Classical Liberal refugees

An interesting piece.  From A Three Point Plan To Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition by Ruy Teixeira.  The subheading is It Can Be Done But It Won’t Be Easy.  Teixeira is a Democrat.

It is actually pretty solid evidence for my contention that the Classical Liberal tradition in America is alive and well but that it no longer maps as easily into either party as it once did.  I would identify attributes of the Classical Liberal world view (Hume, Adams, Ferguson, Locke, Mills, Kant, etc.) as:

Rule of Law

Equality before the Law

Due Process

State monopoly on violence

Enumerated Natural Rights or Personal Liberty (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness) including Freedom of Speech, Assembly, Religion, 

Consent of the governed

Property rights

Reason, Logic and the Scientific Method

Individualism

Freedom

Once upon a time, advocates for these positions could certainly be found in both parties and both parties aspired to them in some fashion.  With different emphasis certainly and with varying degrees of consistency, but everyone broadly spoke the same aspirational language.  

With the changes over the past twenty years, you are now far more likely to find a receptive home, believing in the above principles, in the Republican party than in the Democratic party.  Both remain establishment parties and therefore poor representatives of the will of the people, but the Republicans are far more receptive to Classical Liberal beliefs than are Democrats.

As a consequence, scores and hundreds of Classical Liberal thinkers who once were not only at home in the Democratic Party but in fact were the leading edge of the party, are now finding themselves uncomfortably ostracized.  They have no home in the Democratic Party but are not yet comfortable or trusting to identify with the party where their ideas still have a home, the Republican Party.  

Heterodox Academy is merely a collective manifestation of the homelessness of those Classical Liberals who once had their home in the Democratic Party.  Every old bastion of Classical Liberalism, such as the ACLU, has now become a domain of anti-Liberalism and authoritarianism, leading to the genesis of new institutions to carry the old Classical Liberal flame such as FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.  

Ruy Teixeira strikes me as a Classical Liberal holdout, fighting a rearguard action against the rising tide of authoritarianism in the Democratic Party.  From his article.

The facts must be faced. The Democratic coalition today is not fit for purpose. It cannot beat Republicans consistently in enough areas of the country to achieve dominance and implement its agenda at scale. The Democratic Party may be the party of blue America, especially deep blue metro America, but its bid to be the party of the ordinary American, the common man and woman, is falling short.

There is a simple—and painful—reason for this. The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman. The priorities and values that dominate the party today are instead those of educated, liberal America which only partially overlap—and sometimes not at all—with those of ordinary Americans.

This has to change. I offer here a three point plan to put the Democrats on a different path where they might reasonably hope to be once again the party of the common man and woman. I won’t pretend that will be easy but I think given political will it can be done. Perhaps the results of the 2022 election will help concentrate the mind as the prospect of the 2024 election looms (President Trump anyone?)

Here are the three parts of the plan, explicated in several of my recent posts and collected here in one convenient package.

1. Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues

2. Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda

3. Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism

I would be happy to endorse that entire agenda from either party and I agree it is especially necessary (and challenging) for the Democratic Party.  

I was a little leery of his third point but when you read the details he means something specific and positive.

The sad fact is that the cultural left in and around the Democratic party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. These unpopular views are further amplified by Democratic-leaning media and nonprofits, as well as within the Democratic party infrastructure itself, all of which are thoroughly dominated by the cultural left. In an era when a party’s national brand increasingly defines state and even local electoral contests, Democratic candidates have a very hard time shaking these cultural left associations.

As a direct result of these associations, the party’s—or, at least, Biden’s—attempt to rebrand Democrats as a unifying party speaking for Americans across divisions of race and class appears to have failed. Voters are not sure Democrats can look beyond identity politics to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans.

Instead, Democrats continue to be weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curricula and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding the party as a whole is very difficult, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately undercut by a torrent of criticism. Democratic candidates in competitive races certainly try to rebrand on an individual level but their ability to escape the gravitational pull of the national party is limited.

I wish Ruy Teixeira luck carrying that message into the Democratic Party of 2023 but I think it is a lost cause.  The Democratic Party has to lose so badly that they choose to reform but that will take awhile.   A third party might arise carrying the banner of the Classical Liberal model and put both establishment parties in the shade.  I think that unlikely given our history.  

I think it more likely that the Republican Party will become more Classical Liberal but there will be a constellation of public intellectuals such as Pinker and Haidt and Teixeira and many others - all Classical Liberals of high quality - who are abandoned by their native party and cannot be comfortable rehousing themselves where their ideas are actually welcomed.

It is a shame because the Republican Party needs some intellectual horsepower of a more centrist ilk and all Classical Liberals need to band together.