What is True Classical Liberalism?

Conservatives are in the midst of a bit of a disagreement. Unlike many arguments inside the tent that are over policy, this one is more philosophical.

It all started when New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahamri wrote a lengthy column in First Things with the provocative title “Against David French-ism.” Naturally, French responded with his own column in National Review, “What Sohrab Ahamri gets wrong.”

Ahamari accused “conservative liberals” of empowering the very people who seek to drive them out of the public square:

The more that conservative liberals like French insist on autonomy, the more they strengthen the bullies’ position. This far with autonomy, they insist, but no farther. But why should the other side stop? Why shouldn’t this new, aggressive vision of maximal autonomy not overtake the old?

French, a culturally conservative man, by elevating individual liberty and autonomy as the highest political good has destroyed the values he has fought to maintain. Ahamari argues:

Though culturally conservative, French is a political liberal, which means that individual autonomy is his lodestar: He sees “protecting individual liberty” as the main, if not sole, purpose of government. Here is the problem: The movement we are up against prizes autonomy above all, too; indeed, its ultimate aim is to secure for the individual will the widest possible berth to define what is true and good and beautiful, against the authority of tradition.

French, responding to both Ahmari and a piece by Ben Domenech in the Federalist said that proper classical liberalism, or “conservative liberalism” is the answer to such illiberalism:

The Valyrian steel that stops the cultural white walker is pluralism buttressed by classical liberalism, not a kind of Christian statism of undetermined nature, strength, power, or endurance.

Strip away the personalities, and herein lies the crux of this debate: what is classical liberalism’s logical conclusion.

For French, classical liberalism is 1776 and the Declaration of Independence that declares that certain truths that are self-evident, such as all men are created equal who are endowed certain unalienable rights. From the Declaration we get the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is a very Lockean view that states that the state exists to protect the people’s rights. Classical liberalism therefore protects religion, something both French and Ahmari care deeply about, from the power of the state. Indeed, the proper reading of the First Amendment is that the church is to be protected from the state, not the other way around.

Both French and Ahmari acknowledge that this individual freedom of religion also means that people are free to reject religion and this is where Ahmari diverges. Ahmari is not a theocrat who opposes freedom of religion, but instead argues that the emphasis on individual autonomy has led a raise hostile to tradition and thus, religion. If the individual autonomy is cherished, then, taken to its logical conclusion, the individual has no need for God and becomes the god of his own life.

Therefore for Ahmari, liberalism’s logical endpoint is not 1776, but 1789. Instead of self-evident unalienable rights, liberalism, with its focus on individual autonomy, leads to the elimination of truth and with it religion and tradition. Instead of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, you get Robespierre, guillotines, and the Temple of Reason.

For Ahamri, by embracing the idea that people should be left alone to live and let live, cultural conservatives who are politically liberal sold the farm. Not only have they let the secular left to run roughshod over the culture, but the secular left has not reciprocated in leaving religious and cultural conservatives alone to live their lives. While they may not be literally chopping of heads, they are seeking to push religious conservatives out of the public arena and make them societal pariahs.

So, who is right? Does “French-ism” lead to the French Revolution? In a word, “No.”

Proper liberalism that focuses on individual autonomy does not lead to the French Revolution. A political philosophy that values the individual does not lead to anything that has fraternité as a political virtue. Oddly enough, one that seeks to diminish personal autonomy does.

It is not the individualistic, Lockean view that leads to the elimination of truth. It is the Rousseauian belief in the “general will” that imposes a set of beliefs on the society. C.S. Lewis satirized Rousseauian ideas in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, highlighting that “the general will” is an illiberal concept:

Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state

The head choppers of the French Revolution who came up with a whole new calendar were not concerned with individual autonomy, rather they relied on their collective identity as the Third Estate. They beheaded anybody who was or was perceived to sympathize with the wrong collective. In other words, anybody who departed from “the general will” would be at great risk of literally losing their head.

David French dismantled argument in favor of moving away from individual autonomy and toward the common good that Ahmari favors:

The triggering event for Ahmari’s first attack on me was a tweet announcing a “drag-queen storytime” at a public library in Sacramento. For whatever reason, his initial instinct was to blame me as, in his mind, an example of a conservatism too “nice” to prevent such a thing from happening. It is curious, however, that he never got around to proposing a concrete course of action that would have achieved the desired result. Does re-ordering the common good mean using the power of the state to prohibit that form of freedom of association? And if the state assumes for itself the power to stop such an event and perhaps fire the librarian who organized it, why does anyone think that the forces of Christian statism will continue to prevail and prevent, say, a radical member of a President Kamala Harris administration from wielding the same power against a public reading of The Screwtape Letters?

This critique is ultimately what dooms Amari’s argument. Trump is not going to be President forever, eventually there will be another Democrat in the White House. The question for conservatives is what kind of state do we want that Democratic president to be in charge of?