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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Perspective: Here's what got David Brooks angry last week
The day I encountered David Brooks in person, I was first struck, as we listened next to each other at a conference, at how short this larger-than-life columnist was. Later, at another gathering he organized, I saw for myself why he calls himself 'normally a mild guy' as he navigated with grace the loud protests from one angry attendee. But this week, something set Brooks off. Like other Americans, the journalist has been concerned about changes taking place in the country. He wrote with particular concern about the consequences of tariffs and illiberal impulses now emerging on the right. Yet I've never seen this mild-mannered journalist, followed by millions of Americans, so frustrated as he was in last week's column, which referenced the growing societal impact of a sentiment voiced by J.D. Vance in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention: 'People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Brooks noted the similarity of Vance's remarks to an earlier Memorial Day essay from Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, who he called a 'popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy.' Deneen wrote in 2009 that soldiers 'die not for abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens — so much as they are willing to brave all for the men and women of their unit.' Brooks pointed out that research by historian James M. McPherson rebuts this historical argument, with the majority of thousands of Civil War letters showing 'patriotic motivations' as one reason they went into combat. That includes a Union soldier writing his wife who had begged him to stop fighting and come home: 'Remember that thousands went forth and poured out their life's blood in the Revolution to establish this government; and 'twould be a disgrace to the whole American people if she had not noble sons enough who had the spirit of '76 in their hearts.' This historical debate isn't what got Brooks angry, though. It's how he believes this minimizing of 'abstractions' and 'ideals' appears to be shaping what this administration is currently doing. 'The Bible is built on abstractions,' the columnist notes. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Sermon on the Mount contains a bunch of abstractions: blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the merciful. Believe it or not, down through the centuries, billions of people have dedicated their lives to these abstractions.' Of course, there are many great Americans who appreciate what President Trump is doing — and see Republican actions as realigning the country with its founding ideals. Brooks himself notes in his essay, 'I have no trouble simultaneously opposing Trump policies and maintaining friendship and love for friends and family who are Trump supporters. In my experience, a vast majority of people who support Trump do so for legitimate or at least defensible reasons.' Many of them rightly see a country that has strayed from Judeo-Christian morality. And they appreciate ways the Trump administration is trying to move the nation in a better direction. Along with pulling the country away from DEI mandates and biological men in women's sports, they cheer the cost-cutting attempts by DOGE as past due and the security of the American border that most people (on both the left and right) saw as problematic. As someone who has studied pharmaceutical companies in the past, I'm also among those who believe we're overdue in asking fundamental questions about incentives for our health care system — including the funding that shapes basic medical research we depend on to guide our treatment decisions. Heaven knows we can use more encouragement to improve our health as Americans, which is another focus of this administration. All this feels encouraging to many, and I can sincerely understand why. I wonder, do Trump supporters also understand the reasons others may be concerned? In our hyper-partisan discourse, it's become too easy to make knee-jerk references to 'far left radicals' and attribute any concern to 'Trump derangement syndrome.' Like in a fraying marriage, any hope of deeper reconciliation among Americans depends on at the very least understanding where different people are coming from. So, just like I've invited liberals for years to more deeply hear conservative concerns, I believe this latest column offers a window for Trump-supporters to understand more fully the sincerely-held concerns of his critics. Far from being a 'progressive,' this man is one of the most widely known conservative commentators in the world. I'll recap Brooks' concerns in simple form — centered around three differences in perspective the columnist proposes as fundamental: 1. Two forms of nationalism. On one hand, Brooks describes 'aspirational nationalism' reflected in people like Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan who saw America not only as a homeland, but also as 'founded to embody and spread the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.' On the other hand, he describes a nationalism centered on ancestors and homeland, traditionally more common in Europe — reflecting 'the belief that America is just another collection of people whose job is to take care of our own.' 2. Two conceptions of society. Compared with a more 'universalist' conception of society centered on love of family and neighbor as foundational to larger love towards a nation or humankind, Brooks describes an 'identity politics conception of society' that shows up on both sides of the political spectrum now — namely, 'that life is a zero-sum struggle between racial, national, partisan and ethnic groups.' 