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In the eight years since Britons voted for Brexit and Americans elected Donald Trump to the presidency, right-wing populism in the West has endured and become ever-stronger. This populist persistence has been fueled in large part by one dominant political issue: immigration.

In the Netherlands, the eccentric firebrand Geert Wilders won a landslide victory last year in an election dominated by issues of asylum law. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads a right-wing government that is building offshore detention centers and has sought to deter migration across the Mediterranean. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats joined their first government in history in 2022. The far-right Alternative for Germany has surged to second in the polls there. In Austria, a politician who pledges not to accept a single asylum application is the frontrunner to be prime minister after elections this autumn. Log onto the website for the Identity and Democracy Group, the furthest-right alliance in the European Parliament, and you will be greeted at the top with a petition link exclaiming: Protect our Borders! With elections for the EU Parliament coming up in June, this alliance and other rightist forces could upend the centrist coalition that has steered the EU since its inception.

With stakes this high, liberal and progressive leaders throughout Europe have adapted. Long gone is the 2015 We can do this! rhetoric of Angela Merkel, who allowed more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees into Germany and called on her citizens to embrace the newcomers.

Some progressives have transfigured themselves into anti-immigration zealots. The best example is Mette Frederiksen, who has turned Denmarks Social Democratic Party into the face of Europes anti-immigration left. With measures to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, send refugee families who have spent years in Denmark back to Syria, and a pledge to take in zero asylum-seekers (except for one small U.N. program), Frederiksen has clawed back support from the far right to win two terms in power. Yet her government has been criticized by human rights groups and now faces the threat of an insurgent left wing dissatisfied with her broader rightward shift.

Other center-left forces have foundered on the issue and fallen into the political wilderness. The traditional parties of the Dutch and Italian center-left and center-right have cratered over their inability to articulate an attractive policy to voters. Britains Labour Party has been out of power for 14 years, their most recent loss caused by a hemorrhaging of seats in Northern England, where working-class voters have long sought a tougher approach to migration.

Between the perils of political doom and the prospect of hard-heartedness, however, a few liberals have set out on a third course. Led by Donald Tusk and Emmanuel Macron, Polish and French liberals have determined to protect their electoral viability by implementing reasoned restrictions on migration while staying true to liberal principles. An examination of both cases holds lessons for liberals across Europe and the globe.

***

Last year, Poland was eight years into the rule of the Law and Justice party, known by its Polish acronym PiS, an ultra-conservative political party that tried to eviscerate Polands independent judiciary and exerted control over Polands public media. PiS came to power at the peak of the European migrant crisis in 2015, with PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczyski declaring that refugees were bringing cholera to the Greek islands, dysentery to Vienna, various types of parasites. In power, PiS depicted Middle Eastern migrants as part of an attack on Poland and sought to punish activists who worked to assist migrants.

As PiS lost popularity over other issues their undermining of the rule of law and rolling back of abortion rights the partys leaders turned to immigration as a saving grace. Taking a page from George W. Bushs reelection campaign, PiS scheduled two referenda to be held simultaneously with elections to the Polish parliament last year. One asked voters if the barrier on Polands border with Belarus should be removed (many non-white migrants have come to Poland through Belarus), and another asked if Polish citizens supported the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy. PiS bet that by putting fears of unchecked migration into the debate, undecided voters would hand them a third term in power.

Against this backdrop of fear-mongering, Polands opposition formulated a new strategy on migration. Early in the campaign, Donald Tusk, leader of Polands centrist Civic Coalition, spoke about mass rioting in France, which had fueled PiS demagoguery about Muslim migrants. In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter), Tusk pointed out that migration had in fact increased under PiS rule, and charged PiS with hypocrisy and failure. Tusk loudly called out the government: Why is Kaczyski scapegoating strangers and immigrants while wanting to let hundreds of thousands of them in at the same time? Maybe its because he wants an internal conflict and Polish citizens to be afraid because thats when its easier for him to rule. Tusk was adamant about distinguishing his rhetoric from PiS xenophobia, but was clear that he believed unrestricted migration could pose major problems.

