"The perils of complacency" The Economist December 21, 1996, U.S. Edition XMAS A combination of neglect and misuse seems to have made the word liberal almost meaningless. That is not just a pity, it is dangerous ONE of the rudest things you can call an American politician nowadays is a liberal. Bob Dole threw this insult at Bill Clinton so often during the presidential campaign that Mr Clinton, laughing at the idea that there might be anything in it, called the slur a "golden oldie". In the now-standard American usage, a liberal is the opposite of a conservative--and almost the same as what Europeans used to call a socialist, or possibly a social democrat. That is, someone who favours big government, lots of taxes and public spending; someone, in short, willing to infringe economic liberties in pursuit of the common good. In Europe, to the extent that "liberal" is used at all, it is more often an opposite of "socialist" than a synonym. A European liberal will favour limited government, and give freedom priority over the supposed interests of society. Historians would say this sense of the word has the prior claim. But today, even in Europe, people with such views would more often be called conservative. So it seems that in America "liberal" has become detached from its proper meaning and attached to the opposite, whereas in Europe it is merely falling out of common political parlance. Abuse, misuse and disuse: a sorry fate for such a word. The confusion is by no means confined to everyday speech. In political philosophy, liberalism sometimes seems so broad a term as to exclude almost nothing--that is, to mean almost nothing. The philosopher Robert Nozick is a liberal, in the tradition that descends from Locke. Mr Nozick's view of the just society (as set out in "Anarchy, State and Utopia") calls for the minimal state: the demands of liberty are such that governments may legitimately carry out only the narrowest range of functions. But then the philosopher John Rawls is also a liberal, in a different tradition that runs through Bentham and Mill. His view, explained in "A Theory of Justice", calls for a large state, one of whose jobs is to decide the distribution of income among citizens. Speaking loosely, Mr Nozick the liberal is well to the right of any mainstream conservative in Britain or America, and Mr Rawls the liberal (if he accepts the implications of his analysis) well to the left of any social democrat. If "liberal" imparts so little information even to those whose job it is to use such terms carefully, why worry about its corruption in popular parlance? Why not return to matters of substance? Put aside whether the American or the European sense of liberal should prevail (the European sense is the better-rooted). There is a more important issue. Two apparently con-tradictory things are true. One is that, however much some may protest, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, John Major and Tony Blair, Robert Nozick and John Rawls, not to mention Locke, Bentham and Mill, are indeed all liberals, in a perfectly intelligible sense of the word. The second is that, even when defined so broadly as to accommodate all of these and more, "liberal" still means something important. To understand why it means something to be a liberal, even when membership of the club is flung indiscriminate-ly wide, is to see why liberalism is worth not merely defining but also defending. Freedom and its limits Despite the countless quarrels that liberals have had with each other over the past three centuries, certain core beliefs, clear in the writings of the earliest thinkers, have been central throughout. In different ways, almost all of these beliefs are concerned with protecting the status of the individual confronted with the demands of larger social groups. The liberal society, as it was first conceived, aims to guarantee freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from coercion, freedom from illegitimate authority (ie, from unconstitutional government), freedom to buy and sell property (including one's own labour), and so on. Liberals have always recognised the need to set limits to the freedoms of individuals. But in describing how these limits should be devised, liberals only made their tendency to exalt the individual all the more apparent. The scope of freedom in a liberal society is given by the "harm principle", which in Mill's formulation says this: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. There must be curbs on the freedoms of individuals, the classical liberals conceded, but only to prevent those freedoms hurting others. Perhaps the individual is the best judge of his own interests, perhaps not; but, unless the well-being of others is jeopard-ised, he should be the judge. A crucial implication is that, if freedom is to be infringed, the burden of proof rests with the infringer. The individual does not have to prove that his actions harm nobody. The state that limits his freedom, if it is to act rightfully, has to prove the opposite. It is obvious that the harm principle formulated this way, or indeed in any plausible way, is open to many interpretations--each supporting a different kind of liberalism. First and foremost, what does "harm to others" mean? My conspicuous consumption may offend people: should my visits to Bond Street and Rodeo Drive be curbed? My pornographic novel may corrupt them: should it be banned? Every economic interaction among individuals has implications for third parties. Some such externalities (pollution, for instance) are relatively uncontroversial cases for regulation--that is, for liberty to be infringed. But a different kind of externality (called a pecuniary externality) is pervasive in economic life, as when I decide to buy something, and thereby force up (however fractionally) the price that others must pay. Attempting to curb "harms" of that kind would be inconsistent with the very idea of a market economy, an idea that all liberals are committed to. Consider also what Mill meant by his stipulation of a "civilised community". Not, as you might suppose, that any society which failed to apply the harm principle must be uncivilised. His point was that only civilised people--mature and educated--could use liberty wisely. The principle did not apply to children. Power can be rightfully exercised over them, though not over adults, so long as it is for their own good, and regardless of whether third parties would otherwise be harmed. Mill said the same was true of "barbarians" (a term which is harder to define than "children"). In other words, the full set of liberal rights was not granted to all people merely by virtue of their being people. Rather, it was extended to those who qualified by virtue of their ability to behave responsibly--that is, to members of civilised communities. From this idea springs the liberal passion for education