Four Reasons Why Classical Liberalism Ultimately Fails

It's time for the soft Right to come to terms with its inherent weakness

The premise for this article might seem surprising to many who are used to believing that the Fukuyaman “end of history,” with its proposed ultimate victory of liberal democracy and market capitalism, is a done deal. After all, we look around the world and see the spread of democracy (even if by military force) taking place, as well as seeing the world seemingly integrated into a global economy characterized by complete fungibility of capital, resources, and labour. Yet, while this may be the façade which we are presented, it is manifestly obvious that most of what is called “democracy” is a sham and most of what is called “capitalism” is merely a cover for cronyism at the highest levels. This is the case even in the United States. We can no longer call our system “liberal” in any sort of classical sense when you can be jailed for referring to someone with the “wrong” pronoun and where the supposedly “free” press is effectively only the propaganda arm of one political party.

All over the world, classical liberalism is being supplanted by socialism and progressivism. This is obvious. What is even more obvious is that classical liberalism has been completely unable to prevent this from occurring. While there are some places where the tide is at least being slowed, this is due to the efforts of nationalists and others calling for stronger government along reactionary and traditional lines, not by those advocating for Reaganism, Thatcherism, or other manifestations of modern classical liberalism. Indeed, the two primary expressions of modern classical liberalism – libertarianism and American-style conservatism – are basically failures in every way. Libertarianism has devolved into a clown show of competing virtue signals, while conservatism (which has yet to actually conserve anything) has fastened onto itself the straitjacket of ideological dogmatism dictated to it by neo-conservatives and K-Street lobbyists.

We should not be surprised, however, that this has been the case. Classical liberalism itself was doomed from its inception. The reason for this is that classical liberalism derived directly from the sort of shoddy and shallow philosophies that drove the so-called “Enlightenment.” The Enlightenment – which we were all told was a good thing by our publik skoolz – represented a marked departure by Western civilisation from traditional realities upon which successful Western cultures were built. In contrast to the traditional values of the West, Enlightenment values represented a very skewed, unrealistic form of wishful thinking. Once these departures began to be codified into practice at the national level, it was only a matter of time before the leftward drift affected even the most morally well-insulated nations.

Below, I would like to discuss four basic areas where classical liberalism as an Enlightenment philosophy was set up for failure from the beginning.

Its Belief in the Inherent Goodness of Man

One of the core premises of the Enlightenment which set it apart from earlier periods in European history, was the belief on the part of the philosophes that man was inherently good. Rejecting the earlier biblical view of the inherent sin nature of man, Enlightenment thinkers taught that men were basically reasonable and inclined toward doing good, but bad influences, a poor upbringing and so forth, led men to do wicked things. With the proper environment, man’s natural inclinations toward goodness and rationality could be assured.

Of course, that this view of man’s nature was laughably unrealistic is obvious to any thinking person. There never has been any such thing as a “noble savage.” The peoples who existed closest to the proposed “state of nature” turned out to have constantly made war on and enslaved each other, engaging in all manner of bestial practices and cannibalism. But even in modern, “educated” countries, man still acts as wickedly as he ever has. Teaching men facts and theories, giving him a high standard of living, providing him with extensive license to indulge his desires as he chooses – these have not made man better. They’ve merely given him more tools and opportunities with which to work evil. This much is apparent to anyone who reads the news.

This is the result of the failure on the part of Enlightenment man – including classical liberal thinkers such as America’s Founders – to understand the true purpose and role of education. There has long been a belief in the magical ability of “education” – of the mere imparting of facts, science, theories, and so forth – to somehow render men rational and reasoned. This bears fruit in the modern day’s emphasis on credentialism – the belief that merely by possessing a piece of paper that someone is somehow a “better,” or even more knowledgeable person. What those who imbibe classically liberal Enlightenment values fail to realise is that the only education which can truly make men better is that which recognises the inherently sinful nature of man and seeks to overcome it by appealing to the moral and ethical traditions of our civilizational bases in Christianity and classical culture. St. Paul and Plato will succeed where John Dewey and Rousseau will fail.

Its Blind Trust in Constitutionalism

Because classical liberalism holds to a faulty anthropology, it naturally follows that its emphasis on constitutionalism will also ultimately end up failing. The reverence for the Constitution shown by many American conservatives, while perhaps laudatory from a standpoint of loyalty to principles, nevertheless serves to illustrate the failings of this view of government. Simply put, constitutionalism posits that governments and men in power can be restrained by pieces of paper. Because men are thought to be good, they are thought to be hindered by appeal to a governing document alone. Yet, this is shown not to be the case every time a federal judge discovers some new penumbra in that document or whenever a legislature or president completely ignores it, as happens all the time. The conservative hope that the Constitution will “stop big government” has never once been shown as realistic. The perpetual tendency on the part of American government since the establishment of the Constitution of 1789 has been towards greater and greater federal and executive power.