This dual critique of PiS failed policy and xenophobic rhetoric became a theme of Tusks campaign. In the Civic Coalition platform, Tusk promised to secure the Poland-Belarus border and crack down on smuggling, while also pledging to hold PiS officials accountable for corruption and mismanagement of the immigration system. In interviews, Tusk was clear that he admired human rights activists and would immediately end government efforts to target those who assisted migrants. But he also insisted that the Prime Minister, as the one responsible for national security, must take a tougher approach. When PiS charged that Tusk supported an EU plan to force Poland to take in Middle Eastern migrants who had arrived in other European states (the subject of their absurdly worded referendum), Tusk made clear that he would oppose the plan.

Tusk spent much of the campaign playing defense on the migration issue. But things turned upside-down weeks before the election.

In September, it was revealed that under PiS rule, Polish consular services in poorer countries outside Europe had been offering aspiring migrants visas in exchange for bribes. Current estimates suggest that as many as 250,000 entry permits were sold for cash in India, the Philippines, Qatar, the UAE, and other countries. The sitting government was humiliated on the immigration issue. Tusk was vindicated: the oppositions charges of incompetence and corruption were plain to see. Tusk decried the scheme as the biggest scandal in 21st-century Poland and turned the once-perilous immigration issue into an electoral winner.

Poland went to the polls on Oct. 15. Tusk and his allies won a narrow but decisive majority in Polands Parliament. In urban areas, Tusks Civic Coalition made modest gains over the last election, improving by about 2 percent. In rural areas where PiS anti-immigration message had once resonated loudest, Tusk gained 4-5 percent.

Now Prime Minister, Tusk has begun rebuilding Polands independent judiciary, holding corrupt officials accountable, and improving relations with the EU all while honoring his pledge to impose limits on migration. He has promised to end the xenophobia and hostile attitude of authorities towards migrants, while acknowledging that migration flows must be controlled if Poland is to have sustained, liberal governance.

***

Emmanuel Macron faced a different challenge: as an incumbent, he did not need to revive a languishing liberal opposition, but instead to prove that liberal government could hold back the populist tide in a sustained way. Since his euphoric victory in 2017, Macrons government has been challenged by an increasingly powerful far right: in 2022, anger at migration and Macrons economic policies handed Marine Le Pen 42 percent of the vote in the presidential election and led her rightist National Rally to become the second-largest faction in Frances National Assembly.

Anxieties over the far rights growing strength have worsened in recent years: term limits will require Macron to step down in 2027, and whoever emerges from the mainstream to succeed him will face Le Pen. Her support has only grown since a June 2023 police shooting that led some French Arabs to riot in major urban areas, and poll results released in December showed pluralities of French Muslims characterizing Hamas October 7th attacks on Israel as resistance against colonization.

These events put migration and assimilation front and center, and Macron chose to confront them head-on. In early December, Macron tried to pass a compromise immigration bill that would have sped up some deportations while also easing work authorizations for undocumented migrants. The bill suffered a humiliating surprise failure when members of the center-right Les Republicains party joined with the left and far right to oppose it. Speaking bluntly, one member of Les Republicains summed up his partys opposition by saying: either its a right-wing text or a left-wing text, but it cant be both at the same time.

Faced with pundits declaring the end of Macrons reign, and fever-pitch fears over Le Pens machinations on the issue, Macron moved right. He returned a week later with a new draft that eased deportations, extended waiting periods for migrants to access welfare, and, most controversially, created quotas based on national origin. Both Le Pen and Les Republicains had no choice but to support the bill: opposition would have been blatantly hypocritical. The bill generated outrage on the left and resignations in Macrons cabinet. A quarter of his own party abstained or voted no.

Yet Macrons legislation was not a capitulation to the populists. For one, Macron was open about tackling immigration as a way of disarming the radical right: he claimed it was a necessary effort to start from reality, to deal with the problems that concern the French. Macrons bill acknowledged voter sentiment that the integration of migrants had not fully succeeded. The specific proposals in the bill enjoyed wide public support. Macron was clear-eyed where other liberals had been, perhaps, nave: even when voter sentiments cross over into distasteful anti-immigrant attitudes, those feelings cannot be perpetually ignored.