3. Two kinds of morality. Compared with a morality based on universal ideals, Brooks also references an openly 'tribal morality.' In this, he references the President's own Memorial Day message on social media, which opened with this line: 'Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country.' Laying aside wearisome debates over the President's use of language, Brooks often presses readers to ask what language like this is doing inside us — shaping how we see and relate to others around us. Brooks goes on to argue here that the philosophies behind this administration (often called 'Trumpism') are gradually nudging our nation as a whole towards a morality, a society and a nationalism based less on universal ideals — and reflecting more of a zero-sum, tribal motivation that centers primarily on taking care of our own. This can be seen, Brooks says, as 'giant effort to narrow the circle of concern to people just like us.' He raises concern that the ultimate effect on our country is to 'amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.' On this basis, he says, increasing numbers of Americans have been persuaded to turn away from Ukraine, from the recipients of aid programs in Africa, and to turn against immigrants as a whole. Yet 'if America is an idea,' Brooks appeals, 'then Black and brown people from all over the world can become Americans by coming here and believing that idea. If America is an idea, then Americans have a responsibility to promote democracy. We can't betray democratic Ukraine.' Brooks acknowledges that Vance himself referred to America as partly a set of ideas in his Republican National Convention acceptance speech, but notes the Vice President emphasized mostly the idea of a homeland where his ancestors were buried for generations. I agree with Brooks that our gaze must go deeper than policy level details to the moral and spiritual realm if we want to understand what's taking place in America right now. But I disagree with him that Trump and Vance are somehow intentionally causing harm — 'trying to degrade America's moral character to a level more closely resembling their own.' Yet there's something important in what Brooks is saying that's worth considering, especially his contention that we're continuing to separate ourselves as a country from some of the higher ideals that motivated our founders. Once again, many see President Trump as helping return America to these foundations. But in Brooks' view, the effort to advance a more isolationist, internally-focused America ethos 'stain(s) the memory' of those who gave their lives in the early revolution and who fought to preserve the Union — including 'the men who froze at Valley Forge' and 'who stormed the beaches at Normandy and Guadalcanal,' motivated by something far loftier than survival, conquest, or power alone.
New York Times
7 days ago
- General
- New York Times
How to Make a Mild Guy Really Angry
When I was a baby pundit my mentor, Bill Buckley, told me to write about whatever made me angriest that week. I don't often do that, mostly because I don't get angry that much — it's not how I'm wired. But this week I'm going with Bill's advice. Last Monday afternoon, I was communing with my phone when I came across a Memorial Day essay that the Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen wrote back in 2009. In that essay, Deneen argued that soldiers aren't motivated to risk their lives in combat by their ideals. He wrote, 'They die not for abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens — so much as they are willing to brave all for the men and women of their unit.' This may seem like a strange thing to get angry about. After all, fighting for your buddies is a noble thing to do. But Deneen is the Lawrence Welk of post-liberalism, the popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy. He's a central figure in the National Conservatism movement, the place where a lot of Trump acolytes cut their teeth. In fact, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, JD Vance used his precious time to make a point similar to Deneen's. Vance said, 'People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Elite snobbery has a tendency to set me off, and here are two guys with advanced degrees telling us that regular soldiers never fight partly out of some sense of moral purpose, some commitment to a larger cause — the men who froze at Valley Forge, the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy and Guadalcanal. But that's not what really made me angry. It was that these little statements point to the moral rot at the core of Trumpism, which every day disgraces our country, which we are proud of and love. Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Remote Wyoming vacation lodge emerges as haven for US ‘dissident' right
