Double Betrayal

Is liberalism its own worst enemy?

Loren Lomasky from the March 2001 issue

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The conclusion that should have been drawn is that education, like religion, is too precious and personal to be left to the ministrations of a state that is pledged to neutrality. That, however, would be a bold stance, so instead she ineffectually frets.

Robert Conquest's "Liberals and Totalitarianism" skillfully retells the story of left-liberals' sycophancy for totalitarian dictators but does not shed much light on why they proved to be so susceptible to this disease. In "Liberalism and the Law," Hadley Arkes deplores liberals' zeal to secure through the courts outcomes they have failed to achieve in legislatures, but he concedes that conservatives do their best to play the same game. In his telling, the rule of law is an equal opportunity casualty.

Perhaps the most curious contribution to the volume is John Silber's "Procedure or Dogma: The Core of Liberalism." Silber, the long-serving and controversial former president of Boston University, has almost nothing to say about the theory and practice of liberalism but lots to relate about his own career. It seems that in the face of ideological oppressiveness (the term "political correctness" had not yet been invented) and pusillanimity within and outside the academy, John Silber has been no less than a latter-day Socrates. Continually attacked by the ignorati, he nonetheless reliably stands straight and true for values of fairness and freedom. Perhaps this essay began as an after-dinner speech to prospective donors; how it ever made its way into this collection is baffling. It does, however, afford some clues as to why even those who broadly subscribed to Silber's agenda for the restructuring of universities often found his overweening self-regard hard to endure.

Two essays are outstanding. Military historian Robert Kagan's discussion of "Liberalism and American Foreign Policy" is erudite, nuanced, and thought-provoking. Do the ideas of those two defunct Republicans, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, hold any continuing relevance for an America rethinking its place in a post-Cold War world? Kagan will convince you that indeed they do. Equally well-informed and perhaps even wider-ranging is historian Keith Windschuttle's "Liberalism and Imperialism." Windschuttle roams knowledgeably and assuredly between the empires of ancient Rome and 19th-century Great Britain, tying together military strategy, economic expansiveness, parliamentary infighting, and moral philosophy. It is a virtuoso performance, by itself worth the price of the book.

Former National Review Editor John O'Sullivan's sharp and entertaining concluding essay attempts to delineate broad thematic connections among the various contributions. He fails, but no one could have succeeded. For what this collection reveals above all else is that cohabiting within the rhetoric of contemporary conservatism are two distinct strands of opposition to liberalism. One is friendly to liberty and regrets its restriction by excrescences that have attached themselves to classical liberal theory and practice. The other is hostile to liberty as such because leaving people free to live according to their own lights undermines deference to traditional institutions. The former maintains that political arrangements have been trending mostly downhill for the past century, while the latter sees decay setting in with the coming of the Enlightenment.

Because these two strands share various common enemies, they come together as bedfellows within the pages of The New Criterion and in this volume. It is, however, purely a marriage of convenience and is destined sooner or later to end in messy divorce. Who then will emerge with the lion's share of conservatism's assets: the grumpy obscurantists who wish that people would once again learn to keep their place, or those intent to conserve the rights of individuals freely to make their own place as best they can? That is not the least significant of the numerous questions prompted by The Betrayal of Liberalism.