Macron also had a cynical play in mind. From the time he introduced the new, tougher bill, members of his own party openly mused that Frances Constitutional Council might shoot down its most punitive elements. Under this scenario, the bill could pass, Macron would earn plaudits for his toughness, the far right would have their demagoguery drained, and the core of Frances liberal migration system would remain intact. In January, this prophecy came true, when the Council knocked down some of the bills harshest measures, including national-origin quotas. Mathis Bitton, a political science PhD student at Harvard, told me in an interview, We could also see Macron as a mastermind: he got what he wanted, the more liberal parts of the bill were adopted, the right-wing additions to the bill were vetoed by the Constitutional Council, and Macron gets to blame the court without doing anything about it.

Throughout the saga, Macron never embraced the narrative of the far right. While he viewed the bill as a shield, and celebrated the broad public support for his measures, he was clear that he had rejected the drastic limits that the National Rally had sought to impose. Indeed, while the media seized on Le Pens statement that the bill was an ideological victory for her camp, she also deemed it a very small step and implied she would go far further if ever elected to the lyse.

In Bittons analysis, Macrons strategy on migration makes political sense: His decision was electorally smart more liberal parties are realizing that without the immigration issue, populists have nothing. If the main cleavages are social issues (where populist are more radical than the electorate) and economics (where populists are believed to be incompetent), liberals win. Its that simple. Bittons intuitions have numbers to back them up: one recent poll found that while Macron is more trusted than Le Pen to handle foreign policy, the environment, health, and the cost of living, Le Pen held a 27-point advantage among voters when it came to who they trusted to handle the level of migration.

Macron has used the immigration disaster-turned-passage to initiate a broader shakeup. He has elevated younger and more conservative ministers, and pledged support for mandatory national service for teenagers and parental leave expansions to boost the birth rate. Macron has framed these initiatives as conservative but not populist reflecting a leader determined to stay true to his moral compass while countering the radical right. Time will tell if this strategy wins the day in future French elections, but it has brought a new momentum to Macrons presidency.

***

Despite their vastly different circumstances, Macron and Tusks playbook had commonalities: both leaders focused on policy changes over rhetorical flourishes, both attacked, rather than outflanked, their far-right opponents xenophobia, and most crucially, both men listened to voters in their country. Sometimes, statesmanship is about taking an unpopular stance that defies popular consensus. But after eight years of mass discontent and with a far right on the precipice of destructive power, liberals cannot justify further inaction and hope that voters will change their minds about migration.

The Tusk-Macron playbook represents a third, better approach for liberals who have fumbled on migration. With elections in the EU and the United States approaching, other liberals have much to learn. No liberal party can win the working-class vote without a strategy for handling immigration. But it is possible to adopt moderate restrictions without compromising liberal values. Countries will be better off with popular, measured restrictions on migration than with far-right demagogues in power or a total capitulation to their anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Liberal politicians in Germany, Austria, the U.K., and across Europe could benefit from learning the lessons of France and Poland. U.S. President Joe Biden might too. It was evident during Bidens State of the Union speech that Republicans feel immigration is the issue where they hold the clearest advantage with the public. More Americans list immigration as their number-one voting issue than at any time in 43 years, according to a new Gallup poll. Bidens proposed border bill was a good first step to make Democrats look serious in the public eye with the bill stalled in Congress, perhaps a close examination of Macrons adaptive strategies could point him to new executive actions aimed at stemming illegal border crossings.

Liberalism is an idea that has brought Europe its modern prosperity and unity. It thrives most, though, when it appeals to, and does not reject, the intuitions of the citizens it seeks to govern, even while seeking to mold public sentiment in the long term. For too long, on the issue of migration, there has been a dissonance between the needs of populations and the policies of liberal leaders. Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk have shown another path, perhaps one that could help preserve liberalism as the reigning system in the Western world.

