What is Liberalism?

Why the Most Important Political Philosophy of the Last 300 Years Is the One Nobody Understands

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

The word “liberal” has been so thoroughly mangled by American political discourse that it now means everything and nothing. Republicans use it as an epithet for anyone who disagrees with them. Democrats embrace it as a badge of progressive virtue. Cable news hosts deploy it as a tribal marker. Political consultants focus-group it to death. And through all this semantic chaos, we’ve lost sight of something crucial: liberalism isn’t a political position—it’s the philosophical foundation that makes political positions possible.

This confusion isn’t just academic. We’re living through a moment when the basic framework of liberal democracy is under systematic assault from forces that understand exactly what they’re attacking. While we argue about whether being “liberal” means supporting higher taxes or transgender rights, oligarchs are constructing parallel systems designed to make democratic accountability obsolete. While we debate the proper scope of government, they’re building infrastructure that operates beyond government entirely.

The irony is exquisite: we’re losing liberalism because we’ve forgotten what it actually is.

So let me be precise about what we’re defending—and what we stand to lose.

The Liberal Insight

Liberalism begins with a simple but revolutionary recognition: human beings are fallible, disagreement is inevitable, and yet we must somehow organize society together. This creates what I call the fundamental liberal problem: How do conscious beings pursue truth and build institutions across disagreement, uncertainty, and difference?

Every other political philosophy tries to solve this problem by eliminating it. Authoritarians impose a single vision through force. Religious fundamentalists appeal to divine revelation. Technocrats defer to expert knowledge. Revolutionary movements promise to create new humans who won’t disagree. But liberalism does something different—it builds systems that work because people disagree, not despite their disagreement.

This is liberalism’s genius: it doesn’t require consensus on ultimate values to create functional societies. It provides a framework for collective reasoning that allows people with fundamentally different worldviews to cooperate, compete, and even change their minds through peaceful means.

Consider the miracle of what we take for granted: societies where Catholics and Protestants, capitalists and socialists, traditionalists and progressives can coexist not just peacefully, but productively. Where power changes hands through elections rather than violence. Where yesterday’s heretics can become tomorrow’s leaders through persuasion rather than revolution.

This doesn’t happen naturally. It requires a specific set of institutions, norms, and practices that must be continuously maintained against forces that would tear them apart.

The Architecture of Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy isn’t just majority rule—it’s majority rule constrained by constitutional principles that protect the conditions of democratic reasoning itself. The architecture has several essential components:

Constitutional constraints on power. No individual, group, or even democratic majority gets unchecked authority. Power is divided, separated, and constrained by law. This isn’t inefficiency—it’s insurance against the concentration of power that makes democratic reasoning impossible.

Independent institutions. Courts, bureaucracies, universities, and media organizations that can resist capture by political or economic interests. These institutions don’t need to be perfect—they need to be independent enough to provide checks against abuse of power.

Free expression and open debate. Not because all ideas are equally valid, but because the process of testing ideas against each other is how societies learn and adapt. Mill’s “marketplace of ideas” isn’t a perfect market—it’s an ongoing experiment in collective reasoning.

Rule of law. Equal treatment under legal frameworks that apply to everyone, including those in power. This creates predictability and prevents the arbitrary exercise of authority that makes democratic planning impossible.

Democratic accountability. Regular opportunities for citizens to peacefully replace their leaders through elections. This forces power-holders to justify their decisions to those affected by them.

Notice what’s not on this list: any particular policy position. Liberalism is compatible with a range of economic arrangements—from more market-oriented systems to robust welfare states with significant government intervention. You can be a liberal who supports universal healthcare and high progressive taxation, or a liberal who prefers market solutions and lower taxes. You can be a liberal conservative who emphasizes traditional institutions or a liberal progressive who prioritizes social reform.

What you cannot be is a liberal authoritarian, because authoritarianism destroys the conditions that make liberal reasoning possible. And you cannot be a liberal socialist in the traditional sense, because socialism's commitment to collective ownership of the means of production requires a level of economic control that tends to undermine the institutional independence and distributed power that liberal democracy requires.

The key distinction: Liberalism can accommodate extensive welfare states, significant government regulation, and redistributive taxation—these are questions of degree and democratic choice. But it cannot accommodate systems that concentrate economic power to the degree that political independence becomes impossible.

The Nordic model works within liberal democracy precisely because it maintains private property, market mechanisms, and institutional independence even while providing extensive social benefits. But actual socialism—collective ownership of production—tends to require the kind of centralized control that makes the separation of powers and institutional independence very difficult to maintain.

The Epistemic Foundation

Here’s what most people miss: liberalism is epistemic before it’s political. It’s fundamentally about how we know things and how we organize knowledge in societies. The political arrangements—democracy, constitutional government, individual rights—flow from deeper commitments about truth and reasoning.

Classical liberals understood something profound: no individual or group has privileged access to truth. Not kings claiming divine right, not philosophers claiming rational insight, not scientists claiming objective knowledge, not even democratic majorities claiming popular wisdom. Everyone is fallible. Everyone has incomplete information. Everyone operates from particular perspectives that both reveal and conceal aspects of reality.

This doesn’t lead to relativism—it leads to institutionalized humility. If no one has access to final truth, then our institutions must be designed to remain open to correction. If everyone is fallible, then power must be distributed so that mistakes can be recognized and corrected rather than compounded.

