalism is grounded in the fundamental principle of equality under the law, not “equality and the rule of law.” Neither equality nor fairness, except under the law, are core values of liberalism. Any thinking person, thinking in the 18th century or ours, understands that human beings enter the world with advantages or disadvantages over others. Liberal philosophy makes no promise to even out those advantages or disadvantages. It stipulates only that laws should be applied equally and fairly, leaving each individual free to pursue their own interests, to succeed or to fail. And by this doctrine, we have far greater prosperity than in a world where government instead tries to engineer equality.
On the matter of fairness, Fukuyama shows his hand, displaying his discomfort with true classical liberalism. He writes:
“Moreover, a strong defense of any existing set of property rights is justified only if the original distribution of property was itself just.”
Time for a land acknowledgment! Fukuyama has fallen into the woke trap. America’s founding principles cannot be defended because indigenous peoples were, “killed, enslaved, driven off their lands, and swindled, or else died from European diseases,” all at the hands of European settlers.
Since there is probably not an acre of inhabited land on Earth that hasn’t seen countless waves of population replacement, including during the 12,000 years of indigenous (whatever that means) population of the New World, Fukuyama’s objection to defending liberalism is nonsensical.
The fourth and final mistake I wish to discuss is the one most widely held, and the idea most in need of dispelling. Fukuyama criticizes “neoliberals [who] have made a cult of economic freedom.” He writes,
“Neoliberalism is often used today as a pejorative synonym for capitalism, but it should more properly be used in a narrower sense to describe a school of economic thought, often associated with the University of Chicago or the Austrian School, and economists like Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, who sharply denigrated the role of the state in the economy, and emphasized free markets as spurs to growth and efficient allocators of resources.”
In a nutshell, Fukuyama draws the following conclusion. Excess classical liberalism (that is, the idea that government should be limited) led to extreme income inequality and the financial crises of 2008-2009, which in turn led to the election of illiberal populists like Donald Trump.
Fukuyama’s mistake, a mistake shared by almost everyone, is failing to differentiate between the Austrian School of economics, which is the only group that adheres to true classical liberal principles, and nearly all mainstream economists, who did indeed adopt the monetarist views from the University of Chicago. Okay, let me briefly explain.
For over four decades, the Federal Reserve has pursued a policy of easy money (low interest rates) and serial Wall Street bailouts. These policies date back at least to the 1987 stock market crash, and obviously accelerated during the 2008-9 financial crises and again during Covid. These policies were supported by nearly all economists (as stated above, except the Austrians) and by politicians on both the right and the left (a point Fukuyama makes).
Having a central authority set interest rates for the economy and repeatedly bailing out a financial system that has taken on too much risk, is the furthest thing from free market, classical liberal principles, an understanding appreciated only by the heterodox Austrians. And it was these easy money policies that are the primary cause of the extreme income inequality we have experienced (and many other problems), something I have written extensively about (here and here) and will write about again soon.
The key point is this. It wasn’t too much free market or too much capitalism that led to all sorts of problems in our country but too little, because of the anti-free market (read: socialist) policies of our central bank. I do believe that if more people understood this, we would actually have a shot at uniting much of the right and the left politically.
Abortion and liberalism
Before moving on, I want to wade into the thorny debate on abortion, however, not to opine on the legitimacy of abortion or the constitutional merits (or lack thereof) of Roe v. Wade. I simply want to dispel the notion that abortion is a question of liberalism, and that repealing Roe v. Wade is an attack on liberalism, something we seem to be hearing loudly in recent days from many pro-choice supporters. This is wrong.
Hardline abortion positions are irreconcilable. If you believe that life begins at conception, and that abortion is murder, then the liberal position is to be anti-abortion and to defend the unborn. If, on the other hand, you believe that life begins at birth, then the liberal position is clearly “my body, my choice” (though where were you on vaccine mandates???). In other words, abortion is not a question of liberalism, but a question of to whom to apply liberalism: the fetus or the mother.
