Meaning

I just finished reading Fareed Zakaria’s Age of Revolutions. It’s an excellent book and I’ll review it in more detail in another post, but today I wanted to focus on just one of his observations.

It’s about meaning. Zakaria says that one of the reasons for the rise of worldwide far-right populism is the very success of its opposite: classical liberalism. As classically liberal ideas, like reason and individualism, have advanced in the last century or so, he posits that people have lost meaning in their lives. Church attendance is down as is faith in all manner of secular institutions. Hard-right populists offer a certain kind of perverse grounding in blood and soil nationalism.

I think there’s something to Zakaria’s theory, although it’s not original to him. Many others, most notably centrist columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks, have been making this point for years.

I get it intellectually, but I suppose it’s part of my deeply classically liberal soul that I don’t feel it. I feel no emptiness at the center of my life. And I don’t think it’s my government’s job to fill up that center if I did find it lacking.

I don’t feel the need for religion. And, in fact, tossing off the burden of my Catholic faith over forty years ago was one of the happiest, best things I’ve ever done. I’ve never reconsidered or looked back or felt the need to explore other faiths. I am not a spiritual person and I have no desire to become one. I do respect other people’s religions so long as they respect my right to have none. I understand how religion can provide meaning in a person’s life and, if it works for them, who am I to second guess it. I’m not religious, but I’m also not anti-religious.

I’m not much of a nationalist either. I love America, but not for the blood and soil reasons that Trumpers do. I love the classically liberal ideas that America stands for. To me, America isn’t the flag or the land itself or the language and it’s certainly not the religion. It’s the values of free speech, individualism, reason, the rule of law, tolerance and pluralism. In my view, you don’t have to be white or Christian or a native English speaker to be an American. But you do have to believe in these classically liberal ideas. And if you weren’t born here, that’s fine too, so long as you’re in the country legally.

And yet, our President-elect and convicted felon does not believe in these things. And to make matters worse, unlike his last go at this, he has now surrounded himself with yes-men and fellow authoritarian populists. And, as Ezra Klein pointed out in his latest piece, it’s not just his aides and cabinet appointments. Tech bros and other private sector powers are lining up to kiss his ring. And even the Democrats seem unable to work up much in the way of furor for what he’s about to do.

That’s not all bad because the Left messed it up last time. The major protest to the new Trump Administration in January, 2017 was the Women’s March. That was awful because it said everything you needed to know about what the Left gets wrong. It should have been a march for liberal values — a march for free speech, reason and the rule of law. Instead, it was a march built around identity, excluding half the population, at least in its billing. And, even among the organizers, they couldn’t agree on who was the greater victim and who was welcome. What if you were a pro-life woman? Well…

It would have been good for them to remember that Martin Luther King’s successful march in August of 1963 was not a Black People’s March. He billed it as a “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” It was built around an inclusive idea that was universal, not around a specific identity.

So, not repeating that mistake is a good thing, but my party does have to do and say something. Taking some time to let things play out a bit and considering how to respond makes sense. But it almost feels as if the world has given up on classical liberalism and resigned itself to another Darks Ages of superstition and repression. Why anyone finds life’s meaning in a closed mind is just not something I understand.

But, for what it’s worth, here in our little neck of the woods at YSDA we’ll make it a point to keep reminding ourselves and our readers of what’s good about liberalism. Populism is our enemy and we’ll never forget that. It’s our plan not to recant even as they prepare to burn us at the stake, though we reserve the right to change our minds as our toes start to get warm.

If the problem that has brought the curse of populism upon us is a certain lack of meaning in people’s lives then we’ve got a long Dark Ages ahead. Because, not only does liberalism not pretend to offer that meaning, it is emphatically opposed to doing so. Rather, liberalism creates the freedom for each individual to discover that for himself. Some people find that scary and unsettling. I find it worth defending.