2024 Presidential Election, Donald Tusk, elections, Europe, European Union, France, Immigration, Joe Biden, Marine Le Pen, migration, Poland, President Biden, United Kingdom

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Did Macron and Tusk Just Chart a Path for Liberals Elsewhere on Immigration? - Just Security

Liberals are going through one of their reflective moments. Competing forms of illiberalism are openly discussedeven in polite companyto a degree unprecedented since the end of World War Two. Any lingering hubris following the collapse of the Soviet Union has been fatally punctured by the rise of forces that really might spell the end of the liberal order in the West. Despite that, there is a prevailing sense that liberals have yet to really rise to the challenge. Several prominent liberals have offered reiterations of liberal values that, while well-meaning, have nevertheless felt glib and woefully ill-matched to the scale of their task, reading as if they could have been written in the more certain times of the 1990s when the future was still theirs. The worry is not just that liberals have yet to adequately respond to their illiberal opponents, but that they are absolutely stumped as to how to respond at all. Deer and headlights come to mind.

Alan Kahans Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism joins several other recent volumes in approaching liberalisms current malaise through reminding us of its history.[1]Liberalisms past has become one of the most consequential areas for the debates as to its future. Though hardly the stuff of op-eds, what these studies nevertheless tell us in their different ways is of the utmost importance: that a lack of proper historical sense has left liberals and their critics alike with an emaciated view of what liberalism is. Enemies of liberalism end up mistaking modern neo-liberalism or contemporary identity politics as the total sum of liberal thought; its supporters seem adamant on fighting for a liberalism devoid of what have been its historically most attractive and promising features. Not knowing what they are fighting for, liberals do not know how to fight for it.

Kahan begins from but extends the insight of 20thcentury Harvard political theorist Judith Shklar that liberalism is primarily concerned with eradicating fear as the great impediment to human freedom. While Shklar was concerned chiefly (but not exclusively) with fear of the extensive cruelties made possible by the emergence of the modern state, Kahan sees liberalism as a response to a series of different fears throughout history, each response building upon rather than demolishing that form of liberalism which came before it. To distinguish these he employs a metaphor from computing, differentiating between liberalisms as if software versions (liberalism 1.0, 2.0 ). Though somewhat ungainly, it does nonetheless highlight how subsequent versions of liberalism have developed previous iterations in response to new wants or problems while at the same time both transmitting their bugs into the future or creating new flaws in the process. Not all software updates really count as progress (as any user of Microsoft Words newest comment feature will attest). It is a conceit of software developers if they believe version 2.0 is always better than 1.0. At some point bugs become features that cannot be unpicked without unravelling the entire code. And eventually any software package will find itself obsolete, either outpaced by its rivals or unable to offer its users what they want.

On Kahans telling, liberalism emerged initially in the 18thcentury (1.0) as a response to the fear created by the religious fanaticism of the Wars of Religion, though he equivocates as to whether this is to be counted as liberalism proper or some form of proto-liberalism (surely beta-liberalism?). Liberalism 2.0 followed, which feared the forces of revolution and reaction equally in the 19thcentury. Later in the same century but extending into the next came the fear of poverty (2.0), which was then itself followed by the fear of totalitarianism following the Second World War (3.0). Two decades into the twenty-first century the animating fear for liberals is the rise of populism, and the prospects of there being a liberalism 4.0 depends on whether it can successfully renew itself once more to meet this new challenge.

The upshot of Kahans story is that successive updates to liberalism responded to the problems of their times by stressing and strengthening the political and economic pillars of liberalism but did so at the cost or neglect of its third pillar: morality. When at their best, liberals have attempted to found freedom on all three pillars, with free governments and free markets working together with moral and religious institutions and arguments to keep liberalism stable. Indeed, Kahan contends that historically it has been the moral pillar that has been most central because few thought that liberal political or economic institutions could endure without some level of agreement as to the sort of lives individuals should and should not live. A republic cannot exist without certain kinds of morality, as Benjamin Constant put it. And yet since the last quarter of the 19thcentury, liberals have responded to the problems of their day by separating out these pillars. Increased emphasis was placed on its political and/or economic foundations while gradually relying less on moral justifications, until we reach a point in the later twentieth century when it seems perfectly reasonable to cast liberalism as completely neutral on questions of the good. Liberalism is not a way of life. It is and should be only a political and economic doctrine. Our predicament, Kahan argues, is that liberalism needs all three pillars if it is to successfully respond to their populist opponents. Liberals must learn to talk morality once more. Whether they can do so, and can do so in time, is the question.

