🗽 The legacy and future of liberalism: A Quick Q&A with … economist Deirdre McCloskey

'I agree with my friend Francis Fukuyama that liberalism is, so to speak, the natural state of adult humans. Liberalism is adultism.'

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,

In my Up Wing, conservative-futurist vision, liberalism is not discarded but repurposed. Classical liberal tenets — individual liberty, market dynamism, social mobility, and constrained government — form the bedrock of an open and humane society geared for innovation and prosperity. These principles are presented not as relics but rather essential scaffolding for building a wealthier, healthier, more opportunity-filled future (both down here and up there among the stars).

Looking back at the earliest days of the United States, economist Deirdre McCloskey writes in her recent essay, Economic Consequences of the American Revolution:

The cause of the Revolution . . . was a specifically liberal ideology. . . if the Revolution’s cause was always particularly outer, its greater cause and lasting effect were inner—it brought an entirely new idea of equality of permission into a world that had been, since the coming of agriculture, under an ancient and naturalized hierarchy.

(The essay is part of a collection in Capitalism and the American Revolution, one volume in a series covering various topics, produced by the American Enterprise Institute in the leadup to America’s 250th anniversary.)

After recently podcasting with her, I asked McCloskey a few quick questions about the significance of a country founded upon an idea, as well as what we can expect for the future of liberalism in the 21st century.

McCloskey is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. She is also a distinguished professor emerita of economics and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as a professor emerita of English and communication. She is the author of 25 books — including the magnificent Bourgeois trilogy and Why Liberalism Works — and author of over 500 articles on a wide variety of subjects.

---

1/ When a person hears the word liberalism, at least in the way that you mean, what do you want them to think of?

I want them to think of Adam Smith, the blessed Adam Smith, and if they don't know him, think of Henry David Thoreau, who was a 19th century classical liberal. He's a hero on the left, but that’s because they don't know him very well. The opening sentence of Civil Disobedience is, “[I heartily accept the motto,] ‘That government is best which governs least.’” I want them to think of those people and Cobden and Bright and all the other classical liberals, and I want them to understand that liberalism is extremely peculiarly discussed in the Western Hemisphere.

In the United States, it means social democratic. I was a socialist myself and have many social democratic friends. In Latin America, it means conservative, kind of the opposite of what it means in the United States. In Latin America it means policies good for the rich people enforced by the army. There must be something in the water of the Western hemisphere that's making them act like this.

2/ Do you think and perhaps fear that we've seen peak liberalism in the West?

I agree with my friend Francis Fukuyama that liberalism is, so to speak, the natural state of adult humans. Liberalism is adultism. It's what an adult wants: to have autonomy. Also connection. Both. Humans are that way and should be, it's nice. But we don't want to be someone's coerced slaves. I think that slavery is not the future of the world.

O'Brien, the party man in Nineteen Eighty-Four, tells his victim, Winston, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” I don't think that's the future of humanity.