RETURN TO EISENHOWER/KENNEDY/CARTER/REAGAN/BUSH/CLINTONISM:

[I]'ve been arguing that we need an ideological realignment in which various stripes of liberals find ways to work together and realize that our differences should not prevent us from making common cause. I describe this new alignment as "neo-classical liberalism," a combination of the most common version of liberalism on the left--the market-friendly neoliberal, --and the most common version on the right--the libertarian-leaning classical liberal.

The important shared concept here is "liberal." A liberal is someone who thinks that freedom is one of the central principles of any just, moral and flourishing society.

We need to start thinking about what a broadened liberal coalition would mean in terms of overarching principles and a political agenda. What follows is not quite a neo-classical liberal manifesto--it's too early for that--but more of a starting point.

Protect free elections. No other freedoms can be maintained unless the government answers to its citizens in free elections--unless the party in power can lose an election. There is a long history of politicians making irresponsible claims that the vote was "rigged" when they didn't win. But there is only one movement right now that is attempting to control the apparatus of  vote-counting for the purpose of overturning election results. Part of the point of finding a wider agenda we can cooperate on is to help us remain unified so we can work together on this crucial, single issue.

Guarantee free speech. There is no way to correct an error if people are not free to criticize the status quo. But freedom of speech has to be more than a legal guarantee. It has to be a cultural norm. We need to regard vigorous debate on the widest possible range of issues not as a threat to the truth, but as a necessity for reaching it. And we need to be prepared to support those who are targeted, particularly by "woke" online mobs, for challenging prevailing dogmas.

Fight regulatory 'cost disease.' The most difficult area for different kinds of liberals to work together is in economics, where we disagree on the size and role of government. But one area where we can agree is addressing how restrictive regulations and reckless government subsidies--from NIMBYism in housing to tuition inflation in higher education--conspire to make the major expenses of life less affordable.

It goes without saying that free-marketers will happily get behind a critique of regressive government regulations--and it might even do more good than, say, reducing the top marginal tax rate. Center-left liberals, for their part, should be open to the argument that if government is going to be a force for good, it had better do things that actually help people, rather than allowing itself to be captured for the benefit of entrenched interests.

Big-government liberals have gotten themselves trapped in a cycle of "cost-disease socialism," where government restrictions drive up the ordinary costs of living, which then need to be covered by ever-increasing government subsidies. But what helps people more--a bureaucratically administered handout or a liberalized system that prevents them from needing the subsidy in the first place?

Defend free markets and free trade. [...]

In particular, it is important for the anti-authoritarian center-left to craft its own independent economic vision and agenda--one that embraces the market alongside the welfare state--rather than merely adopting a watered-down version of the latest utopian vision offered by the radical left.

Fight authoritarianism. We need to pull our foreign policy back out of its post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan funk of defeatism and commit the U.S. once again to the defense and promotion of liberalism and representative government around the world. The goal of our current policy seems to be to manage one retreat after another--in Afghanistan, in Ukraine and next in Taiwan--and simply hope that each new withdrawal will not be too embarrassing. Meanwhile, the dictators swallow up more of the globe, gain in power and influence, and provide models to be emulated by advocates of authoritarianism at home.

Tweet   @brothersjudd