No doubt there will be some who will quibble with Kahans historical story. It is, of course, true that not all liberals thought of their project in negative terms of avoiding fear, and even where this could be plausible they nevertheless might have not been so united in their views of which fears ought to concern us. Kahan knows this. Which in part is why he uses the subtitle of the book to flag the purposeful incompleteness of the history it tells. Others will surely want to debate the periodisation Kahan employs. Where Hobsbawm thought the nineteenth century long, Kahan treats it as all-too-short, for instance. But this feels somewhat besides the point. This is history told with a contemporary purposeas a call for liberalism to regain its moral backboneand should be judged on that basis.

In the parlance of contemporary political philosophy, what Kahan is calling for is the return of liberal perfectionism. To be a political perfectionist isalong with such disparate luminaries of the Western political tradition as Aristotle, Saint Aquinas, Spinoza, Marx, and T. H. Greento build an account of politics on an objective account of the good for all human beings. Only the latter was a specifically liberalperfectionist in thinking that it was liberal answers to what is of value in human life that ought to inform our politics, and while there have been others (the late Joseph Raz chief among its contemporary proponents, though Kahan finds his account wanting in several regards) it is certainly a minority sport in academic circles. Liberal neutrality has been and, in many ways, remains the dominant position. And yet it appears to be so blatantly counter-intuitive. Or, put the other way around, there is something deeply and instinctively appealing in perfectionism. Why, after all, would you not want politics to take an interest in helping people to live good lives? What reason could you possibly have for thinking the state should recuse itself from what surely are among the most important questions humans ask?

Liberal responses to this have ranged from the pragmatic to the principled to the philosophical. So-called Cold War liberalsthe likes of Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, and Judith N. Shklarremind us of the dangers to individual freedom that follow when you give the state the power and authority to intervene in matters of value and meaning. Better to leave these to individuals to work out for themselves in the private sphere. Principled arguments have tended to insist that such paternalism violates individuals natural rights, autonomy, or their equal dignity in some way or another. After all, no one has the authority to tell us how we should live. Anti-perfectionism is given a fillip too by those varied philosophical or metaphysical arguments that reject the very notion of there being an objective way of life that is good for all individuals. Without such an account of universal human flourishing in sight, there is nothing for politics to try and perfect.

Part of the value of Kahans book lies in it adding further support to the thought that liberal neutrality is not just peculiar as a political position but that it is historically peculiar within the liberal tradition also. Almost everything that liberalisms critics today take to be characteristic of liberal politicsthe list is familiar: thin over thick values, atomism or individualism, rights rather than duties, maximising individual freedom at the expense of community, prioritising economic freedom over social goods, lack of concern for the moral lives of individuals, neglect of tradition and place, etc.turn out to be very recent acquisitions. Even if, and this is a big if, it does capture the character of contemporary liberalism, it cannot possibly capture the entirety of the liberal tradition. Liberals have not always thought this way. They need not think this way in the future either.

So, lets have it out. Ditch neutrality; moral and religious cards on the table.

Whether liberal perfectionism is the answer to the rise of populism we have been looking for depends very much on what sort of answer it is we want. This is far from a simple question, and likely depends as much on judgements as to what is politically feasible within what might turn out to be a fairly limited timeframe as anything else. Kahans ambiguity on this issue is therefore unsatisfying but understandable. At points Kahan speaks as if the fourth wave of liberalism ought to aim at winning populists over. Liberalism 4.0, we are told, must find a way to reduce the fears of populists, overcome their cultural alienation, and regain, to the extent that it is possible, legitimacy in their eyes. Elsewhere he talks of reconciliation between liberals and populists, which, in implying the possible compatibility of liberalism and populism, is quite a different prospect altogether.

