The Book That Changed How I Think About Liberalism

Introduction

0:00If you find yourself bewildered by this moment where there's so much reason for despair and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me say I hear you. I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times Opinion, host of The Ezra Klein Show. And for me, the best way to beat back that bewildered feeling is to talk it out with the people who have ideas and frameworks for making sense of it. There is going to be plenty to talk about. You can find The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30You can find The Ezra Klein Show.

Illiberalism

1:00So we live in this moment when illiberalism is winning, when illiberalism is in power. I don't think anybody really argues that. What has surprised me about it is how weak liberalism has felt in response. I'm a liberal. I'm like a professional liberal, one involved in liberal politics. And I don't think at this moment I could tell you what liberalism's vision is, who its leaders are. In some way, I feel liberalism never really recovered from the Obama era when it had this grand victory in electing America's first black president,

1:38when it had this thoughtful, deliberate, and frankly quite popular liberal leader, and then it ended in Donald Trump. And not only Donald Trump once, Donald Trump twice. But here's the thing. Donald Trump is not working out. He is not making people want more of what he is. But if he's going to be beaten, if illiberal political forces are going to turn back, I think you're going to need a liberalism that is aspirational again.

2:13A liberalism that has moral imagination again. A liberalism that stands for more than not this.

Liberalism's Vision

2:20And so I've been on this sort of esoteric personal quest, reading all these books in the liberal canon, reading all these histories of liberalism, trying to think through, like, what in this very, very long tradition is valuable for us right now? And one of the books I came across in the search is called The Lost History of Liberalism. It's by the historian Helena Rosenblatt. And one of the arguments it makes is that before we ever had this word liberalism,

2:51in fact, for thousands of years before the word, there was this tradition of being a liberal. And behind that tradition, there was this virtue called liberality. And people thought this virtue was really, really important. As Rosenblatt writes, for almost 2,000 years it meant demonstrating the virtues of a citizen, showing devotion to the common good, and respecting the importance of mutual connectedness. Liberality was talked about everywhere. You can read about it in Cicero, in John Locke, in the letters of George Washington.

3:25And yet, we never talk about it today. Liberalism as a political philosophy and movement, it completely elbowed out. Liberality is a virtue. As an ethic, a citizen aspires to meet. I want to be clear, I don't think a rediscovery of liberality is a complete answer to what ails liberalism. But I do think it's one piece of the puzzle. I found it exciting. I think it's one place to begin an inquiry you're going to hear a lot more of on this show over the next year. Helena Rosenblatt is a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center.

3:57She's the author of Liberal Values, Benjamin Constant, and the Politics of Religion, as well as the aforementioned The Lost History of Liberalism, which I highly recommend. As always, my email, Ezra Klein's show at NYTimes.com.

Helena Rosenblatt Interview

4:20Helena Rosenblatt, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So to the extent people think about liberalism today, which is, let's be real, a niche hobby, I think they define it as a philosophy of individual rights, of individual expression. You write in your book that the word liberalism did not even exist until the early 19th century. And for hundreds of years prior to its birth, being liberal meant something very different. What did it mean? That's right. Being liberal really was not just about

4:52believing in a certain, or working towards a certain political design. It wasn't just about a constitutional form. It wasn't just about individual rights. It was actually more about moral development and about a certain character development that they felt was so very important and that a good constitution should promote. And many of them thought that, yes, rights are important, but they're important because they allow us to accomplish our obligations. They're very much concerned with establishing

5:24a good, morally good regime. It's amazing how many of the early liberals were actually moralists at heart. So talk me through the early word here. It's not even liberal, it's liberalitas, or where does this start for you? Liberalism as a word was coined around 1811, 1812, and it was first theorized as a concept. People start talking about what is liberalism. Well, liberalism is this, that, not the other thing in the early 19th century

5:55in the wake of the French Revolution. It doesn't become this Anglo-American tradition until very late in the game. I say middle of the 20th century. Does it become an Anglo-American tradition? This was something very exciting that I found in my research. So I decided to trace the word and the meaning of the word all the way back to ancient Rome, which is liberal in ancient Rome. The root of the word is liber, right? And the word liber, yes, it means free,

