Liberal Purposes
Douglass, R. Bruce
Resetting the liberal compass It's a curiously contradictory double life liberalism leads these days. For there is a sense, of course, in which it is riding high. Considered as one of the great...
...And the hold it has on the public mind appears to be growing all the time...
...It's the message itself that is at fault—at the most fundamental level...
...optimistic that it will have anything like the desired effect...
...This does not mean, however, that I am 24.17July 1992 ~~ "Actually I'm quite rare...
...Nor have they had any compunctions, either, about relying on institutions inherited from the past when it suited their purpose...
...They were under no illusions about the fact that people did not just automatically turn out the way they had in mind...
...Fortunately, however, Galston assures us, none of this is necessary...
...As long as one is not doctrinaire about the latter, so that it ends up being the only thing that matters, there is no good reason, he says, why the two cannot be reconciled...
...And when on top of this they then go on to place themselves in principled opposition to attempts to preserve institutions like the two-parent family that are essential for the realization of the virtues on which free societies depend for their viability, they almost ask to be dismissed...
...And the last thing to which they are likely to be receptive is the suggestion that they need to be more open to the views of those with whom they see themselves doing battle...
...Nor have they been at all hesitant, either, to see to it that practices they knew to be necessary to realize that way of life were actively promoted...
...Few people who are writing today about such matters, moreover, are better equipped to bring it about...
...Considered as the basis of a partisan position in our national electoral politics (the kind of thing represented by the progressive wing of the Democratic party), it is anything but a success...
...There have been times in the history of liberalism in this country when it has indeed been able to function as a unifying force—largely because of what liberals themselves have understood their mission to be...
...But it will not be the occasion for much soul-searching on the part of those who are not...
...So the reader is left on his own at just the point when the argument becomes theoretically interesting...
...To this reader, at least, it has the ring of common sense about it, and as such, comes as a much-needed breath of fresh air...
...It is obvious Galston thinks the tendency liberals have to look with suspicion on familiar customs is in principle not well advised...
...They could hardly do a better job of discrediting themselves if they deliberately set out to do so...
...And the fact that Galston is prepared to be as adventuresome as he is in advancing a solution to the problem he identifies only enhances the value of what he says...
...Surely, moreover, he is right about much of this, which is why the book makes as provocative reading as it does...
...In fact, if anything, it is an aberration...
...But there is another sense in which just the opposite is the case...
...And this is a matter which, to put it mildly, can hardly be neglected...
...It is bound to be partisan...
...One can see why for reasons of political expediency it might make sense, but there still remains the issue of principle...
...For if there is anything Galston is right about, it is that the liberal project as now conceived is self-defeating...
...He's convinced it goes much deeper than that...
...This is a shame...
...And for all of the difficulties in which the other side increasingly finds itself, there is no end of the crisis in sight...
...That's what policymaking is all about...
...The same combination of explicit partisanship and practical realism is what Galston believes contemporary liberals should be striving for...
...For in dealing with a subject as ideologically charged as this one, it is one thing, of course, to make an argument that makes sense and quite another to appeal successfully to the minds that need to be changed...
...For even though it does an excellent job of making what I would characterize as a political case for recasting the liberal project along the lines Galston has in mind, it simply does not address adequately the more fundamental theoretical issues it raises...
...There is no way, he says, that a state which is at all active can in fact be neutral among the various alternative conceptions of life's meaning and purpose now available to us...
...And people sense that—which is why they can't help but mistrust anyone who claims to think otherwise...
...For in the past, he insists, most liberals have not thought this way at all...
...Instead of being forced to choose between liberal principles and their inherited moral understandings, people would be able to treat them as complementary...
...Liberalism in this sense is in crisis, and has been for some time...
...And if one is a liberal oneself, the obvious next question is whether anything can be done about it...
...For fear of being tarred with the "L" word, they shy away from talking about principles...
...The obvious question, to take a sensitive example, when he proposes that liberals need to show more respect for the wisdom embodied in inherited beliefs and practices is why this is so...
...We are living in a moment when liberalism functions primarily as a vehicle for very particular partisan causes whose proponents see themselves engaged in what amounts to a cultural war...
...William Galston, as one who clearly approaches the subject with such a partisan interest, believes he has the answer to both questions...
...It is doing so well, in fact, that it is not at all hard to understand why some would have us believe the moment has come to declare it the clear winner in the great ideological competition of the age...
...But as far as I can see, this is something about which the book has next to nothing to say...
...In spite of the fact that it is clearly the work of a gifted theoretical mind, it ends up having a curiously atheoretical quality about it...
