You may find it surprising but I tend to agree with the claim in Robert Kagan’s recent Washington Post op-ed—for the MAGA Republicans freedom is not an objective or at least it is subordinated to other subjectives:
For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.
How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establishment a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.
Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.
Where I disagree is that I don’t believe the issue is limited to a single party or even a single group within one party. Just to cite one example, recently in the oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that freedom of speech (or, actually, of the press as well) could “hamstring” government action:
“Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Benjamin Aguiñaga, the Louisiana solicitor general. “I’m really worried about that, because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”
Actually, it all stands to reason. Officials are not elected based on their support for freedom of speech, of the press, or the other freedoms in the Bill of Rights. They are elected based on their promises to provide security and material benefits.
And to respond to Justice Jackson the “institutions established by the Founders” are intended to hamstring government.
It all reminds me of a quote from a play (I don’t recall which one): “Freedom is the most important thing to me. After I’ve eaten.”
I should add that I have some problems with Mr. Kagan’s framing of the contrast between liberals and anti-liberals. They can be summed up in one question: is compelled speech liberal or anti-liberal? I think it’s anti-liberal but many of those who support that anti-liberal viewpoint are not Christian nationalists.
Much of the essay is about Christian nationalism and I honestly have no idea how great a threat Christian nationalism constitutes but I think he has his history wrong. Like many Americans today he has little understanding of the relationship among government, society, and religion as envisioned by the founders. Suffice it to say that I doubt that the founders could have imagined religion being banned from the public square as many secular Americans want to be the case today. It would be interesting to know how they reconcile that with states having established churches twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution.
While I acknowledge that there is a tension among government, society, and religion, I think that it is in the very nature of religion to inform the views of adherents. Consequently, it cannot be banned from the public square entirely. How it affects government and the law may be constrained to some extent by law including Constitutional amendments. Eschewing that path is either mistaken or nihilistic.
Rather than dwelling on this I will merely observe that the first moment that verifiably true speech was held as damaging, we had already abandoned the institutions established by the founders. There’s no going back at this late date even if a majority of Americans wished it.
Footnote: Robert Kagan is a prominent liberal interventionist AKA neoconservative. As such he is proximally responsible for many of the messes we’ve been in over the last 30 years.
This guy admonishes us about the anti-freedom tendencies of Trump, but cites nothing concrete. Its his fever dream. Lot of that going around.
Meanwhile Biden has weaponized the DOJ, colludes with social media, tells the Supreme Court to pound sand on student loans – and brags about it – doesn’t do a damned thing about enforcing border law. And on………
And its cheered on by the left, most notably media.
“a fundamental difference between the neoconservative worldview and the liberal interventionist one: the role of international institutions and law. Those of a neoconservative persuasion aren’t much interested in global architecture; they’re intent on achieving liberal, democratic governance at the national level whenever and wherever possible. Indeed, they believe that consensus-based international organizations and procedures tend to obstruct that enterprise as often as facilitate it. Liberal interventionists share the desire to spread freedom and the conviction that outsiders can help do so, but they also care deeply about building international architecture (almost always) and respecting international rules (usually).”
One of many endless debates about the differences.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/09/what-divides-neocons-and-liberal-interventionists/
More on topic, I am pretty much a free speech absolutist, however I have had many conversations on this with son and some of his friends. It’s pretty clear that there are some downsides to free speech and it is not an unmitigated good. On net it is positive but a lot fo people still get harmed by fire speech.
As to religion it is hopelessly tied up with politics now. Read David French on Christian Nationalism. In short, it’s not very Christian.
Steve
Consider the alternative. Think 1984. The alternative is wholly political speech including compelled speech, censored by the government to support the rulers’ point-of-view. “We have always been at war with Eastasia”.
IMO there is a three-fold strategy for reducing the harm (or perceived harm). The hearer must be responsible for his or her own reaction and should actually care about the speaker. That should be informed by what used to be called a liberal education that provides the public with the ability to assess what they are hearing. And the speaker should be informed by actual caring about others.
The “caring” part is basically what Jesus of Nazareth advised two thousand years ago.
I have always said that I agree with the idea that here is no good alternative. Your idealized idea doesnt exist, we just have tribes and right now, as Buck pointed out in your other piece, one of the tribes is heavily into conspiracy theory and is in thrall to a cult of personality. The other tribe sucks too, just less.
Steve