A vacation lodge known as the Wagon Box Inn in the tiny town of Story, Wyoming, has emerged as an unlikely hub of rightwing ambitions to reorient US politics and culture. Events held there since it opened, and others planned for this spring, have brought together figures from the so-called 'dissident right', political figures backed by reactionary currents in Silicon Valley, and proponents of the 'network state' movement. The dissident right is a term that describes rightwing intellectual currents that go beyond and even attack mainstream conservatives for their perceived concessions to liberals on issues like race, feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Network state proponents envision a network of extra-national communities that exist beyond the control of nation-states. The Guardian contacted the Wagon Box founder and owner Paul McNiel for comment. He did not respond directly but instead posted a screenshot of the request to X appended with commentary. There, McNiel said he was driven by 'good-faith curiosity' that events there had been 'largely focused on a suspicion of 'the machine'' and boasted of the 'breadth of the politics represented', citing appearances by the likes of Patrick Deneen and Seneca Scott. Deneen is a Notre Dame professor and conservative political theorist whose 2023 book Regime Change 'offered a preview of the Trump administration's intention to breathe fire on America's cultural institutions' whose fans include JD Vance, the vice-president. Scott, who McNiel described as a '90s Democrat who wants a safe community for his family and goats', is a former union organizer based in Oakland, California, whose activism, political campaigning and social media output have targeted transgender people, homeless encampments, local media organizations, progressive politicians and city employees. Sheridan county property records indicate that Paul McNiel bought the property that includes the Wagon Box – formerly a holiday destination and RV park – in August 2022. Property records, satellite imagery, and media posted on social media platforms and on the Wagon Box website indicate a semi-rural location on the western fringes of Story. Since McNiel took control of the property, it has played host to a string of events, many of them featuring figures associated with overlapping rightwing movements. The project has drawn concerns in local media, but garnered a laudatory write-up in the Bari Weiss-founded Free Press. Free Press investors include rightwing tech figures like Marc Andreessen and Trump administration 'crytpo czar' David Sacks. McNiel – billed as a millionaire in an appearance on a real estate investment podcast in 2021 – is the principal of a legion of LLCs, according to company records in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana and North Carolina. Property records and data brokers indicate that McNiel or LLCs controlled by him have bought and sold dozens of properties – many of them trailer parks or similar sites for low-cost housing – in at least three states. According to founding documents on its website, Wagon Box is run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a term for organizations managed in part via decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts. A 2021 Wyoming law allows DAOs to incorporate in the state, despite their often anonymous ownership structure. The sparsely populated state is notorious for a 'cowboy cocktail' of loose financial regulations and opaque company ownership. 'We're not northern Idaho or even Montana. We've so far managed to not attract the crazy far right to our state,' said Elizabeth Storer, a Democratic state representative from Jackson who has spoken critically of Wyoming's libertarian financial laws and opacity. 'We've allowed just about anyone to come into Wyoming because of our low tax environment, our limited liability corporation laws and the use of registered agents all over the state – it allows people to offshore funds in Wyoming with a great deal of secrecy,' she added. The current version of a document explaining the DAO aligns the project with the network state movement, claiming that 'the grand project of liberalism is crumbling, and that in its wake people are looking for new avenues of allegiance and interdependence'. The document continues 'Balaji Srinivasan, among others, has identified this shift and suggested a process for uniting modern technologies with ancient human trends of association to create network states', providing a link to Srinivasan's self-published 2022 book of the same name. Srinavisan is an entrepreneur and investor formerly associated with companies including Andreessen-Horowitz and Coinbase. (That company's current CEO, Brian Armstrong, is another outspoken booster of network states). For more than a decade, Srinivasan has advocated a radical anarcho-capitalist vision in which like-minded people can 'exit' and place themselves beyond the legal and economic reach of nation-states in parallel, networked special economic zones. His ideas are often couched in vituperative attacks on his perceived enemies, including academics, government employees and the media. As early as 2013, Srinavisan was advocating a 'reverse diaspora' in which people enabled by technology could assemble in 'cloud cities … outside the United States'. These 'could be floating cities in international waters as put forth by Peter Thiel, or one of the more ambitious 80,000 person colonies on Mars desired by Elon Musk'. Soon after, in response to reporting linking Silicon Valley figures to the anti-democratic neo-reactionary movement and its leading light, Curtis Yarvin, Srinavasan reportedly emailed Yarvin with the suggestion that 'it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out'. He later cited Yarvin in The Network State, writing: 'As Yarvin