The Future of Liberalism - Post 4

This is the 4th part in my 4-post series about the future of liberalism, the American political movement that I believe has the greatest chance of helping to improve our society and the world around us. I'll finish up with a summary later.

In Post 3, I discussed where economic liberalism should be headed. I argued that changes in our economy (most importantly, the IT revolution and globalization) have made it necessary for liberals to find some new economic issues and even goals on which to focus - an updated answer to the question "What does it mean to be an economic liberal?". I gave some suggestions for answers to that question.

But economic issues are only one side of politics. Far more divisive battles are fought over social issues, and it is social issues that have the potential to mobilize voters in their millions to fight long, difficult campaigns. Economies change rapidly, but basic human relations not so much. Political philosophy must bow to the prevailing winds on economic issues, but on the enduring topics of freedom, power, responsibility, and civic virtue, a clear philosophy remains a necessity for progress.

So what does it mean to be a social liberal?

The three greatest social struggles of liberalism in the past century were the civil rights movement, the women's equality movement, and the battle against government authoritarianism. Notice that these issues share common threads - they are all struggles for greater freedom, greater equality, and greater individualism.

Freedom is the most basic liberal value. Freedom, of course, spares people from the horrors of government oppression and preserves (through democracy) an effective political system, but it does much more. With greater freedom, people have far more dignity, and dignity is a powerful force that makes people feel good about their lives. With freedom, people also have greater opportunity to customize their lives to their own talents and desires - whether that means being a CEO in a big city, teaching windsurfing in a beach town, programming computers in the suburbs, or growing organic vegetables on a commune...or all of those. With a government telling you that you can't be a CEO because you're a woman or society telling you that only bums teach windsurfing, you'll be less likely to be happy.

This leads into the value of individualism. Recognizing and upholding the individual as the basic unit of human society is key to optimizing our happiness. Though people work together in complex systems, it is the individual who must guide him/herself to his/her most effective place in those systems, and it is for the benefit of individuals that those systems must harness their powers.

And individualism implies equality. By equality I don't mean the facile equality offered by socialism, in which people are forced to have the same amount of wealth in order to eliminate jealousy and resentment. I am referring to equality of individuals in the eyes of government and society - equal rights, equal opportunity, equal value for each human being. Equality creates freedom and boosts individualism, and it is essential for preserving society against internal conflict. Equality in the liberal sense does not mean there will be no "rich" and "poor", but it means that a rich person will be seen as equal to a poor one.

These basic values aren't going to change - they are the principles of the Enlightenment. Liberalism, at its core, is the Enlightenment philosophy, clarified beyond the speculations of Rosseau, Mill, and Hume, but bearing the same fundamental values and ideas. Greater freedom, equality, and individualism have given us amazing leaps in technology that have boosted our standard and quality of living, they have given us the largely responsible humanitarian governments we in the West now enjoy, and on an individual level they have allowed us to do all the fun things we now spend much of our lives doing - like blogging. I believe that these priniciples have not been applied to their fullest, and so they still require champions to advance them. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't call myself a liberal.

But once we get past that question of basic values, we find ourselves confronted with the real question: What issues in this day and age are most important for advancing liberal values? And here's the rub. Because in America the civil rights struggle is pretty much over (really only gay marriage remains), and women are nearing a position of equality in the US. So what liberal social issues are there that will make us the biggest gains, generate a sense of urgency, and resonate with voters? We need to find social issues that address pressing, unmet needs, where liberal values stand to make the biggest difference. A few suggestions.

1. Spread liberal values around the world.
We may have a relatively gender-equal society, but Japan sure doesn't...and that's to say nothing of Africa and the Middle East. In Malaysia, Islam is the state religion, and in China, all religions are heavily restricted. Torture abounds in Asian jails, dissidents are imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, opposition voters beaten in Egypt, human trafficking is surging, rape victims are punished instead of rapists in Pakistan, and...well, OK, just go read the Human Rights Watch website. My point is that about 40% of the world doesn't yet accept liberal values, and much of the remaining 60% has big holes where liberal values should be. It should be the goal and quest and mission of American liberals to spread their values around the world, both because it benefits untold billions of human beings, and because it allows us to make a more convincing case for upholding liberal values here at home (read that article, by the way, it's excellent).

2. Resist America's creeping authoritarianism.
In the 1990s, unless you were a Militia of Montana wing nut, it was apparent that authoritarianism in America - direct government surveillance and control of people's lives - was at a low ebb. But the Patriot Act changed all that, and since then things haven't looked promising. We've had arbitrary executive detention of an unindicted American citizen, we've had CIA torture, and we've had the Pentagon spying on American protesters. This is an ominous tide, and it must be stopped. This is an issue people will rally around.

3. Uplift the urban African-American underclass.
This problem has persisted too long. It is the shame of our nation that, while immigrant groups from Eastern Europeans to Hispanics have managed to escape poverty in a few generations, urban African-Americans have largely remained as a high-poverty, high-crime underclass decades after the abolition of Jim Crow. While things got better for a long time, they are (arguably) not getting better now. This has got to be changed, not only for the sake of our economy, but for the much more fundamental reason of social equality. The answer is not, as some suggest, to focus on making reparations for past wrongs done to long-dead African-Americans by long-dead whites. Neither are there many more gains to be made from stamping out racism, since racism is already a public taboo and illegal in hiring and admissions, and the government can do relatively little to change the bigotry that lurks hidden in some people's hearts. What the government can do is help African-Americans move out of ghettos, improve education with innovative strategies in predominantly black areas, and work with black leaders to encourage entrepreneurship and personal economic achievement among black youth. Also, ending the large-scale incarceration of African-Americans for nonviolent drug crimes would be a huge help to shattered communities, and encouraging responsible fatherhood among African-American men couldn't hurt either.

4. Fight against American election-rigging.
Gerrymandering (now known euphemistically as "redistricting") is a fundamental threat to our ability to choose our leaders, since it eliminates competitive elections and makes party primaries into the real elections. Vote-machine rigging, while never proven, is an ominous threat that should be headed off at the pass. People want real choices, and they deserve them. Democracy is the great preserver of our freedom, and we should work hardest to preserve it here at home, by creating independent bodies to oversee redistricting and voting procedures.

5. Curb exploitation of women.
Women's equality is great for those who can get to college, but for women who are forced into prostitution, equality is a joke. And every time a man visits a prostitute, he loses a little respect for women in general (if you don't believe me, live in Asia for two years). True gender equality means stamping out prostitution and human trafficking, as well as internet predators, both in America and in as many of our allied countries as possible. This will also help stop AIDS, and happens to be an issue on which liberals can often strategically partner with conservatives.

Those are five issues where liberal values - freedom, equality, and individualism - are sorely needed in our current society. More exist. This is not at all to say that the liberal quests of the past are no longer important - we should fiercely combat any attempts to roll back the gains we've made on fronts like civil and women's rights. However, society needs to move forward, and so playing defense is not enough. Progressives must progress. We must spend quite a lot of time stating and reiterating our basic values, and using specific issues - like these 5, or others - to show our commitment to the advancement of these values. That, along with updated economic policies, is what will win back the momentum for the liberal movement.