The majority of Americans, along with most developed countries of the world, seem to take a compromise position. Most people can get comfortable (or at least not too uncomfortable) with the idea that life begins when a fetus can be reasonably viable outside the womb, say at 12-20 weeks, and thus abortion should be legal before that threshold, illegal after. This is, of course, the magic of democracy, which is compromise. And it is why abortion should always have been left to the democratic and legislative process, not to the courts.
I also want to share with you the last three episodes of the podcast I co-host with Beth Feeley, Take Back Our Schools. We talked education freedom and Title IX regulations with Betsy DeVos, training more women activists with Kim Borchers and how one private school retaliated against two moms for speaking up. I hope you’ll have a listen and let us know what you think. Take Back Our Schools is available on all major podcast outlets, including Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher.
Talking Education Freedom with Betsy DeVos
On this very special episode of Take Back our Schools, Beth and I spoke with former U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. We discuss Betsy’s lifelong advocacy for education freedom and school choice, and she shares stories of some of the innovative schools she has seen as well as her experiences being the primary target for the powerful teachers unions. We also discuss her effort reforming of the Title IX rules, and the Biden administration’s proposed rollback, announced just last week, of some of these regulations around sex and gender discrimination in schools and universities.
Betsy DeVos is the author of Hostages No More – The Fight For Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child, published this week. Betsy served as the 11th U.S. Secretary of Education from 2017 – 2021 and for more than three decades, she’s led the fight for policies that allow students and their parents the freedom to choose the best educational option for them. Betsy is the former chair of the American Federation of Children, the Philanthropy Roundtable, and the Michigan Republican Party. She is also a mother of four children and a grandmother of ten.
To comment on the Biden Administration’s proposed changes to Title IX click here.
Training Women To Take Back Their Kids’ Schools
On this episode of Take Back Our Schools, Beth and I interviewed parent advocate Kim Borchers. Kim is the President and owner of Bird Dog Recruitment and Consulting LLC, was formerly with the Foundation for Government Accountability, and has spent 20+ years in the grassroots movement. Along the way she also served in politics, serving as a Deputy Chief of Staff for a Midwest governor, is the current RNC National Committeewoman for Kansas and currently advises and directs the Policy Circle’s Civic Leadership Engagement Roadmap (CLER) program. Kim is also part of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Kim speaks about her first experiences as a parent activist when she was a young mom fighting pornography in her local public library. We talk about Kim’s passion for preparing women to effectively engage in their own local communities, and how the landscape of the parent activist has changed. Kim also shares her advice for how to get other women to join the fight for their children’s educations and speaks about the work the Policy Circle is doing training women to be community activists and school board candidates.
Expelled For Speaking Up
In this episode of Take Back Our Schools, we talked to two courageous mothers, Andrea Gross and Amy Gonzalez. They tell the story of how their children were expelled from their prestigious private school, Columbus Academy (Columbus, OH) because of their advocacy efforts.
The two moms founded and organized a group of hundreds of parents, students, alumni, and teachers, called The Pro CA Coalition, to foster positive dialogue with the school and help the school return to a core focus on academic excellence. The school retaliated by expelling their children and even involving the FBI. Needing a new school for their children, Amy and Andrea decided to launch a new classical education school, Columbus Classical Academy, affiliated with Hillsdale College, and scheduled to open in August 2023.
I hope you enjoy these episodes of Take Back Our Schools. As always, please share any ideas or suggestions, including for podcast guests. You can contact me through the website: speakupforeducation.org or email me at andrew@speakupforeducation.org. I am also on Twitter @AndrewGutmann.
Thank you for keeping a sharp eye on parental options for education during this time. Your last three podcasts covered the federal, organizational and local level of this battle for our children, which was very helpful. If you're interested in a live example of how public education has provided the entry point for radically altering the culture and political control of a state, our 'How to Steal a State' series at The V1SUT Vantage (https://v1sut.substack.com/) is available now. The money flowing behind this radicalization of public education is staggering and so often in the shadows. Oklahoma's State Superintendent of eight years did her strategic damage to public schools, flipped party affiliations, and is now running for governor with the help of the education unions and several, very liberal billionaires. It's an eye-opening warning for all other states. Keep the great information flowing and thank you again.