I’ve had disagreements with the libertarians at Reason magazine in the past, and doubtless I will again, not being a libertarian myself. But in two recent pieces for the publication, senior editor Stephanie Slade has provided much fodder for thought about our present political discontents.
Start with “The Authoritarian Convergence,” which is the cover of Reason‘s October issue. In it, Slade argues that, while political polarization is a real problem in the modern U.S., there is a sense in which both sides of the aisle are agreeing more: on the need for radical action against the other.
The future of the parties is now a matter of live debate. But in both cases, the elements that seem to have the most energy behind them have something important in common: a desire to move their side, and the country as a whole, in an illiberal direction.
On the left, a new crop of socialists hope to overthrow the liberal economic order, while the rise of intersectional identity politics has supplanted longstanding commitments to civil liberties. On the right, support for free markets and free trade are more and more often derided as relics of a bygone century, while quasi-theocratic ideas are gathering support.
What has not changed—what may even be getting worse—is the problem of affective polarization. Various studies have found that Americans today have significantly more negative feelings toward members of the other party than they did in decades past.
But partisan animosity suits the authoritarian elements on the left and right just fine. Their goal is power, and they have little patience for procedural niceties that interfere with its exercise. As history teaches, a base whipped up into fear and fury is ready to accept almost anything to ensure its own survival. Perhaps even the destruction of the institutions and ideals that make America distinctively itself.
Slade identifies this as a bipartisan problem, and it is indeed worth recalling the Left’s myriad assaults on our political and cultural order, and fighting against them. But at last week’s National Conservatism Conference in Miami (which I also attended), Slade detected among the NatCons evidence of the right-wing part of the convergence she identifies:
This burgeoning political faction has at its heart a fundamentally favorable orientation toward federal power and not a mere revivification of national pride. It also makes it clear that the natcons’ purpose in acquiring government power is not merely to prevent its misuse by opposing ideologues; it’s to use it affirmatively to destroy opposing ideologues.
As I am not a libertarian, neither am I “liberal.” Even so, Slade’s shade thrown at illiberals is difficult to discount.