Ruthless

The other week my sister showed me a YouTube video that used a compelling example to make a semi-familiar point about contemporary liberalism. In brief, the argument runs: Republicans play dirty, and therefore so should we. It is a notion I disagree with, but in the wake of the horrible news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, I fear it will only gain adherents.

Taking the example of Obama's response (or lack thereof) to the procedural chicanery that Mitch McConnell pulled at the end of his second term to deny him another Supreme Court appointment (the Merrick Garland atrocity), the YouTuber was arguing that instances like these show how liberals will continue to "get rolled" (to borrow a term from a recent discussion on The Weeds podcast on this theme), so long as they retain their devotion to a set of procedural norms. 

I don't expect today's events to make this line of thinking any less appealing to many progressives. The monumental hypocrisy of the contemporary Republican party is already in full view. Those who invoked the most spurious claims to deny the former president a Supreme Court appointment at the end of his term have now already promised a swift confirmation of Trump's nominee in the final months (we hope) of his presidency. Have they not proved it is impossible to deal with them as reasonable adversaries?

When the opposing side will simply violate any norm that inconveniences them, the one adhering to the norm is at a permanent tactical disadvantage. We should therefore abandon the principle of "when they go low... we go high" and be willing to stoop to conquer—or so the YouTuber argues.

I've addressed this line of thinking before and continue to side with the Michelle Obamas of the world. It still seems to me that—while a liberalism that violated procedural ethics might gain more lasting political power—it would quite possibly cease to be liberal in the process—in which case, why would we want it to achieve power in the first place? Liberalism, after all, is not just a factional political ideology like any other. It is also the doctrine that informs the ground rules of the liberal democratic procedure for resolving disputes between factions and ideologies. It has procedural as well as political implications.

The YouTuber would perhaps fire back that in a contest with those who reject the ground rules of liberalism, this principle can no longer apply. It is only good for negotiating disagreements amongst those who buy into the underlying system, and breaks down when one is dealing with those who have no respect for that system whatsoever. 

This, however, is to misunderstand the nature of liberalism which—while it is not neutral among worldviews (for reasons spelled out philosophically by Brian Barry among others)—does require conceding the promulgation of illiberal ideas and the pursuit of illiberal ends so long as these do not violate the procedural ground rules. As Ortega y Gasset put it—and no one has ever said it more beautifully—the essence of liberalism is the willingness to "share existence with the enemy."

To refuse to share space in the political sphere with the enemy in the pursuit of scoring victories for liberalism is therefore at the same time to cease to be a liberal. It is for this reason that liberals must continue to hew to the chivalrous notion that to lose one's honor in the pursuit of extrinsic ends is to lose the value of those ends—and thus, the original purpose of the pursuit. As I quoted from Richard Lovelace on that earlier occasion: "I could not love thee (Dear) so much, loved I not honour more."

Of course, none of this is a problem for those who are not committed to liberalism to start with. Our YouTuber, for instance, is evidently one of those leftists who find themselves weighted down by having to share a party with people so wedded to the liberal ground rules. From their perspective, these rules are valuable so long as they advance ends (i.e. progressive political goals) that are just. When these means conflict with the ends, the ends must take precedence. 

For this YouTuber, this line of thinking would appear to extend even to some civil liberties and the basic rights of our democratic process. He argues, for instance, that alt-right groups should be "policed and shut down as hate groups." Asking how that would be any different, from a moral perspective, from DHS teargassing left-wing protesters and investigating journalists has an obvious answer, according to this line of thinking—the crucial difference is precisely that those protestors are left-wing. They are fighting for a just cause. Their civil liberties deserve to be protected. Those of Neo-Nazis do not. 

This is of course of a piece with leftists who think the ACLU should not take cases defending the First Amendment rights of far-right groups; who think hate speech codes are a good idea; and so on. I'm too tired and in too sour a mood about today's headlines to feel inclined to try to mount a philosophical exposition of why they are wrong. All I can say is that I'm quite confident the world would be a worse place if their arguments carry the day. Societies have tried living without liberal democratic norms, without protections for expressive rights, and so on. I don't think they provide exempla to follow. 

Of course, people will say that those historical instances provide no guidance, because we are faced with unprecedented circumstances. We are up against people who genuinely have no respect for norms, who will stop at nothing, who cannot be reasoned with. 

This is what people have said about their enemies throughout history; nor have they always been wrong. The point is that the existence of illiberal people does not justify violating the principles of liberalism in one's treatment of them—to the contrary, they provide the only test case in which those principles matter. A principle is no principle at all so long as it is applied only at one's convenience, only when it advances one's prior goals. 

There is a character in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor—one of the more honorable individuals ever depicted in literature—of whom the author writes: "His settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds of those days[.]" We should strive to be likewise. 

The vicissitudes of history may seem to present us with novel situations, calling for new courses of action. But in truth, Trump, the alt-right and their minions, are not the first evil men to walk the earth, and they will not be the last. The principles of liberalism can be a line of defense to us—a set of "settled convictions" that never desert us—even (or perhaps especially) when the institutions of liberal democracy seem to be cracking up around us.