Coming through the libertarian talent pipeline, I was taught all the ways that politics fails. For example: how Condorcet's paradox demonstrates that there is no such thing as the public will to justify democratic decisions. That biases aren’t cancelled out by voting, but shape its outcomes. Decisions made by voting are backed by force, not cooperation. Incentives align for the few to take from the many. I could list more examples. But I can’t recall being taught a positive theory of politics for classical liberals.

My first three pieces at Liberalism.org attempt to fill that gap, I hope not only for classical liberals, but definitely for anyone with my experience. Liberalism needs to be defended through politics. It can and should be motivated by big ideas, explain how those ideas can help us orient ourselves and coordinate in the spontaneous order of politics, and present a model for understanding when and why people come together into political coalitions, and when those coalitions fall apart.

In The Libertarian Moment™ (roughly 2008–2015), support for democracy was, at best, taken for granted. At worst, it was discouraged. It was common to discourage or pooh-pooh voting, to celebrate not caring about politics, and to believe that almost everyone who participates in politics is made worse by it. Every decision we end up having to solve by voting represents a failure to find a peaceful solution. I won’t claim that was the consensus, but those beliefs were affirmed and promoted by teachers and mentors. Those were all my beliefs at one time, and moving away from them has been part of my being considered a libertarian¹ squish by some folks these days.

The overall effect was an impression that politics should be minimized, rendered toothless, or eliminated completely. This would be done by dramatically shrinking the state, or by perfecting institutional/constitutional design. The aversion to politics, rather than an attempt to understand ourselves operating within it, is the main reason that I think so many libertarians and classical liberals call refer to an "ideas movement" rather than a self-consciously political one, or talk about “policy not politics” as though the two are separate.

Such a negative conception of politics makes it easy to conceive of big ideas in politics as dangerous. Canonical examples are Isabel Paterson’s guillotine-wielding humanitarians and Thomas Sowell’s criticism of the “unbounded” vision.² Libertarians and classical liberals, who didn't see ourselves "in politics," felt that our big ideas were different.

Labels don’t make the classical liberal project less political, and its foundational ideals are certainly Utopian. If we do Utopian politics, too, then we shouldn’t condemn others’ visions simply for being far-ideal.

Monstrous ideal worlds from the imaginations of the likes of Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler were pursued ruthlessly. The consequences of their ideas were so awful not only because of the dream at the end, but because their pursuit ruled out input from and protection for political dissenters. Without the constraints imposed by democratic procedures, the ideal of a small-government world can also be pursued monstrously.

What should follow for liberals, especially those motivated by political ideals, is a strong endorsement of liberal democratic politics, and commitment to our contribution to those politics.

Liberals with a conception of politics that encourages them to participate while holding onto their visions for a better world need to navigate those politics.

A negative, fixed conception of politics makes it easy to feel adrift when one-time allies seem not to care anymore about what motivates us, or even work against the political goals we thought were shared. A positive, dynamic understanding of politics is a corrective.

I think often of this piece by my late friend Steve in response to the shifting political ground during Trump 1.0. Classical liberals at the time were debating whether Trump’s government was worth supporting:

What was different then, and is different now between libertarians like Steve and those who cheered along with or threw their lot in with Trump, are the principles motivating members of the erstwhile libertarian movement.

Old and familiar political coalitions seemed so stable that it was easy to think that what mattered was the allies in the partnership. Thinking that way tempts us to believe that what matters most is getting the next political grouping just right to avoid more foreseeable heartache. But it’s principles associated with policy, not political partnerships or the people we once stood next to, that are the appropriate compass in an unfamiliar landscape.

Instead of focusing on getting the next partnership exactly right before politics can move forward, liberals should think of the principles that motivate them. And diverse principles competing politically are good stuff. They help us find what matters to people, which helps them buy into peaceful democratic politics. Fuelled by inspiring visions for a better world, the right principles motivate political action through something other than pure self-interest—they become salient for reasons we can’t always explain.

Salient principles act as coordination points in the uncontrollable, dynamic environment of liberal politics.

In my latest piece, I discuss why, given all of the above, people ever bother to come together to form political coalitions that might one day disappoint them. I also—and more importantly, in my opinion—explore why we should expect political partnerships to be both temporary and always costly, even while they last

I consider types of political coalitions that might form: loose “coalitions” of people working towards a goal, but not really working together, all the way to more top-down coordinated parties and movements operating within the emergent orders of politics. And I talk about how the benefits of strong partnerships can help their constituent members overlook their irritants. I argue that those irritants shouldn’t be forgotten even while they have to be set aside. For liberals in particular, there is a strong enough temptation to abandon some of our commitments that we’ve seen it happen repeatedly, with both moral and political consequences.

Liberalism has to be defended not only by people acting through coalitions, but within coalitions against partners with different commitments. This is because liberalism will one day have to be defended without any coalition a liberal once found themselves in. No coalition lasts forever. In our dynamic, liberal politics, coalitions shouldn’t last forever.

For folks more in the weeds of political activism, I also talk about the effects of firmer coalitions on political-intellectual and activist institutions. I hope folks who have found themselves at odds with an organization that once meant a lot to them find something there that speaks to them, and comfort in this whole series.

My conviction that liberalism should be considered a set of ideas that we fight for within a broader liberal democratic framework that lies in the background in a different way is heavily influenced by Jacob Levy’s articulation of that argument in this book chapter:

Justin Ling’s latest, on the Canada-U.S. trade war considered in part as an information war, is imo essential reading.

Matt Zwolinksi (a fellow contributor at Liberalism.org) and I could probably quibble over a drink about Burke if we weren’t separated by the better part of a continent. His latest is an important corrective to the idea that classical liberalism and libertarian offer a straightforward solution to the challenges liberalism faces.

That’s it until next month.

Featured photo by Sergii Kozak on Unsplash.