Colleagues the other day were lamenting the use of the word “liberal” to mean “statist.” In an older usage, still prevalent in Europe, it means the opposite. To its critics on the right, statism is a malady primarily of the Left. They call the Left “liberal,” at least in America. I’ve stopped using “liberal” in that sense. The far Left — call it the woke Left — is illiberal almost by definition.
So, alas, is the far Right, the other end of the horseshoe. The war between Right and Left is longstanding and traditional. Many of us know its rules of engagement well and have grown adept at the competitions in which they obtain. The war between liberalism and illiberalism is different. It has heated up in recent years, in Europe as well as in America, and is the more serious conflict, in my view.
I found this book to be helpful, The Lost History of Liberalism, by Helena Rosenblatt (2018). From the introduction:
Most scholars admit that there is a problem defining liberalism. They begin their work with an acknowledgment that it’s a slippery or elusive term. What’s strange, however, is that most of them then proceed to stipulate a personal definition and construct a history that supports it. This, I contend, is to argue backward. . . .
In colloquial parlance in France and other parts of the world today, being liberal means favoring “small government,” while in America it signifies favoring “big government.” American libertarians today claim that they are the true liberals. Somehow these people are all supposed to be part of the same liberal tradition. . . .
At heart, most liberals [in Europe through the nineteenth century] were moralists. Their liberalism had nothing to do with the atomistic individualism we hear of today. They never spoke about rights without stressing duties. Most liberals believed that people had rights because they had duties, and most were deeply interested in questions of social justice. They always rejected the idea that a viable community could be constructed on the basis of self-interestedness alone. Ad infinitum they warned of the dangers of selfishness. Liberals ceaselessly advocated generosity, moral probity, and civic values. This, of course, should not be taken to mean that they always practiced what they preached or lived up to their values.
. . . The idea that liberalism is an Anglo-American tradition concerned primarily with the protection of individual rights and interests is a very recent development in the history of liberalism. It is the product of the wars of the twentieth century and especially the fear of totalitarianism during the Cold War. For centuries before this, being liberal meant something very different. It meant being a giving and civic-minded citizen; it meant understanding one’s connectedness to other citizens and acting in ways conducive to the common good. [My emphasis]