Revenge of the Spray
We should remove the well-known works of Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele or Lucien Freud from museums womaniser, to make way for those of an unjustly overlooked black artist or a visual artist who has suffered gender-related harassment?
Perhaps it is better to find other space in the museum to welcome these artists unjustly excluded from the dominant figurative culture de facto supremacist and male chauvinist. In this case, however, some say that we should put an asterisk on the plaques of works by Picasso, Schiele, Freud et al. to inform the bystander that he is faced with the work of an artist who deserves worse?
We could do even more, that is, ride history backwards to erase people and events that have left a mark that irritates our sensibilities as people of the second millennium of the 21st century.
For example, all the statues of Woodrow Wilson, Nobel Prize winner but also segregationist, could be removed or covered with a red cloth, those of Washington himself, founder of the United States but also owner of slaves or Columbus, the reason being easily imaginable.
One could also put a plaque on the statues of Voltaire informing that, the father of tolerance, he got rich on the colonial trade and is therefore despicable.
The catalog would be infinite like that of Don Giovanni. This culture of cancellation, which has noble motivations but leads to questionable actions, has now become the program of a certain political area that the "Economist" calls the illiberal left.
The London magazine dedicated this week's cover to this phenomenon and made it the focal point of its analysis of the current state of liberalism around the world.
It is very interesting to read what the newspaper writes about it in its editorial. In London they seem really angry.
The decline of liberalism
Something has gone very wrong with Western liberalism. The core of classical liberalism is that human progress comes from debate and reform. The best way to bring about change in a divided world is through a general commitment to individual dignity, open markets and limited government.
It seems, however, a program on the verge of collapse. China, on the rise, argues that liberalism is selfish, outdated and unstable. In the West, populists of both left and right rail against liberalism for its elitism and discriminating meritocracy.
Over the past 250 years, classical liberalism has led to unprecedented progress. It will not disappear in a quick bonfire of liberal ideas. It is, however, facing a severe test, just as it did a century ago, when Bolshevism and fascism began to undermine liberal Europe from within. It's time for true liberals to understand who their enemies are and to fight back.
America, the fulcrum of the clash
Nowhere in the world is the struggle as fierce as in America. This week the Supreme Court chose to give the green light to a draconian and vexatious anti-abortion law. The most dangerous threat to the house of liberalism comes from the Trumpian right that birthed this law.
Populists denigrate liberal institutions, such as science and the rule of law, as camouflages of a deep state plot against the people. Trump followers subordinate fact and reason to tribal instinct.
The persistent falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen indicates to what extremes that instinct may lead. We know that when people fail to resolve their differences through debate, institutions and trust, they resort to violence.
The dangerous trend in elite universities
The attack on classical liberalism from leftist positions is more difficult to interpret, in part because in America the area "liberal" has come to include an illiberal left as well. A new political creed has recently spread to elite universities.
Young graduates have occupied important positions in big media, politics, business and education, bringing with them a political agenda obsessively focused on bringing justice to historically discriminated identity groups.
They have also theorized and put into practice tactics to control a certain ideological purity, banishing enemies and differentiating themselves from allies who have transgressed the principles of identity equality, also interpreted retroactively.
This behavior recalls that of the sectarian state that dominated Europe before classical liberalism took hold in the late eighteenth century.
Classical liberals and the illiberal left
Apparently the illiberal left and classic liberals, like "The Economist", want the same things. Both believe that people should be able to progress regardless of gender or skin color. They share the same aversion to authority and vested interests. They believe in the power of democratic change.
However, classical liberals and illiberal progressives couldn't disagree more about how to achieve these goals. For classical liberals, the direction of progress is unknowable and indeterminable beforehand. It must happen spontaneously and from the bottom up. It depends on the separation of powers, so that no one group can exert lasting control over the system.
On the contrary, the illiberal left puts its power at the center of everything, because it is sure that real progress is possible only after steps have been taken to dismantle racial, sexual, gender and all kinds of hierarchies.
Laissez-faire
This difference in method has profound implications. Classical liberals believe in developing fair initial conditions and letting competition between ideas and activities do the rest. For example, through the cancellation of monopolies, the opening up of businesses, the radical reform of taxation and the promotion of an education accessible to all.
Illiberal progressives see the laissez-faire as a fiction in the service of vested interests intent on preserving it status quo. Rather, they believe in the imposition of "fairness" — the final outcome of their political action.
Ibram X. Kendi, a scholar-activist, argues that any racially biased or neutral policy, such as standardized testing of children, is actually discriminatory and ends up increasing racial differences, however enlightened the intentions behind it.
Kendi is right to want an anti-racist policy that works. But his simplistic approach risks denying some underprivileged children the help they need and others the chance to develop their talents.
Individuals, not just groups, must be treated fairly for society to thrive.
The general interest
Also, the company has many goals. People care about economic growth, welfare, crime, the environment and national security. Policies cannot be judged simply on whether they advance or penalize a particular group.
Classical liberals use debate to set priorities and accept compromises in a pluralistic society and then use elections to set the course forward.
The illiberal left believes that the market for ideas is rigged like all other social phenomena. What is being marketed as fact and reasonableness, they say, is actually yet another affirmation of brutal power by the elite.
The question of free speech
Old-school progressives remain champions of free speech. But illiberal progressives think that the principle of fairness requires that there be limitations on the privileged and the reactionary. This involves limiting their freedom of speech.
The illiberals establish a sort of caste of victimhood: those at the top must give way to those who must receive restorative justice.
It is also about identifying the alleged reactionaries, punishing them when they say something that hurts the least privileged. The outcome of this attitude is the marginalization, cancellation and revocation of the right to be heard.
The convergence between populists and the illiberal left
Milton Friedman once said that "the society that puts equality before freedom will have neither." He was right. Illiberal progressives think they have a blueprint for liberating oppressed groups.
In reality, theirs is a formula for the oppression of individuals and, in this sense, not very different from the programs of the populist right. In their own way, both extremes put power before confrontation, ends before means, and group interests before individual freedom.
Countries run by strongmen that populists admire, such as Hungary under Viktor Orban and Russia under Vladimir Putin, show that unchecked power is a bad foundation for good governance.
Utopias like Cuba and Venezuela show that the ends do not justify the means. And nowhere do individuals willingly conform to state-imposed racial and economic stereotypes.
The decline of institutions
When populists put bias before the truth, they sabotage good governance. When progressives divide people into competing castes, they turn the nation against itself. Both diminish institutions and ignite social conflicts. So they often resort to coercion, although they love to talk about justice.
If classical liberalism is so much better than its alternatives, why is it struggling so much around the world?
One reason is that populists and progressives feed on each other pathologically. The hatred that one feels for the other on all sides inflames one's supporters — to the benefit of both.
Criticizing the excesses of one's tribe feels like an act of treason. Under these conditions, liberal debate is deprived of oxygen.
Just look at Britain, where politics in recent years has been consumed by wrangling between hardline Conservative Brexitari and the Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
Liberalism, a difficult practice
Some aspects of liberalism go against the grain of human nature. It is required to defend the opponents' right to speak, even when they are wrong.
One must be willing to question one's deepest beliefs.
Businesses must not be sheltered from the perturbations of creative destruction.
Loved ones must advance on merit alone, even if all our instincts are to bend the rules in their favor.
One must accept the success of one's enemies at the polls, even if one is convinced that they will lead the country to ruin.
Da The Economist,, 4 September 2021