6:26but it also means generous, which I thought was so very, very interesting. So if liberal were really the qualities of freedom, lovingness, and generosity expected of a citizen, liberalitas was the noun that went with it. So this was an attitude that was expected of citizens in Rome when you are devoted to the commonwealth, to the common good. One thing that was a bit of an epiphany reading a book for me, I think a lot of things are missing

6:56in modern liberalism. My interest in doing this episode and more that I think are going to come is trying to figure out why liberalism feels so exhausted at a moment that it is so needed, and why so many of the books I read about it, some of the defenses I read of it are so arid. They like have no blood in them. But one thing that was interesting here was this idea that liberalism is built on a virtue, not a political philosophy, right?

7:26Liberality. And as you just mentioned, that the old definitions of it, and you have Cicero and John Locke and John Donne, and they have some kind of intersection between generosity and freedom. But not freedom like we think of it now. So what did freedom mean in this context? It's really about having the freedom to voluntarily become the person that you should be. And this has dropped out of our conversation. We think of liberalism so much, as you said, being about individual rights

7:58and maximizing our choices. But it was to them also about making good choices. And a good system of government government would help you, give you the capacity to make those good choices. That evolved over time. So in the medieval period, it became Christianized. And it's behaving freely the way God wants you to behave in a generous, charitable way. When you talk about this conception of freedom, this conception of what it means

8:28to be liberal, who are some of the people you quote and what are their arguments? Oh, well, as you can imagine, since, you know, it's not a super long book, so I kind of move rather quickly and I have to make some strategic choices. But as you mentioned, there's Cicero and Seneca and these are well-known names that have had tremendous influence. What do they say? What is their vision of liberality? So that liberality is about reciprocity, exchange, gift-giving,

8:58and reciprocity is fundamental. You need to be good to one another. Very much about what they would call, you know, citizenly, or I call citizenly virtues, things that make a commonwealth work and adhere. That is not to, I don't try to idealize, you know, these thinkers either, because, you know, you had slavery in Rome, which is, so we're talking about a small group, an elite. I think this is quite important and it's something threaded through your book. You write at some point that this idea of being a liberal,

9:30which comes way before liberalism as a political philosophy, is designed by and for the free, wealthy, and well-connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient Rome. And some other things that emerge as the book goes on, one thing it makes clear is that if today your problem with liberalism and liberals is you find them to be a bunch of smug, condescending elites, that problem goes way back. That's always been braided into the issue here. And that there was, like, it was a set of virtues

10:02that was associated with, like, the noble born and set them apart in a way that would make them the ideal citizens. And that feels to me actually like a quite profound tension at the heart of the project. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they don't even always live up to the ideal. Sure don't. But they had that ideal and they talked about it. And they designed an educational system,

10:32a liberal arts education that was supposed to cultivate these virtues, this liberality, in elite boys but there was a lot expected of the elite as well. So I don't think it was just mere, you know, hypocrisy. I'm writing a book right now about Madame de Stal, a great early liberal and a woman, a powerhouse, such a fascinating woman right at the, it was, some say that it was in her salon, in her drawing room that liberalism

11:03was invented. Her name appears as a very important sort of power broker and intellectual in the early 19th century and then gets dropped out. She is endlessly frustrated by where are the good men? We need some good men. Not only to pursue the policies that we need but to serve as examples. A question echoing through history right now. Yeah. I think this is also somewhat inspiring or provocative to think of from our current vantage point which is to say that one of the problems

11:33that early theorists of being liberal are trying to think through is what are the habits, what is a kind of education, what is a form of personal development needed to instill the virtues that will be necessary to hold together complex societies. Yeah. What is needed to hold together a country or even a city is not easy. I actually think this helps explain

12:05one reason liberals have always been so shocked and repulsed by Donald Trump himself, not just Trumpism or the Republican Party but him which is quite deep in the liberal theory and inheritance I'm not even sure people totally realize that they have absorbed is the sense that to make a country work people have to behave in a certain way towards each other and the ways in which he flouts the rules of behavior the ways in which he acts towards other people are almost separate

