liberalism vs. centrism, adjacency and action

I’ve written often about philosophical liberalism on this blog, because I have a complicated relationship to it. On the one hand, like John Milton, I don’t believe most of the things that philosophical liberals believe. On the other hand, it’s clear that at least some of the common critiques of liberalism fail to account for the complexity of the views of the smartest liberals, especially John Stuart Mill. Also, while the idea that liberalism provides a “level playing field” for all is and always has been a fiction, I believe that a more level playing field is something worth striving for, and that the current tendency among many Americans to make illiberal power grabs, or anyway to fantasize such power grabs, on the grounds that “politics ain’t beanbag,” is regrettable and makes me nostalgic for liberal proceduralism.

When people stop wanting a level playing field, they opt for a more confrontational model of politics — but there are several such models on offer, or perhaps it would be better to say that there are several kinds of confrontational practices, from the snarky to the murderous. In a new essay at the Hog Blog, I have tried to offer a taxonomy of those confrontational practices, and a suggestion that those of us who would like to see a lowering in our current level of toxicity should probably focus our attention on the people whose behavior is closest to our own. Adjacency as a guide to action.

Let me add to this gumbo one more idea — one that I should probably develop further at some point.

I often hear it said that people who reject illiberalism (of the right and the left, insofar as those terms have any meaning today) and who are committed to proceduralism are “centrists,” and while that might often be the case, it’s isn’t necessarily. I do not consider myself a centrist — indeed, my recent move towards anarchism (about which I’d like to say more, but I have to wait until my essay on the subject comes out) takes me considerably farther from the “center” of the current system than the Left Purity Cultists or the MAGA-heads, both of whom basically just want Management to take their side. There’s a simple distinction between ends and means at work here: the political ends I envision are pretty radical, but the means by which I hope to achieve them are peaceable and centered on persuasion, fair-mindedness, respect for the integrity of my political opponents, even charity. By contrast, the illiberals of left and right want to employ drastic means, but their ends would leave transnational capitalism securely in place. They’d just have managed to climb the greasy pole to the top; I’d like to take down the pole.