Either way, there is good reason to be skeptical that re-adopting perfectionism will get us very far. For one, if what Kahan is hoping for is that once liberals begin talking in a moral register once more this would lead to greater convergence on the nature of the good life then that seems fanciful. Philosophers (in the broadest sense) have been debating this issue for millennia now and while it would be going too far to say that no progress has been made, any progress there has been should give us little hope that ethical unanimity is just around the corner. Many of todays illiberals are academics (e.g. Hazony, Deneen, Vermeule) and so presumably know what liberals themselves think are the strongest arguments we have so far come up with in defence of liberal ways of life. And yet Maybe the best, most irrefutable argument for liberalism that can only be rejected on pain of irrationality is being written by someone somewhere at this very moment. Wait just a few more weeks, months, or years (academic peer review runs at glacial speeds) and it will be ours. But even if this is true, do we really think the illiberals among us will be so easily converted? It is wishful thinking to suppose that others moral beliefs are held in place solely or even predominantly by rational persuasion (self-deception when the same thought is applied to our own beliefs). Some satisfaction might be gained by being able to label our opponents irrational, but that gets us nowhere politicallyand may indeed serve to make them our disagreements even more intractable.

There is little reason for thinking if liberalism did morality that would make understanding or reconciliation more likely either. Liberalisms critics tend to alreadythink of it as a form of perfectionism, as a politics that promotes specifically liberal ends and actively works to undermine more traditional ways of life. It is no revelation to them that liberalism was once a perfectionist creed; the only surprise in accounts like Kahans is the claim that it ever stopped being so. Indeed, the issue is usually not so much that liberalism is perfectionistits opponents are usually perfectionists also, often from religious motivesbut that liberals have the wrong account of human flourishing (emphasising individual autonomy over tradition, or community, or the common good, or God, etc.). What we need is to re-orientate society to the true (non-liberal) conception of the good life. In their pursuit of a false view of the good liberal societies make people worse rather than better. Hence the significance of the trans-gender rights movement as what liberalisms antagonists take to be the latest iteration of liberalisms foundational but erroneous commitment to ensuring that the individual is free from all unchosen impediments. Our identity must be ours to determine; not even nature can impede the autonomous individual in choosing what he/she/they are. That this issue has become so totemic for illiberals of liberalisms moral corruption makes it hard to share Kahans hope that a perfectionist liberalism would not still be experienced as alienating by its opponents.

Kahan is far from alone in thinking that the way forward for liberalism lies in it recovering its moral backbone. Similar conclusions are reached by Helena Rosenblatt and Samuel Moyn in their own historical diagnoses of the origins of liberalisms current predicament. Too often, however, there is a failure to take seriously enough the problems with attempting to dust off an earlier liberalism and make it fit for the twenty-first century. The heyday (and, it turned out, twilight) of moral liberalism was the New or Social Liberalism of the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, and often it is this that people have in mind when they propose that liberalism needs to rediscover how to sing in a moral key. And yet there were reasons, some of them very good reasons, why this Social Liberalism fell dramatically out of favour following World War One.

Its optimism in the power of rationality, as well as in human nature itself, while rarely nave is nevertheless harder for us to accept (despite Steven Pinkers best efforts). The sort of moral and creative agency liberals envisaged was possible for individuals in the Victorian era, and which would keep Western societies on the path of individual and collective progress, looks almost idealistic today now we are as aware of how technological advancements can hinder individual freedoms rather than enhance them. Maybe the dawn of an AI revolution will dramatically unleash individuals potential, but we have been made such promises before (including by the Social Liberals themselves). And liberal notions of the good have come under decades of assault from those who believe it to be inextricably linked to the sins of imperialism and various forms of exclusion and discrimination. Faith in liberalism as a form of life would require a reckoning with those critiques, and a willingness to do so is severely hampered when the incentives of our public spaces (including universities) are hardly conducive to such enquiries.

