Reports of Liberalism’s Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

The election of Donald Trump has brought relief to many who feared another four years of Democratic Party rule. For some, his reelection represents the triumph of a nationalist conservatism after four years (or more, if you think of Joe Biden’s presidency as a third term for Barack Obama) of progressive mania. Doubtless for some his reelection represents a repudiation of the excesses of contemporary liberalism and its embrace of “wokeness” as further evidence that liberalism has failed in some sense and is about to go the way of the dodo.

In actuality, the opposite is true. Trump’s election is a reaffirmation of the basically liberal character of United States. Despite Democrats’ shrieking assertions that Trump and his followers are radical, right-wing “fascists,” it was moderate liberals forced right by the progressive/leftist wing of the Democratic Party that carried him to his (relatively) decisive win. All one has to do is look at members of his transition team: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, even Trump himself, are all former Democrats. 

Today, much of what passes for “right-wing” (opposition to open borders, transgender mania, foreign wars) only seems so because the country as a whole has become more liberal. Many of Trump’s policies, such as his preference for tariffs, would once have been considered liberal policies. He even included the head of a major labor union as a speaker at the Republican National Convention, something hardly conceivable twenty years ago.

Nothing illustrates this continued liberal drift better than Trump’s stand on abortion. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, it has become clear that its imposition of abortion via the courts was more the driver of its repeal than opposition to abortion as such. Trump understood this, which is why he took a “states’ rights” stance on this issue as a way of defusing the issue. (It worked; Trump shrank the gap with unmarried women this election, a group that he lost miserably four years ago.) Seven states passed constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights while such measures were defeated in only three states. 

In my home state of Florida, with one of the best and most effective pro-life governors in the country, a measure that would have done the same only failed because it barely fell short of the 60 percent threshold required to amend the constitution (it received 57 percent of the vote). Much as it may grieve faithful Catholics, a solid majority of people in this country believe access to abortion of some kind is a right to which they are entitled.

Liberalism is still triumphant in American foreign policy as well. One might have thought that the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan have damaged the “Freedom Agenda” in the eyes of foreign policy elites, but one would be wrong. The American proxy war with Russia continues apace, and while a disaster for Ukraine, it can be counted a success if you consider its main purpose was to bleed dry an “illiberal” opponent of the U.S. that dared to challenge its policies. The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria removes another “illiberal” leader that both neo-conservative and liberal interventionist types have wanted to remove for years, leaving the other Great White Whale of U.S. Middle Eastern policy makers, Iran, now very much isolated.  

Syria’s collapse leaves Russia’s port in Tartus on the Mediterranean sea vulnerable, making it a potential negotiating point for any end to the war in Ukraine (the U.S. has already had direct contact with the main jihadist group, the HTS, and was already supporting another group involved in Assad’s overthrow). For all of its defeats and disastrous engagements over the past twenty years, the United States is still the most powerful country in the world, and its foreign policy is still identifiably that of liberal interventionism (i.e., human rights, democracy promotion, etc.).

Do not mistake my meaning. These are all terrible things in my opinion. The fact that the U.S. is now a firmly pro-abortion society is obviously bad, and all of the long-term problems attributable to our cultural liberalism that people have identified (birth rate, social atomization, addition to technology, etc.) are still very much present. But none of these long-term developments change the reality that liberalism is still the most powerful ideology in the world; and as a social and political philosophy, it has no rival in the U.S. 

One could object that the country’s drift leftward has taken it beyond liberalism to what some call “actually existing postliberalism,” a reference to the authoritarian turn left-wing governments in Western countries have taken in the past five years but also to the desire of some on the Right to leave liberalism behind. The idea is that putatively “liberal” governments abandoned their ideals by suspending civil liberties during the Covid lockdowns and subsequent panic over “disinformation.” 

There are several problems with this line of thought, however. One is that it overlooks how “illiberally” liberal governments have acted in the past when they feel threatened (Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Japanese internment during World War II, the Patriot Act, etc.). Another is that it adopts an ahistorical view of liberalism which equates it with “classical liberalism,” with small government, individual rights, and defense of property, as it was in the nineteenth century. But this treats liberalism as if it existed sub specie aeternitatis when one of its strengths has been its ability to adapt. Liberalism has gone from small government, nationalism, and individual rights, to promoting the welfare state, internationalism, and group rights in the past century and a half; it has even become the dominant political philosophy of the most powerful nation on earth.

I know that certain thinkers on the right, especially some Catholic thinkers I respect, believe that these changes represent deadly contradictions within liberalism that will somehow doom it to extinction. This betrays an overvaluation of the importance of ideas in my opinion. Liberalism triumphs not because it is true but because it is powerful, and claiming its internal contradictions will lead to its collapse is no more plausible than Marx’s predictions about capitalism. 

In practice, most people do not care about such things, as discussion at any length with the average voter will reveal. Government, as Edmund Burke once pointed out, “is the contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.” As long as liberalism gives people—especially Western elites—what they want, it is not going anywhere.

In fact, there is a link between the fate of liberalism and the United States to be found here. For all the talk of its decline and of making American “great again,” such decline as the United States has experience over the past forty years has only been relative. It is still, even when measured against a genuine competitor and threat from the People’s Republic of China, the greatest power in the world, despite the world no longer being a “unipolar” one. You will begin to see liberalism truly decline when America does, or when it no longer provides our elites with the satisfactions they desire. Until then, we are living in a liberal world, and people looking for alternatives underestimate liberalism at their peril. 

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]