The Woke Left has Turned its Back on Liberalism
Talk to the author of, The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civil Virtue
A woke Democratic Party represents a betrayal of American liberalism…
PUBLIUS SPECIAL GUEST: F. H. Buckley, author of The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civil Virtue.
In today’s politics, there is a growing sense that liberalism has been tried and failed. Anti-liberal ideas we had thought long buried – the belief that inconvenient constitutional guardrails can be ignored and that democracy doesn’t matter unless our side wins – are now commonly accepted. This is true of both sides, but it’s especially true of the Left, which has come to dominate our culture and finds that liberalism gets in its way. Free-speech rights were all very well when the Left was the dissenter, but not after it ascended to power.
That is why conservatives in Britain and America should recognise that they’re the true liberal party. Disraeli thought that the Tory Party should stand for the common good of all Britons, and that’s precisely what liberalism seeks. Whatever else it might be, liberalism is an egalitarian creed that rejects special privileges for one race or group. Policies that abandon the criterion of universalisability don’t even count as moral theories.
In America, the GOP of Lincoln and Eisenhower was a proudly liberal party, and shorn of the candidate’s crudities that is what attracts voters to Trump. They recognise that a woke Democratic Party represents a betrayal of American liberalism, as found in the principles of the Founders and as restated by Lincoln.
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This spirited book traces the roots of liberalism through the noblest traditions, virtues, institutions and longings embedded in Western culture.
"Are conservatives the only liberals left? F.H. Buckley's intriguing and intelligent book demystifies the confusion surrounding the real meaning of liberalism. His is a compelling argument and a great book that conservatives and genuine liberals should read.”
—Frank Furedi author of The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its History
Liberalism is under attack from both left and right, but anti-liberals have failed to understand how the tradition defines our idea of civic virtue. Liberalism is not an ideology that stands above our practices and judges them, but a practice itself, an inheritance of virtues, institutions, customs, and longings embedded in our culture and passed on through our memories and stories of moral heroes.
In this book, Buckley explains how we learned magnanimity from the Code of Chivalry and to avoid brutishness from the Code of the Gentleman; how, through the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and the novels of Charles Dickens, kindness became a liberal virtue; how the republican virtue of the Founders can be traced back to fourteenth century Sienese merchants. From the stories that comprise the Western Tradition of liberalism, we learned the civic virtues that are the efficient secret of American constitutional government.
The anti-liberal cult of wokeness has attempted to cancel this tradition, but it will not long survive. It offers a creed of sin without absolution, of guilt without soul-easing joys, of frowns without laughter. It rejects the West’s high culture and offers nothing in its place. Without learning, art, industry, or anything that might attract a person, its emptiness will soon be seen by all, and liberalism will continue to inspire the civic virtues of our culture.
BIO: F. H. Buckley, author of The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civil Virtue, is a Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law. He is a frequent media guest and has appeared on Morning Joe, CNN, The Rush Limbaugh Show, C‑SPAN, NPR, and numerous other outlets. He is a senior editor at the American Spectator and a columnist for the New York Post, and he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and many other newspapers. His most recent books are The Republican Workers Party (2018); The Republic of Virtue (2017); The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America (2016); The Once and Future King (2015); and American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (2020)
F. H. Buckley, author of The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civil Virtue.