The death of Liberalism

I read a post online once that said, “America is a bloated corpse. Liberals are rooting for the maggots and conservatives are rooting for the corpse.”

This statement, while harsh, has an element of truth. Regardless of where one falls in the conservative-liberal dyad, many observers fail to understand the broader struggle at play. If you were to compare the positions of today’s conservatives and yesteryear’s liberals, you would be hard-pressed to find a difference.

Even paragons of liberalism like Barack Obama publicly opposed gay marriage early in his career. Today, you may find many self-described conservatives ceding gay marriage but drawing the line at the transgender movement.

No doubt, conservatives will buckle on this issue too just as they have on every other item of contention.

Conservatives conserve nothing.

This is because Republicans and Democrats are both capital “L” Liberal. They differ only by the degree to which they believe ideological Liberalism must be implemented.

If you’ll bear with me, a short history lesson is needed to explain this odd confluence. Liberalism, as a political movement, finds its origins in the heady revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The American Revolution was a Liberal rebellion against the ancien regime of Britain. The French Revolution a few short years afterward was an expression of the same principles, albeit more chaotically. The Liberal revolutions put into action the ideas of thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire.

Through these movements, Western Civilization cracked the edifice of seemingly unassailable institutions like the church and monarchy. In the present day, monarchy is something only tabloids care about, and the church is a shadow of its former self in terms of societal influence and attendance.

This is not to say the church has no value or cannot influence individual believers. Rather, I am speaking about broader trends.

Formerly foundational elements of our civilization have been reduced to tourist attractions. When one looks back with rose-colored glasses at eras when elements of the ancien regime still beat on, it is tempting to idealize a frozen moment in time.

However, the tectonic movement of Liberalism was already underneath the foundation of these eras, prepared to crack them asunder. The largest crack formed with World War I when longstanding empires and dynasties collapsed into dust.

In its aftermath, the ancien regime would never make a robust appearance again. Moreover, a new strain of the revolutionary fervor of the old Liberals emerged, even more iconoclastic than its predecessor: Communism.

In short order, the Romanovs were executed and the ancient empire of Russia became the Soviet Union. Communism sought to purify Liberalism of its capitalistic tendencies.

With the encroaching tide of Communism, anxieties rose over popular discontent due to class inequality. The newly formed Soviet Union engaged in aggressive wars and sponsored revolutions to effect a global Communist sweep. These goals were eventually reduced to more modest forms.

Nevertheless, the fear of global Communism gave rise to a third alternative. National Socialism and Fascism formed as responses to perceived Communist elements pervading society. These ideologies sought to create class unity by appealing not to king or faith, but to race and nation.

This nascent challenger was effectively killed in the cradle as the forces of Liberalism (the Western Allies) and Communism (the Soviet Union) united to crush this third position in the Second World War. After World War II, the uneasy alliance between Liberalism and Communism returned to open hostility with the Cold War.

After decades of proxy conflicts, space races, and regime changes, the Soviet Union collapsed. Liberalism had bested its final opponent on the world stage. Political scientists such as Francis Fukuyama lauded the victory as the “End of History.”

Fukuyama’s proclamations were emblematic of Liberalism’s confidence at the height of its power.

Observers of our present day find something amiss, however. In Liberal countries with the highest standard of living, one also finds the highest rates of suicide, depression, and drug use versus less developed nations. It is my perception that most in the United States feel immense disquiet over the direction of the country and perhaps civilization writ large, whether one is conservative or lowercase “l” liberal.

The explanation is simple: Liberalism, the ideology that conquered the world and the last one standing after a century of cataclysmic bloodshed, is going the way of the ancien regime it supplanted. All empires fall, and the Liberal order is no exception.

Illiberal ideological challengers such as Russia’s revanchism, China’s state capitalism, and Iran’s theocracy pose significant threats to Liberalism.

It is unlikely these powers could militarily defeat the Liberal nations. Counterintuitively, the larger threat to Liberalism is the creation and survival of illiberal societies able to resist outside pressure.

Liberalism assumes its own inevitability. If only a few “rogue states” remain defiant long-term, the emperor is shown to have no clothes.

The dogged attempts to keep Ukraine alive have little to do with national sovereignty and everything to do with Liberal hegemony. The failure of the sanction regime imposed on Russia after its invasion is a prescient example of this decline.

Instead of caving, Russia forged stronger ties with other revisionist powers like Iran and China. Much to the Liberal order’s chagrin, the war in Ukraine drags on.

Whether Russia wins or loses is immaterial. The fact it assailed the rules of Liberalism and survived strikes a serious blow.

Domestically, the United States and most other Western nations have descended into an ideological malaise. Liberalism has taken increasingly cartoonish forms of itself toward ends beyond anyone’s understanding.

If it seems the country has gone mad, I believe it has. Liberalism, once the champion of the world, is now an aging dementiac angrily flailing against the same glacial forces of history that brought it into existence.

The common people who live in these countries will soon become the object of its rage and insecurities. Republicans and Democrats will continue to fight each other like squabbling rats on the sinking Titanic, blind to the broader crisis.

We stand at the confluence of nearly 300 years of meta-political trends outside of our control. Our ancestors killed the ancien regime for better or for worse.

We, the deracinated progeny, must brace for the tumultuous rebirth of our civilization as the vitality of Liberalism slips into the inexorable rot of decline.