12:37from anything he believes like a profound challenge to what what liberalism believes of how you make a society work. I think in many ways he is proving that there was something important in that but this question of how do you instill in a society the virtues necessary to make a society work understanding that as an actually hard problem I think there's juice in that today. Yeah, no absolutely and the fact that they're elitists liberals throughout their

13:07history have tended to be elitist but they demanded a lot there were a lot of obligations and they took that extremely seriously there's a section in my book where I talk about Lincoln and they thought you know at that point they thought maybe a liberal democracy would fail there was no real example of it lasting you know would the American example this exceptional example actually work and Lincoln showed that it could and he did it in this beautiful way that kind of made people

13:37optimistic about liberal democracy he was not a demagogue he did not talk down to people he raised them up he engaged in moral uplift and they recognized that and it showed that a liberal democracy could survive if it had a leader like this they also recognized that it was those kinds of leaders are very hard to find what is liberal in the liberal arts oh the purpose of the liberal arts education is really to form leaders to form freedom-loving and moral

14:08leaders and giving them the tools rhetoric and history and some science for sure but it's supposed to train citizens really through engagement with the classics in the early times there was a lot of emphasis on being able to speak in public to speak in a convincing way in public and this is all really to convince people to become citizens and to do the right thing it sounds terribly idealistic and I don't always want to again idealize them or say

14:38these people were perfect in every way far from it but the ideas were pretty beautiful and I think we could learn something from them education is such an important part of this book other histories of liberalism I've read actually reveal the same thing that when you go back into the liberal tradition the purpose of education is hotly debated and held at the center of the project today you don't have that discourse in the same way

15:09we talk about whether or not education is working not so much what it is for it's almost taken as evident that the purpose of education is to prepare you to get a job and that was not the purpose of the liberal arts no it was not today it's a lot about vocational training a lot about preparing students to get jobs these were considered menial tasks liberal arts was for the leaders in the times and the citizens were the leaders of society in Rome

15:39in medieval period as well it was always about something other than preparing you for a job isn't it funny that today when people try to defend the humanities which are you know under siege in many universities frankly and they try to advocate for liberal arts education that they say oh well actually there's proof that having a liberal arts education will get you that job so it's that whole discussion about what a citizen of a democracy

16:09means what it means to be a citizen what are the values what is our common language what does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy all of these questions that are so important have kind of dropped out of our discussion and people are even embarrassed sometimes and do you think that's because citizenship is broadly shared now and so it isn't seen as a thing that people have to work to achieve or do you think that's because that politics doesn't

16:39work people don't like it people don't want to be told what they have to do to be a citizen that's a great question as a historian I always apologize for

16:49usually there's not just one answer to that terrific question just give me the one that best serves my current purposes or maybe another way to ask it is at what point in your view did the strand of liberal thinking that was about the cultivation and disciplining of the self drop out definitely it happened during the cold war let's say it's pretty recent in the history that I describe in

17:19my book right but this idea of disciplining the self we're talking about the collectivity about your duties about any government or state getting involved in forming citizens a public education system that forms citizens started to have a scary kind of ring to it when you've seen fascism and communism and liberals wanted to show like oh we're not that we're not going in that direction we are not about the state forming

17:49citizens we are about individual rights about property rights in particular and I think that really gave probably the impetus to something that was probably happening already I gave my brother a New York

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Critiques of Liberalism

19:21you hear today of liberalism go back quite a long way you have this part of the book where you're describing fights in England in the 1830s and the conservatives what they say about the liberals even that is that critics of liberals are accused of meaning the exact opposite of liberality they accuse liberals of being selfish egoistic only interested in the gratification of their individual desires so you know you're describing this tradition that is focused on you know personal cultivation and the liberal arts

19:51so at what point is this critique that no you just want to be able to follow your own desires wherever they go and not have anybody tell you not to when does that enter into the fray right at the beginning it's been shown that liberalism the actual word was first a pejorative a term of insult it was coined as I said in 1811 but by the enemies of the liberals because of what had happened in the french revolution and the word liberal when it refers to