If liberals can neither win populists round nor achieve reconciliation with them then liberals must find a way to defeat them. That is quite a different sort of answer altogether, and it is to Kahans credit that he takes that thought seriously. However, it remains unclear why perfectionist liberalism has the advantage over neutrality if that is the objective. We need to be alive to the possibility that the re-moralisation of liberalism could itself become a source of fear, and not just for illiberals. Ours are, after all, societies that have become quite used to the thought that morality and God are not areas in which the state ought to stray, and that our individual freedoms in large part depend upon it not doing so. Moreover, as long as people believe liberal moralising smacks of racism, sexism, and various other forms of bigotry, then we should expect it to meet resistance among those groups who think liberal universalism undermining of their chances for social justice.

Then there is the issue that a perfectionist liberalism will need to start being much more specific about precisely which sort of lives it values and which it does not, and potentially which it will use state resources to support and which it will not. This is a judgemental liberalism. Once you start saying that people must be free not to live as they wish but to live as they should that is going to exclude a great number of ways of life which neutral liberalism makes room for. What looms is not state-level intolerance of certain experiments of living; it is liberalperfectionism, after all. Nevertheless, and as best exemplified in the work of John Stuart Mill, a liberalism that simultaneously restricts the use of state power for moral or religious ends while maintaining that there are still better and worse lives (based on whether they pursue the higher or lower pleasures in Mills theory) is neither a reassuringly stable position, nor a particularly inclusive one. Alienation from a society that judges what you value as inferior, or possibly outright immoral, is still something one can quite reasonably fear even if those judgements are not backed up by state power.

Liberalisms turn to neutrality did not come from nowhere. If it began in an earlier period, then certainly it was given further justification as Western societies became radically pluralistic throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. We can overdo the moral homogeneity of previous times, but ours are the most diverse societies in which liberalism has ever sought legitimacy. Part of the reason why moral neutrality so often seems the only viable option for liberals is precisely because such pluralism as it exists today has undercut the conditions of at least greater regularity in peoples moral and religious beliefs that makes political perfectionism at all plausible (and which could only be recreated through means liberals would judge as themselves thoroughly illiberal). Kahan interprets this as abandoning the moral pillar of liberalism, but that is not right. Better to think it a thinning out of liberalisms ethical commitments precisely so that it can still enjoy moral legitimacy across as broad a base of the population as possible, or a reimaging of what can morally legitimate the liberal state for autonomous individuals in conditions of such radical pluralism. This is still liberal morality, just for very different sorts of societies. Defeating populists and their illiberal associates must include pressing in the strongest possible terms just how fundamentally estranged they are from the realities of modern societies, and which explains the air of reactionary authoritarianism that consistently surrounds them. Theirs is not a solution for societies such as ours. Yet that same line of attack explains why liberal perfectionism remains such a problematic option also.

If this all sounds defeatist, it is not intended to. The point is that matters are not so simple as reversing to take a missed turn. Kahan and others know this, of course. And it is a significant virtue of Kahans analysis that he shows why this cannot be the case (Moyn gives the greatest impression that an older strand of the liberal tradition becomes readily available to us once we disavow the dominant Cold War liberalism). Reminding us of the richness and complexity of the liberal tradition, and in doing so of the potential that it retains, is a vital task to undertake, but it is a job half-done if that potential is not then cashed out in terms fit for the twenty-first century.

[1]Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea(Princeton University Press, 2014); Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (Yale University Press, 2023); Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century(Princeton University Press, 2018).

Featured image is The FDR Memorial, by Courtney McGough

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Freedom from Fear and the Specter of Perfection - Liberal Currents

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday touted U.S. Sen. Katie Britt's (R-Montgomery) recent Republican response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. The SOTU rebuttal was heavily panned and even parodied by "Saturday Night Live."

While at a Vandalia, Ohio, campaign rally, Trump, the GOP nominee for the 2024 presidential race, first railed against Britt's 2022 senatorial opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville), for telling voters to move on from the 2020 election.

"[M]o Brooks gets up and he says, 'Let's forget about the election. The election was fine ... we have to get on to the future.' He got booed," Trump recalled on Saturday before noting Brooks' polling numbers plummeted after saying that.