...And what he then goes on to argue is that the root of the problem is a particular interpretation of the liberal project that has caught on among activists and academics alike...
...The thing in particular that makes what he has to say distinctive is the way he links the crisis into which the liberal cause has fallen in American electoral politics to recent trends in moral and political philosophy...
...It is the kind of work that will appeal to those already predisposed to go along with it...
...But this particular effort won't suffice, and thus I hope, it will not be Galston's last word on the subject...
...The heart of this view, in turn, is a certain conception of how we should deal with the challenge posed in our public life by the fact of our moral and religious pluralism...
...Add to this, moreover, the fact that this is something that almost certainly can be done (Galston is convinced) without ever taking a position on the intrinsic merits of the practices in question, and it is hard to see, he says, why anyone but the most doctrinaire proponent of the politics of "difference" would have reason to object...
...And there is no good theoretical reason, he believes, why they cannot do so and at the same time honor the commitment they have to respecting Commonweal 17 July 1992:23 people's right to live their lives as they choose...
...And in Liberal Purposes, a book drawing upon both his considerable scholarly expertise as a political theorist and the LIBERAL PURPOSES William A. Galston Cambridge University Press, $16.95, 354 pp...
...Considered as one of the great "isms" of our time, it dominates the way Americans tend to think about matters of public concern...
...As long as the vision of life's purpose that guides the liberal project is not construed narrowly, so that it ends up excluding much of what people these days (in all of their variety) in fact understand their striving to be for, acknowledging it explicitly will serve only, says Galston, to clarify what it is that all along has made liberalism so appealing—namely, the fact that it provides a way of combining the aspiration for personal growth and development with a respect for the diversity of human beings...
...R. Bruce Douglass experience he has had as an activist in the national Democratic party, he goes a long way toward proving the point...
...For he is not inclined to place much stock in the notion that the problem liberals now face is just a matter of packaging...
...They have been frankly partisan...
...And its central tenet is the idea that what we should be aiming for, as much as possible, is a neutral state—a proposition Galston thinks voters are perfectly justified in treating with suspicion...
...some ways of life will be favored and others won't...
...Whether it be Locke or Kant or Mill, they have made no bones about the fact that they were dedicated to promoting a particular way of life...
...The prestige it enjoys in the wider world, moreover, is enormous...
...The thing in particular it will not do, moreover, is convince such people that there is in fact an alternative available that might be preferable to the view they currently hold...
...It is badly in need of reconstruction, and of just the sort he has in mind...
...Especially in national electoral politics, the fortunes of liberals have fallen so low, in fact, that their candidates are tempted to mask the fact...
...And the way to do it is to combine a broadly inclusive conception of the good that liberals seek with what he characterizes as a "functional traditionalism" in determining the means to bring it about...
...A traditionalist without a tradition...
...For all too often, when the argument he is making raises a difficult theoretical issue, Galston is prepared to stipulate a position rather than develop a sustained case on its behalf...
...How could such a thing happen...
...And if anything is evident about liberalism today in this country, it is that its development is being driven by forces that are in no mood to think along Galston's lines...
...It is the seminar-room equivalent of the sort of straight talk voters seem to be hungering for these days...
...Especially not, moreover, when in the next breath the same people turn out, as they so often do, to be partisans in some of the most hotly debated moral controversies of our time...
...How in a country where liberalism enjoys such wide appeal as a public philosophy could the liberal cause fall into such disrepute that its partisans have to apologize for the fact...
...Especially is this the case, moreover, when for many liberals criticism of established traditions is just what the liberal project is all about...
...And this is where I cannot help but find fault with the book...
...For as a practical matter it is something that can't possibly be realized, and attempts to do so only end up making it harder to take the steps elementary moral intuition dictates must be taken if freedom is not to become a recipe for social disintegration...
...Especially not, moreover, in the absence of the sort of theoretical argument it would take to justify the rethinking of basic issues of principle this would require of them...
...But the reasons he has are not at all well developed...
...For no matter how appealing this kind of thing may be to some liberals, it is by no means essential to liberalism as such...
...And if this were to be done in a way that also involved a willingness to honor the accumulated wisdom reflected in such institutions as the family in making sense of how people are to be empowered to attain such a vision, the result would have even more the feel of inclusion about it...
...For this reason, I find it hard to imagine, in turn, that many minds are going to be changed by Liberal Purposes...
...Not when the legitimacy of inherited beliefs and practices is just what is at issue in so many of the battles in which liberals now find themselves engaged...
...But this is not one of those times...
Vol. 119 • July 1992 • No. 13