This is natural, of course. The fundamental reality of human government is that the division of power is inferior to its concentration in the hands of a strong executive. This is what serves to best restrain the lawless proclivities of the citizenry of any nation. This was the lesson of the Roman Principate, and it has been the lesson of the American Republic. Likewise, it has been the lesson of every other place that has attempted to put Enlightenment, classically liberal style constitutions into effect, hoping that mere paper documents would restrain the baser instincts of mankind. We can look across this globe and see how well that has really worked out.

Its Fallacious Belief in Human Equality

A natural outflowing of the belief that all men are inherently good and can be educated into reason is the dogma of human equality. “All men are created equal,” and all that. If all men are good, then all men are equally interchangeable in their role as citizens and contributors to the “general will” of the community. All men are equally worthy to partake of the increasingly divided shares of political power that comes with the never-ending expansion of the franchise. It is a short step, then, from the belief in political equality to the belief in every kind of equality, coupled with the ever-expanding effort to force men to be equal in every way. Harrison Bergeron ceases to be satire by becoming reality.

Yet, it is quite apparent that all men were not, in fact, created equal. Simply put, some men really are better than others – stronger, more intelligent, more industrious, more moral, more reasonable, more capable. By a combination of inhering traits and studious cultivation of abilities through practice, inequality naturally arises. This inequality has, during periods of disorder or societal expansion, resulted in the formation of aristocratic castes in virtually every nation and society that has ever existed. During extraordinary times of social stressing, naturally superior men rise to the top and govern the new order which emerges from the old. This is the natural and right order of things. Attempting to raise the lazy, the indigent, the stupid, the foolish to a level of equality with a society’s natural aristocrats (or rather, trying to bring the aristocrats down to the lower level) is fundamentally unnatural, and results in the sort of socially destructive inversions that we’re seeing all across the Western world today.

Its Obsession with Democracy

At this point, the conservative or libertarian may think, “Ah hah! I’ve got you now! The United States were formed as a republic, not a democracy!” Yes, we’ve heard that tired old trope time and time again. However, it ignores the fact that, due to its basis in Enlightenment values, the American Constitution was inevitably going to result in the establishment of a democratic form of government, rather than the sort of aristocratic republic that many conservatives believe was intended. That document was tailor-made to encourage the expansion of the voting franchise. This capacity was a feature, not a bug, for those who crafted it. And indeed, it worked as advertised. While many would blame the Civil War for the ultimate democratisation of American government, the fact is that most states (even the Southern states) had established universal manhood suffrage by the 1840s. Democracy was the form that, even if not explicitly intended, was inevitably to arise within a government defined by that document.

This is only natural. Once again, if all men are inherently good, and if all men are equally capable of exercising a share in government, then democracy is the only “rational” choice. If one accepts the fallacious premises, then the fallacious conclusion naturally follows. Yet, because the premises are false, so is the belief in the superiority of democracy. The fact is that practically every democratic system in history has failed within a couple of centuries. Athenian democracy – touted by moderns as the epitome of responsible self-government – was a morass of failure that constantly extorted its allies and started wars it couldn’t finish (sound familiar?) and was despised by the very philosophers we look back to in admiration. Very few people back in the 4^th century BC lamented the passing of Athenian democracy – not even the Athenians themselves.

One might wish to argue that democracy protects a nation from tyranny. Really? Looking at America today, do we really see democracy protecting us from tyranny when our lives are hectored by a million nagging regulations put into place by our (supposedly) democratically elected government? Democracy merely serves to give rise to demagogues who then subvert that democracy toward their ends of establishing a tyranny in their own hands. This is why the ancients and the medievals deeply distrusted democracy – they’d seen in it action and didn’t like what they saw. It has been rightly said that even a bad king is better than a bad democracy. It’s better to have one tyrant 3,000 miles away than 3,000 tyrants one mile away. Let us never forget, as well, that it was a democracy that put Socrates to death, while it was a monarch who made Plato what he was.

Conclusion

The evidences of history and human nature are very clear: the Enlightenment was a tremendously bad idea that rested upon logically and empirically unsupportable premises. As a result, anything that is based upon this set of values and philosophies – including the classical liberalism of America’s founding and of modern conservatives and libertarians – ultimately will decay and fall away. This we see today in the state of American conservatism and libertarianism. If we wish to have truly natural and sound government, then we must look back to before the Enlightenment, back to the traditions and systems of our ancestors, back to the order and virtues of days gone by. Our modern world is really just an anomaly, a fluke which by all apparent evidence will not last much longer and which will return to systems of authority, hierarchy, and order.