in particular has documented at length, the most important left-authoritarians are not formally part of the elected state at all. They are the professors, activists, bureaucrats, and journalists.' He describes people in these fields as constituting 'the control circuitry for the US government'. Last September, he opened a residential network school for would-be builders of network nations, reportedly located in Malaysia's Forest City, whose 'requirements include an admiration of 'western values', seeing Bitcoin as the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and trusting AI over human courts and judges'. The network state vision has already inspired an attempt to build a city, California Forever, in rural Solano county, with investors including Andreessen and the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Network state advocates also reportedly want to construct a similar 'charter city' in Greenland if it is annexed by the United States. Donald Trump has floated the idea of creating 10 such 'freedom cities' on federal land, including San Francisco's Presidio. The movement also overlaps with efforts to mount a rightwing takeover of city governments in San Francisco and Oakland, with the likes of the Y Combinator CEO, Garry Tan, backing both projects. Srinivasan has offered lurid fantasies of what a tech-controlled San Francisco might look like. In an October 2023 podcast interview, he envisioned a city controlled by tech-aligned 'grays' enjoying privileged access to large parts of the city, bribing a pliant police department, and with 'blues' – San Francisco's liberals – subject to exclusion and hostile propaganda. Devin Burghart, the executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Righs and a longtime observer of far-right organizing in the mountain west, told the Guardian in an interview that the Wagon Box was significant for being one of the first real-world attempts at constructing a 'network state' hub beyond California. 'They've tipped their hand a bit with the constant references to [accelerationist theorist] Nick Land and Italian futurism. This is a different veneer of the apocalyptic, post-democratic world view that is also quite common with militia and prepper types.' The Wagon Box reportedly attracted immediate scepticism from residents of tiny unincorporated Story in the months following its establishment. Attenders at a 2023 public meeting reportedly expressed concerns both about the draft DAO document's vision of ''capital seed for a nascent network state' and … a place for either gatherings or apocalyptic retreat', and McNiel's association with the notorious anti-government activist Ryan Payne. In 2018, Payne was sentenced to federal prison on conspiracy charges after playing the role of, according to a federal judge, 'an architect' of the 2016 Malheur national wildlife refuge occupation, in which he participated alongside the likes of the current fugitive Ammon Bundy. Wagon Box has hosted a series of events since McNiel's acquisition, many with guests and themes associated with the far right. The 27 April event, Dawn in the West: A Futurist Serata (DitW) was subtitled 'An UncleTed Talk', a reference both to Ted talks and a nickname for the so-called Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. Advertising materials highlighted themes including the work of Land, who, alongside Yarvin, is one of the progenitors of the neo-reactionary movement, whose anti-democratic ideas have been cited as an inspiration for the Trump administration's gutting of the federal government. Another advertised speaker at that event was Jonathan Keeperman. The Guardian identified Keeperman in 2024 as the man behind the L0m3z X account and rightwing publisher Passage Press. Keeperman-founded Passage Press is also listed as a participant in Wagon Box's 31 May roundtable Coalition for Cultural Renewal (CCR). The schedule for a Wagon Box event last August promised a conversation between Keeperman and the journalist James Pogue on 'the failure of liberalism and globalization'. Pogue has written extensively about the new right for media outlets including the New York Times and Vanity Fair. In a post at the Wagon Box's Substack newsletter, Pogue and McNiel are pictured together in a photograph purportedly taken inside the Passage-Press-sponsored Coronation Ball in Washington this January, and described in a caption as 'Wagon Box brothers'. Keeperman is one of the overlaps between Wagon Box and a broader far-right milieu. Keeperman, for example, spoke last month at a pro-natalist conference in Austin, Texas, whose speaker roster included self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science. At the event, in response to a small protest on site, Keeperman took to X, posting: 'NATALISM IS NAZISM Say it loud say it proud.' Balaji Srinivasan spoke at the same conference in 2023. The Natalism conference founder, Kevin Dolan, is listed in Texas company records as the principal of a non-profit; a newly incorporated Eternal Capital Texas Inc; and Exit, a men-only organization which he characterized in a Substack newsletter as a rightwing business network which is 'not just about making life in the regime more tolerable … setting ourselves up to succeed as it declines'. He founded that organization following Guardian reporting in 2021 that identified him as the man behind an influential 'DezNat' account, '@extradeadjcb'. Exit is billed as a participant in Wagon Box's CCR event, which