"And we have a very wonderful senator. I endorsed her the following morning ... Katie Britt. She was doing a good job," he added.

Trump then said Britt "did a very nice job" in her SOTU response, adding that "liberals didn't like it very much."

"Who liked the job she did the other night? I thought she did a very nice job. Liberals didn't like it very much, I guess, but I thought she did a very nice job. We have another senator now because people don't want to hear bullshit. They don't want to hear it."

Following her SOTU speech, Trump posted on his Truth Social account, "Katie Britt was a GREAT contrast to an Angry, and obviously very Disturbed, "President." She was compassionate and caring, especially concerning Women and Women's Issues. Her conversation on Migrant Crime was powerful and insightful. Great job Katie!"

To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email trent.baker@1819news.com.

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Trump praises 'very nice' Katie Britt SOTU response in Ohio rally - 1819 News

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Liberal media outlets took Trumps words out of context to push their agenda again.

Former president Donald Trump speaking in Dayton, Ohio on Saturday during a rally in support of Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. During his speech, Trump spoke about Chinas involvement with the automotive industry.

Addressing Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said, Those big monster car manufacturing plants that youre building in Mexico right now youre going to not hire Americans and youre going to sell the cars to us, no. Were going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and youre not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected.

Trump followed up by saying, Now if I dont get elected, its going to be a bloodbath for the whole thats gonna be the least of it. Its going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But theyre not going to sell those cars. Theyre building massive factories.

Outlets asked Trumps team to clarify his remarks, with campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt stating, Bidens policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers.

Now it seems clear what Trump meant by these comments, but that doesnt stop the Liberal media from doing what they do best and misconstruing his words to fit their narrative.

Liberals were quick to attack Trump, claiming that the former president was implying he would start a revolution if he didnt get elected this time around.

This is who Donald Trump is: a loser who gets beat by over 7 million votes and then instead of appealing to a wider mainstream audience doubles down on his threats of political violence, Biden spokesperson James Singer said in a statement.

Nancy Pelosi also barked about Trump, claiming that his bloodbath quote was among a list of other shocking remarks the media has alleged Trump had made throughout his political career.

Hes even predicting a bloodbath. What does that mean? Hes going to exact a bloodbath? Theres something wrong here, Pelosi said. How respectful I am of the American people and their goodness. But how much more do they have to see from him to understand that this isnt what our country is about? Praising Hitler, praising the Russians. Honestly? Condemning our soldiers for losing or dying in war or being captured in war.

While Pelosi went all out with her crazy lies, Trumps former VP, Mike Pence, actually defended him.

I woke up this morning seeing online all of the discussion about bloodbath and as you just reflected, the president was clearly talking about the impact of imports devastating the American automotive industry.

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Liberal Media Loses It Over Trump's 'Bloodbath' Comments - WIBC - Indianapolis News & Politics

(AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

First and foremost, you must convince people to set aside what they are being told by nefarious people who stand to lose status and power when Trump is reelected. Tell them to be dispassionate in looking at the factsand not their feelings. The key is How did Donald Trump build America up? and How is Joe Biden tearing America down?

Are you better off today then you were during 45?

Fiction Fact

Border is secure People flood across every day

Immigrants just Looking for better Criminals from all over are pouring in and turning cities into disaster zones

Cities are safe Crime is high and violence is everywhere

Prices are low Everything from eggs to gas costs more

Affordable housing is a lie Rents are high and home ownership is down

Interest Rates are low Rates went from 0% to 9%

Student loans should be forgiven We are still giving them out

Fossil fuels are bad We need fossil fuels to meet needs

Guns are bad All politicians are protected by guns

Biden is fit Are you kidding me?

Biden is not corrupt Streamed millions $ to his family

No election Interference in 2020 The media participated Are you kidding me (Ballot harvest)

No election Interference in 2024 Stop Trump by the Dept of Injustice

Abortion is a right Bad law finally corrected by SCOTUS

Climate change is a Big threat Science says NO!

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The Case for Trump: Bullet Points to share with Liberals and RINO's by Joyce Kaufman 850 WFTL - 850 WFTL