CLASSICALLY REPUBLICAN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM:

The social-justice left now casually portrays whiteness (and sometimes maleness) itself as a sort of moral disease. The alt-right embraces nativism and vilifies immigrants. Both sides insist that we are in the midst of a Manichean culture war, and imagine that they are fighting against implacable extremists. Language matters, and good-faith debate and compromise become impossible once one side has painted the other as inveterate bigots or criminals. Who would want to reason with a racist, or dialogue with a demagogue? [...]

The term "classical liberalism" gets thrown around a lot, sometimes in a way that mangles the term's true meaning ("liberalism" today represents something different from its 18th century meaning). So in my 2015 book, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity to Truth, Justice, and Freedom, I tried to systematically enumerate what I believe are the core elements of a classically liberal society:

a democracy in which the franchise extends to all adults;

rule of law, including a constitution that is subject to change only under extraordinary political circumstances and well-defined judicial procedures; a legislature whose laws are applied equally to all citizens; and a system of courts that serves all litigants impartially;

protection of civil rights and civil liberties;

a potent police and military to ensure the safety of citizens;

property rights, and the freedom to trade with others at home and abroad;

a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system;

freedom of internal movement;

freedom of speech, the press, and association;

mass education, accessible to all, of a type that encourages critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and the dissemination of knowledge.

And to this, I would add one more element--which though alien to classical liberalism in its original form, has become an integral part of all modern democracies that engenders societal stability, trust, and inter-group solidarity:

adequate public spending to help the needy--including the homeless, mentally ill, physically handicapped, unemployed, aged, and very young--through the provision of such needs as shelter, child care, food, energy, education, job training, and medical care.

This last point is one I would not have included in my more libertarian youth, but now embrace in my classically liberal maturity, having studied the empirical data collected during my lifetime. Although the left and right disagree about social spending (too little or too much), the fact is that today the strongest and fastest growing economies in the world allocate anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of their GDP to social expenditures. A 2015 study on global human development between 1870 and 2007, conducted by the economist Leandro Prados de la Escosura, reported a positive correlation between the percentage of GDP that an OECD nation allocated to social spending and its score on a composite measure of prosperity, health, and education. Germany, for instance, has created the strongest economy in the EU on the basis of a social-welfare system that provides citizens with cradle-to-grave security. (My wife Jennifer is from Köln, Germany, and she is constantly amazed at what the United States fails to provide those in need--starting with universal health care.) This shows us that it is not only morally virtuous to help those who cannot help themselves, it pays economic dividends, as well.

We also have empirical evidence showing us that, for all the tribalized division between America's left and right, both sides share a surprisingly large number of basic moral values. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt, for example, collected data from hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and distilled five foundations of morality common to all of us:

Care, underlying such virtues as kindness, gentleness, and nurturance;

Fairness, associated with such ideals as justice, rights and autonomy;

Loyalty, including patriotism and a tendency toward self-sacrifice;

Respect for authority; and

Purity/sanctity, which manifests in the effort to live a more elevated or noble way.

According to received political wisdom, conservatives care primarily for #3, #4, and #5, while liberals are more concerned with #1 and #2. And the survey data does bear out this trend to some degree. But the statistical differences are more minor than we've been conditioned to expect. Both liberals and conservatives value all five moral foundations, even while varying in their degree of assigned priority.

The one hard kernel of dogma that tends to separate liberals and conservatives today, and which reflects a clear deviation from the ideals of classical liberalism, is the prevailing emphasis on the group over the individual. Under the banner of identity politics, liberals tend to categorize individuals as members of an oppressed or oppressing group, using race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other crude categories as a moral proxy. Meanwhile, under the banner of faith and flag, many conservatives sort people into collectivities according to religion and national origin. The resulting Us vs. Them tribalism leads to such illiberal policies as speech censorship on the left and economic nationalism on the right. The racial politics of the Alt-Right is the moral mirror image of identity politics of the Alt-Left.

Classical liberalism provides an escape from this dyad, because it identifies individuals, not groups, as the locus of rights. It is individuals, not groups, who perceive, emote, respond, love, feel, suffer--and vote.

Classical republican writers maintained that to be free means to not be dominated--that is, not to be dependent on the arbitrary will of other individuals. The source of this interpretation of political liberty was the principle of Roman law that defines the status of a free person as not being subject to the arbitrary will of another person--in contrast to a slave, who is dependent on another person's will. As the individual is free when he or she has legal and political rights, so a people or a city is free insofar as it lives under its own laws. 

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