Liberalism Isn’t Failing — But We Might Be Failing It

Why Christian anxieties about moral decay and political weakness don’t require abandoning the liberal tradition.

Sean Demars hosts a podcast that represents well the little corner of evangelicalism I’m a part of. So when he talked about Classical Liberalism, religious liberty, and post-liberal critiques with Dr. John Wilsey, my ears perked up. Christianity and classical liberalism are two of my favorite things. But what caught my attention was hearing two Christians processing the proposed failure of liberalism. There are two threads of worry that I saw in this podcast, and more generally in evangelicalism, about liberalism. The first is that liberalism created a culture that brought us moral failure, the destruction of communal bonds, and the atomization of society. The second is that liberalism isn’t strong enough to stand against the tides that are coming in.

Patrick Deneen is representative of the first worry. He makes arguments that resonate for many Christians. He contends that liberalism’s mandate to center the absolute autonomy of the individual has led to a loss of social cohesion, immorality, community destruction, and flawed elites.

Rod Dreher shares Deneen’s concerns but evidences the second worry more. He points at things like the United Kingdom allowing more immigration and then not enforcing the law against immigrants who raped underage girls. Let’s set aside the obvious objection that the actions of such men against girls are incredibly illiberal. That is axiomatic. Dreher links the liberal orientation to not protecting these young girls because no one wants to appear bigoted against immigrants. For Dreher, liberalism isn’t strong enough to protect itself against strong illiberal actions.

So both worry that liberal culture itself weakens the will of government actors to enforce the law. They believe that liberal culture makes police afraid to arrest people from various minority backgrounds.

Both concerns miss the truth — that classical liberalism has tools to address these things. Let’s consider the UK and the lack of law enforcement around child rape. It’s horrific, full stop. But this is what the rule of law is for. The answer is not populist rage or some post-liberal experiment that hasn’t been tried. It’s the equal enforcement of laws against perpetrators, regardless of identity.

It’s not liberalism that’s failed the UK in the protection of girls; it’s the courage of law enforcement that failed. J.S. Mill talks about this very thing in On Liberty. He decries the despotism of custom. His antidote to fear is moral character. He doesn’t run to the government to fix moral or cultural problems. He appeals to the individual character of the people.

Adam Smith critiques slavishly admiring “men of fashion” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition… is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” — Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Meaning that we should not allow our desire for approval, or our desire to approve the culturally ascendant, to cloud our moral judgment. In his day, he was worried about admiration of the wealthy, but the principle applies to admiration of any person that clouds right moral judgment. We could go on finding examples from the classical liberal tradition, such as John Locke insisting on the moral equality of persons due to natural rights from God.

Equal protection under the law is a liberal value. The liberal tradition is the very thing that won us individual rights. It is the tradition that brought legal protections, a right to trial, and a system to deal with injustice. It is not perfect, but it is better than the rest. What’s more, liberal government is resilient because it can be responsive to change. Elections still matter. Laws can change. Liberalism protects the freedom of association. It protects churches’ ability to meet and voluntary organizations’ ability to form, but it does not guarantee vitality. For that, we have to embrace what Mill argues for: courage.

The tools found in the liberal tradition give us the means to fix what ails us. But it can’t do moral formation. That’s not liberalism’s job. Liberalism’s job is to give us space so that we can have agency over our own moral formation. This is why I take a classically liberal line.

Demars and his guest, Dr. John Wilsey, reached the same tentative conclusion. They are worried, but both don’t see the answer as tearing up the liberal system we have and replacing it with something untested and untried. Wilsey sharply makes the point that such deconstructionalist tendencies aren’t what conservative liberals do; they’re what Marxists do. In this they rightly channel Edmund Burke, who reminds us that we are a link in a chain; we inherit from previous generations and make commitments to future generations. Entirely upending liberalism isn’t the answer. Rightly using its tenets is.

*ChatGPT did a copyedit for spelling and grammar issues only.