20:22something political is often written with an accent on the e to show its kind of foreignness it's something dangerous it's liberal it has to do with you know the revolution and we don't want that you know all of this getting rid

20:38which we would call civil equality isn't that a great thing they would say no that's removing the privileges that they had had for such a long time so that's being selfish that's not being magnanimous and so the catholics mainly catholic counter revolutionaries immediately started denouncing liberals for being selfish because they were taking away their privileges i mean they had a whole slew of insulting terms that they used as synonyms for liberals anarchists they're against

21:19of the old regime throughout the 19th century the catholic church was probably the most powerful enemy of liberalism the popes one after the other just spewed you know the most vile kind of if i may say rhetoric about liberals about how very bad and sinful the world they liberalism is sin i mean there were works that came out like that so and i think actually you know interestingly enough today's criticisms for example by post-liberals

21:50and so on which are many of them men are the catholic are actually reviving some of that language and using very old arguments i've sat here with patrick denean i mean not literally in this room but on this podcast and you know i was like where is this coming from with you and he's like one of these post-liberal close to jd vance and he's like well you know the left wants to destroy the family yeah i don't think we do but but but that is his view of it yeah um how much is the tension between the catholic church and liberals or liberalism how much

22:21is it around what i think of is like liberalism first significant political idea because so far we've been tracking this almost virtue that is a way

22:35if i were to be i think straightforward about it it's not a way to reorder society but this idea of generosity towards your fellow citizen begins to flower into an idea of toleration when that is more radical and toleration is a way of reordering society so can you tell a bit of

Toleration and Religion

22:55that story how we get from you know liberality to

23:05absolutely many key liberals were actually protestant this founding group that i talk about in france madame de stale and benjamin constant were actually protestants and the protestants were way overrepresented in terms of numbers in liberal movements throughout french history the reason here is you know protestants in france wanted to be tolerated to be actually recognized as citizens which

23:35one of the key sort of developments in the history of of liberalism when it moves from being just what we were talking about the virtues of a like a roman citizen or a christian nobleman who should give to the poor and be liberal and magnanimous to now you're starting to say that we have to be accepting of difference and you start using liberal not to just define or describe an individual who's magnanimous but a whole society

24:06clubs can be liberal because they allow different types of members religions can be liberal when they are tolerant and you can understand them the church a catholic church in particular gets very worried about this when you're going to

24:27I want to spend a moment on this because from where we sit now in the United States of America I don't think religious tolerance strikes many people as a particularly radical idea it is taken broadly for granted and I'd like you to paint a little bit more of the picture of what is the context into which this argument is beginning to play out and the

24:57relationship to religion is like a fundamental divide in societies and the stakes are very high for people who believe so just tell me a little bit about what is the situation into which this argument over religious toleration is entering well today well today today we hear very much about celebrating difference and diversity is a great thing including religious diversity but what I've found and one might find this somewhat troubling is that these Protestants that I'm talking about the early founders

25:28of liberalism really did not advocate toleration for toleration's sake because they are very hostile to or disdainful towards what they call superstition and dogmas so dogmas have held people back in their opinion the church of course in France they were in charge of education they're in charge of censorship they basically find and you can see this in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations which is really

26:04among themselves and this is going to lead to a purification of religions and eventually people are going to become liberal Protestants like they are or Unitarians type or deists you know have a religion they're not anti-religious but the way you please God is by being good to your fellow citizen by doing good to the community not necessarily praying certain times of the day or doing certain rituals or believing certain dogmas but being good so you could see also that certain not

26:34just a Catholic church but certain Orthodox churches would be upset by this because literally if this is the case what you need churches for you can believe in God and be

27:00not about being polite that there is a theory here about the marketplace of ideas one of the other books on liberalism I've quite liked is Edmund Fawcett's liberalism the life of an idea I think is the subtitle and he makes more than you do of the idea that central to liberalism is the idea that in a conflict ridden disputatious society that you can turn difference into something constructive

27:30speech etc that it's not about being nice it is about this belief which sometimes proves out and sometimes does not go as well as people hope that you can make disagreement