will include other far-right publishers , along with Murphy's Other Life and hard-right online magazine IM-1776. The Guardian previously reported on IM-1776's support of authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele; its enthusiasm for extremist political figures such as Gabriele D'Annunzio and Kaczynski; and its close links with contemporary hard-right activists like the culture warrior Christopher Rufo, Erik Prince and would-be 'warlord' Charles Haywood. IM-1776's literary editor, Daniel Miller, is a speaker at DitW, and in YouTube videos posted to Wagon Box's channel he is characterized as a writer-in-residence. In a January article for IM-1776, Miller called for Donald Trump to overthrow the government of the UK led by Keir Starmer and 'liberate' the country, saying it was run by 'a criminal regime' dominated by 'a mafia-like organization of pathological personalities', a necessity 'as clear as the imperative of the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia and remove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979'. Miller did not respond to a request for comment. Events this spring also bill speakers associated with a tech-backed hard-right political movement in California's Bay Area. Scott – who has run both for city council and mayor in Oakland – is set to appear at the Doomer Optimism Campout in June. Scott's political activities in Oakland – including the candidacies and his advocacy for the recall of former mayor Sheng Thao last year – have been punctuated by scandals. During his 2022 campaign media reports revealed a 2021 arrest on charges of brandishing a firearm, in an incident that took place not far from the community garden he founded in West Oakland. Those charges were later dismissed. Last December, the city of Oakland applied for a restraining order against Scott over his alleged harassment of a city worker during the recall campaign. Among other things, Scott reportedly claimed that the employee was a pedophile on social media and posted their address publicly. In a February settlement, Scott agreed to stop posting personal information about the employee online. Scott has received backing from rightwing tech figures including Tan, who, like Scott, has agitated against progressive approaches to homelessness and law and order, and employed bareknuckle social-media posting to promote his views. 'If you want Oakland to be great then you will follow and support Seneca,' Tan wrote on X last year. In Oakland, Scott has drawn scrutiny for anti-transgender commentary and attacks on progressive voices in politics and media. Scott appeared at another Wagon Box event in summer 2024 in conversation about 'Cities: urban agriculture, crime, and criminal justice reform'. Pogue also appeared alongside Scott at his community garden in a 2023 event hosted by a Scott-run non-profit, Neighbors Together Oakland, that was last year shuttered by California's attorney general last year for conducting fundraising without a non-profit license. In an interview with Free Press in 2023, Scott had said he planned to use that non-profit as a platform to support '100 nontraditional candidates' for city councils, school boards, and potentially higher offices across the US. Another Doomer Optimism Campout speaker is Andrew Hock, a Tennessee political consultant who was reportedly involved with an alleged attempt to facilitate anonymous donations in support of the recall of Mayor Thao. Questions about Foundational Oakland Unite's fundraising came amid a flood of campaign money into pro-recall groups, much of it from big-money donors. As previously reported in the Guardian, deep-pocketed tech figures have been involved in attempts to drag politics to the right in Oakland and San Francisco. In April, 2024 the Thao recall campaign sent an email to prospective donors offering 'options for donors to remain private if you prefer'. Oakland city law forbids anonymous donations to political candidates. The message included an email address for Andrew Hock at Foundational Oakland Unites, a political action committee founded by Scott, as the main point of contact for donations. According to 2024 reporting by the Oaklandside, Scott previously employed Hock as a paid campaign consultant during his 2022 mayoral campaign. Scott claims to be a part-owner of Hock's campaign consultant group, Laschian Consulting. In an April 17 post to X, Scott claimed that Laschian Consulting 'has planted its flag and is already in talks to help other major US cities fight back against the soggies and their anti-human agenda', using a self-coined derogatory term to refer to social democrats. 'If your city is spiraling due to failed progressive policies and a coordinated NGO + public sector union takeover, give us a call. Maybe we can help you save your city too.' In January, Thao, the recalled mayor, was herself federally indicted over allegations including that she solicited political donations in violation of campaign finance laws. The alleged straw donor campaign for Thao was uncovered by Oakland's Public Ethics Commission in an investigation that began half a decade ago. Though the PEC did not make a criminal referral, FBI white-collar crime investigators in Oakland picked up the thread and built their own criminal case independently. The PEC's budget was slashed earlier this year amid a citywide fiscal crisis, severely impacting its ability to complete ongoing investigations. Hock did not respond to requests for comment.