This is why free speech isn’t just about individual expression—it’s about collective intelligence. Why independent media isn’t just about holding politicians accountable—it’s about creating information flows that help societies learn. Why competitive elections aren’t just about representation—they’re about institutionalized error-correction.

The liberal commitment to open inquiry, free debate, and democratic accountability isn’t based on faith that these processes will always produce correct answers. It’s based on recognition that these are the best mechanisms we’ve discovered for remaining open to better answers.

What Liberalism Isn’t

The systematic confusion about liberalism serves the interests of its enemies. So let me be clear about what liberalism is not:

Liberalism is not progressivism. Progressives believe society should move in particular directions—toward greater equality, environmental sustainability, social justice. These may be worthy goals, but they’re not inherently liberal goals. A progressive who wants to impose their vision without democratic consent or constitutional constraint is being illiberal, regardless of how noble their intentions.

Liberalism is not conservatism. Conservatives believe in preserving valuable traditions, maintaining social stability, respecting established institutions. These may be wisdom, but they’re not inherently liberal commitments. A conservative who wants to preserve arrangements without democratic accountability or constitutional limitation is being illiberal, regardless of how venerable the traditions.

Liberalism is not libertarianism. Libertarians believe in minimal government and maximum individual freedom. But the crypto-oligarchs who call themselves libertarians while building parallel systems to escape democratic accountability have abandoned liberalism entirely. When Peter Thiel declares that “freedom and democracy are incompatible,” he’s not being libertarian—he’s being anti-liberal.

Liberalism is not socialism. Socialists believe in collective ownership and democratic control of economic resources. But when socialist movements try to implement their vision through revolutionary violence or authoritarian control, they abandon liberal principles. Democratic socialism can be liberal; revolutionary socialism cannot.

The confusion arises because liberalism provides the framework within which all these other philosophies must operate if they want to remain committed to democratic reasoning. Progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and socialists can all be liberal—but only if they accept constitutional constraints on their power and remain accountable to democratic processes.

The Anti-Liberal Assault

Which brings us to why this matters now. We’re facing a coordinated assault on liberal democracy from forces that understand exactly what they’re attacking. The crypto-oligarchs, neoreactionary intellectuals, and authoritarian movements aren’t trying to win within the liberal framework—they’re trying to replace the framework entirely.

When Curtis Yarvin argues that democracy is “inefficient” and should be replaced by corporate-style governance, he’s not making a policy argument—he’s making an anti-liberal argument. When Elon Musk declares that empathy is “civilizational weakness,” he’s not critiquing particular social programs—he’s attacking the moral foundations that make liberal society possible.

When tech oligarchs build cryptocurrency systems designed to operate beyond democratic accountability, when they construct “network states” that escape constitutional constraints, when they choose fascism over progressive taxation—they’re not being libertarian. They’re being anti-liberal.

The danger isn’t that they disagree with particular liberal policies. The danger is that they reject the entire framework of democratic accountability, constitutional constraint, and moral obligation that makes peaceful disagreement possible.

The Stakes

Here’s what we stand to lose: not just particular political arrangements, but the capacity for democratic reasoning itself. The ability to organize societies where people can disagree productively rather than destructively. Where power can be constrained by law rather than exercised arbitrarily. Where tomorrow’s truth can emerge through today’s debate rather than being imposed by yesterday’s authorities.

The alternatives aren’t mysterious. We can see them emerging in real-time: algorithmic governance that replaces democratic deliberation with computational efficiency. Oligarchic networks that operate beyond constitutional constraint. Authoritarian systems that eliminate disagreement through force rather than organizing society around it.

These aren’t dystopian possibilities—they’re operational realities. The infrastructure is being built. The precedents are being set. The philosophical justifications are being developed and deployed.

The Defense

Defending liberalism requires more than voting for particular candidates or supporting particular policies. It requires understanding what liberalism actually is and why it matters. It requires recognizing that the framework is more important than any particular outcome the framework might produce.

This doesn’t mean being neutral about everything. Liberals can and should have strong convictions about justice, equality, freedom, and human flourishing. But they must hold these convictions in a way that remains open to democratic accountability and constitutional constraint.

The test isn’t whether you support the right policies—it’s whether you support the conditions that make democratic reasoning about policies possible. Whether you accept that your political opponents have legitimate standing in democratic debate. Whether you’re willing to risk losing elections rather than abandoning democratic processes. Whether you believe power should be constrained by law rather than exercised through will.

The Choice

We face a choice that will determine not just what kind of policies we have, but what kind of beings we remain. Do we preserve the framework that allows conscious creatures to reason together across difference? Or do we surrender to forces that promise more efficient solutions through the elimination of democratic accountability?

The crypto-oligarchs have made their choice. They’ve chosen sovereignty without constraint, power without accountability, efficiency without democracy. They’ve built the infrastructure to implement their vision. They’ve captured the political mechanisms to enforce it.

But they haven’t won yet. Liberal democracy remains possible—but only if we understand what we’re defending and why it’s worth defending.

Liberalism isn’t a political position. It’s the condition that makes political positions possible. It’s not a set of policies. It’s the framework that allows policies to be democratically chosen, implemented, and changed.

It’s not perfect. But it’s the best system we’ve discovered for remaining human while organizing society—for preserving the capacity for reasoning, disagreement, and growth that makes consciousness worth having.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And conscious beings reasoning together across difference is more valuable than any particular outcome that reasoning might produce.

The framework is the foundation. Without it, everything else becomes arbitrary power dressed up as necessity.

The choice is ours. For now.