New York Times
26-01-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Renewed Liberalism Can Meet the Populist Challenge
With President Trump back in the White House, it should be abundantly clear that 'establishment liberalism' is no longer viable. We need a new liberalism that is more faithful to its original values but adapted to our times. Establishment liberalism is liberalism as it came to be practiced in the mainstream of Western countries and their institutions throughout the post-World War II era, by both center-right and center-left parties. But a renewed liberalism must rediscover its most inspiring roots: an energy coming from opposition to the unfair and unrestrained use of power; a commitment to freedom of thought and celebration of different approaches to our common problems; and a concern for the community as well as the individual as the basis of efforts to improve the opportunities of the disadvantaged. With Mr. Trump's radical agenda to reshape U.S. institutions, liberalism's revival is urgent: It is again in opposition and in a position to speak truth to power. Liberalism and its failure At its core, liberalism includes a bundle of philosophical ideas based on individual rights, suspicion of and constraints on concentrated power, equality before the law and some willingness to help the weakest and discriminated members of society. Liberalism is not just an abstract philosophy. It lays the foundation for institutions and systems that have contributed to the heights of human flourishing. Yet countries throughout the industrialized world have turned to right-wing populist parties such as the National Rally in France, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and AfD in Germany. And many detractors have proclaimed that liberalism is discredited. One of its best-known critics, Patrick Deneen — the author of the 2018 book 'Why Liberalism Failed' — recently emphasized the flaws of liberalism 'in an increasingly tyrannical state-corporate nexus that governs every minute aspect of our lives.' Mr. Deneen and other critics contend that liberal ideas were flawed from the beginning, because they attempted to change culture from elite institutions down and emphasized individual autonomy ahead of community. This critique ignores the many successes of liberalism (fighting fascism, the civil rights movement, the opposition to Soviet totalitarianism). It ignores that countries that switch from authoritarian political regimes to democracy, which tend to increase civil liberties and constraints on abuse of political power and coercion, typically experience faster economic growth, more stability and more spending and better outcomes in health and education. It ignores that we need liberalism because we are living in a world shaped by the largest corporations humanity has ever seen and powerful governments unshackled from democratic norms and armed with huge fiscal might and artificial intelligence. More important, these criticisms confound establishment liberalism with the very different roots of liberalism in the past. These roots can be gleaned from another 2018 book, 'The Lost History of Liberalism,' by Helena Rosenblatt, which recounts the sensibilities and struggles of the founders of liberalism from ancient Rome to European philosophers of the past four centuries. These liberal thinkers used to have a more expansive view, emphasizing human fallibility, community and ethical responsibilities related to reciprocity and working for the common good — not just radical individualism and an overarching emphasis on autonomy. Ms. Rosenblatt quotes Cicero, who could be considered the first philosopher in the liberal tradition: 'Since we are not born for ourselves alone,' he wrote 'we ought to contribute our part to the common good, and by the interchange of kind offices, both in giving and receiving, alike by skill, by labor and by the resources at our command, strengthen the social union of men among men.' Liberal thinkers were also diverse. Friedrich von Hayek, one of the most important liberal philosophers of the past two centuries, grappled with how to combine human ignorance and fallibility together with institutions protecting freedom. He wrote that 'the case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare depends.' Yet today's liberal progressives would reject even having Hayek in their ranks. Another important distinction among the founders of liberalism: They were in opposition to and often speaking truth to power. This made liberalism a philosophy that criticized how power was exercised by economic and political elites. We cannot understand the problems of the liberal establishment today without recognizing that it became the establishment and never adjusted to this new reality. The three pillars In the United States, establishment liberalism became the more or less bipartisan governing philosophy following the New Deal and World War II. Republicans from Dwight Eisenhower to Richard Nixon accepted it. The Barry Goldwater-Ronald Reagan conservative revolution rolled back some of the New Deal-era regulations, reduced taxes and favored large corporations, but three pillars of establishment liberalism grew in strength: (1) cultural liberalism, with emphasis on individualism, autonomy and progressive cultural attitudes; (2) the empowerment of educated elites, in the form of both technocracy and meritocracy, but going beyond just technical matters and extending to issues like moral values; and (3) an emphasis on establishing procedures for predictable application of laws and regulations. Each one had positives and negatives. The problem was that there was little balance of power. The way that liberalism became the establishment and turned into practice was not, after the 1980s, seriously or coherently questioned from within the Democratic Party in the United States and many center-left parties in Europe. Yet historically, these three pillars of the establishment were not essential to liberalism. At best, they should have been thought of as part of a bundle of practices adapted to the times and exigencies that the modern state encountered. Cultural liberalism was part of the spectrum of values that helped reduce discrimination against ethnic, religious and sexual minorities in the United States. But the balance here is delicate. It is one thing to defend minorities (and this is very consistent with liberalism as an opposition movement); it's an entirely different thing to impose values on people who do not hold them (for example, telling people which words are acceptable and which are not). Without the adequate balance of power, cultural liberalism shifted more and more toward imposing values. It also came to conceptualize liberty with individual rights, without recognizing the importance of reciprocal contribution to community. Empowerment of the educated elites: The past four decades have seen a steady increase in the economic, social and political power of college graduates and more recently of postgraduates. The ascendance of the educated elite is partly economic, driven by the decline of manual work in postindustrial society. It is also a consequence of the growing role that experts came to play in the state institutions and the intellectual towers of liberal democracies. Establishment liberalism and these elites justified this ascendance with meritocracy. But this justification also contributed to their top-down practice of imposing policies and cultural liberalism. The rest of society, in part as a reaction, came to view technocracy as biased and meritocracy as a rigged game. Procedures and effective governance: a big promise of liberal democracy was to deliver widely accessible, high-quality public services. This is what the British poet laureate John Betjeman pithily summarized when he wrote, 'Think of what our Nation stands for' — 'Democracy and proper drains.' Yet democracy came not to stand for proper drains anymore. We saw a proliferation of regulations to deal with safety and risks from new products, from cars to pharmaceuticals, and paperwork to deal with federal regulations on the environment and anti-discrimination provisions. These procedures have multiplied over time, and special interest groups have used them to push their own agendas (from NIMBYs stopping public housing to progressive groups piling on anti-discrimination paperwork on federal contracts). A pronounced decline in the efficiency of providing public services followed. Recent research by the economists Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow finds that from the 1960s to the 1980s, government spending per mile of highway increased more than threefold, most likely because additional regulations were introduced so that groups of citizens were not harmed by new highway construction. These came to be strongly policed by activists and special interest groups. Other economists have found similarly mounting inefficiencies in the construction industry, with a similar explanation: onerous land-use regulations. These three pillars combined to create the impression that liberalism was hectoring and not even efficient. It is true some of this discontent was manufactured by talk shows and right-wing media and social media. But some of it was real. The new liberalism At least three principles should guide a reform of liberalism. The first is a much greater emphasis on freedom of speech and a repudiation of 'thought-policing.' If liberalism is partly about our ignorance, fallibility and doubt about what is right, then it should always stand against efforts to shut down different thoughts and perspectives. This doesn't mean that certain types of social media cannot be regulated. But it does mean that liberals should welcome diversity of viewpoints and criticism and stop putting social pressure on those who deviate from the accepted lines. It also means that elite universities should be more welcoming of different ideas, including those from conservative thinkers. They should also more generally try to diversify their social-economic base, particularly from rural and manual worker backgrounds. The second principle should be an explicit attempt to have greater social-economic diversity among political activists and elites. Part of the problem and a major source of the lack of balance of power is that progressive activists are mostly from the upper middle classes, with elite education degrees (and few ties to working-class people). Center-left parties should explicitly welcome the working class and people without college degrees, particularly into leadership positions. These policies can work. Recent research shows how gender quotas put in place in the 1990s by the Swedish Social Democrats, requiring local candidates to alternate between men and women, were effective in promoting the representation of women, and they raised the quality of the candidates as well. The third principle should be a new approach to regulation that emphasizes effectiveness and minimizes paperwork and procedural barriers. The modern state, and especially liberal parties and politicians, have to find a way of regulating with minimal red tape and delay. The modern state also has to focus on core regulations: It is one thing to deal with risks from nuclear technology, new pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, and a completely different thing to build a bureaucracy for piling up permits for repairs or licensing hairdressers and massage therapists. One way to remake regulation is to eliminate many unnecessary regulations and empower politicians to streamline the regulatory process, with strict accountability following after the fact — meaning that rather than restricting what politicians and bureaucrats can do before policies are carried out, serious and well-designed accountability should come after policy execution and according to the success of the policies. Experimentation with different alternatives is key — which is another liberal idea that has been forgotten. The Democratic Party, arguably the worst offender in establishment liberalism's faults, can and should take the lead. It must oppose Mr. Trump when necessary, but Democrats should experiment with local and state governments where they hold power. There they can show how they can streamline regulations, promote more citizens from working-class backgrounds to positions of power and move away from all sorts of thought-policing.