and for equality of opportunity: only a civilised society, in this special sense, can be a liberal society. But the fact remains that, just as it is unclear exactly what liberals mean by "harms", it is also unclear under exactly what circumstances people qualify for liberal freedoms. Difficulties such as these are only the beginning. A larger, indeed inexhaustible, source of dispute is the fact that some liberal freedoms appear to be in conflict. For instance, if the state is to provide its citizens with freedom from coercion, it will need to exact some r from them (policemen need to be paid). Even in Mr Nozick's liberal state the government must confiscate some property: one freedom is secured only at the expense of another. More generally, a distinction is often drawn between two kinds of fr the negative kind, such as freedom from illegitimate authority, and the positive kind, such as freedom to lead a good life. The first (freedom from . . .) protects the individual from outside interference; the second (freedom to . . .) may often require it. Even liberals who favour a minimum night-watchman state regard it as the state's job to secure certain positive freedoms. Its role in protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and so on, may all be seen in this light. Most classical liberals went further, arguing that the state should provide relief to the poor, and supply the services (notably education) needed if people are to play a full part in society. Such ambitions require larger takings from citizens. And some liberals went further still, defending an idea of distributive justice that requires transfers of income from rich to poor, not to relieve poverty but to achieve a "just" distribution of income (Mr Rawls's theory is a modern example). A case for the full-blown modern welfare state can be developed along similar lines. For each such regime, different schools of liberals have proposed different ways of establishing its legitimacy. Given these complexities and uncertainties, each one creating a niche for a different kind of liberalism, it is hardly surprising that "liberal" is a term that stretches so widely. But what matters is whether the things that all liberals have in common are more important than the things they disagree about. If they are, then the term, however elastic, is serving some purpose. A profusion of liberalisms If Bill Clinton, Robert Dole and (yes) Newt Gingrich are all liber answer might seem quite the opposite. What divides them is surely bigger than what unites them: on the face of it, apart from being white American men, these politicians have little in common. To say this would be a mistake, however, and a revealing one. For all three share a belief in the liberal society as defined above: a society that provides constitutional government (rule by laws, not by men) and freedom of religion, thought, expression and economic interaction; a society in which infringements of individual liberty must be justified. "So what?" you might say. By that definition, everyone in the mainstream of American politics is a liberal. Quite so. America's system o for all its faults, is probably the most successful liberal-constitutional regime the world has seen. And virtually all other systems of government in the West, and the politicians within them, are liberal too, despite their competing policies. They are liberal because the systems embody, and the politicians share, those defining beliefs. In this sense, despite the anger and bitterness they generate, the quarrels of western politics are arguments among friends. But this is proof that "liberal" is too vague a term to be useful. Rather, it demonstrates the extraordinary triumph of liberalism in the West--a victory so total, in fact, that it brings perils of its own. Joseph Nye, an American expert on international re analogy between security and oxygen. It serves here just as well. In the West, we have come to take fundamental liberal freedoms for granted--as we do with breathing. Normally, it is easy and even desirable to forget abo breathing. But sometimes it becomes terribly obvious that breathing is necessary. When that happens, nothing else matters. Two centuries ago, it was plain that what united liberals was more important than what divided them, because liberals were opposed to many aspects of the ruling order. All denounced autocratic rule, religious intolerance and political power by inheritance. In the West these battles have been won so decisively that no serious politician any longer questions--even thinks about--such fundamental preferences. But here lies the danger: the liberal triumph has encouraged a kind of complacency, a corroding intellectual laziness, in the West's politics. It takes a variety of forms. For instance, so secure does the West feel in its liberal freedoms that its politicians feel able to look indulgently on countries in other parts of the world where rulers still deny their people such liberty. Sev Asian economies have startled the world with their economic progress in recent years, but in some cases their governments have failed to enact the full range of liberal rights. Some of these rulers defend this as a matter of policy: they argue that liberal freedoms are not for their people, saying that Asian values and western licence do not mix. This is listened to politely, even sympathetically, in the West. If their own liberal freedoms were less securely entrenched, western sympathisers would need to temper this indulgence. Otherwise it might be seen as support for new restrictions on freedoms at home. (The sympathisers would appear to be asking why, if Singapore can do so well without a free press, Britain or America should need one.) Precisely because those liberties are taken for granted in the West, nobody need fear being so accused. But that also means there is no need to rehearse the arguments that helped to entrench the liberties in the first place--and nobody need be reminded that those arguments apply to Asians every bit as much as to Europeans and Americans. In short, we may be liberals, but we seem to be forgetting why. The poverty of anti-liberalism Not content merely to neglect the arguments for liberalism, other western thinkers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre in America and John Gray in Britain, these days go much further, and pronounce grandly on the failure of "the liberal project". Western rationalism has smashed traditional modes of thinking, they argue, and the result is disastrous: incipient moral collapse. Again, what licenses intellectual anti-liberals to embark on such a critique is the very fact that liberalism seems so secure. Just 60 years ago in Western Europe, and a mere ten years ago in Europe east of the iron curtain, any thinker who declared liberalism a failure would have been understood as proposing a radical alternative--such a Soviet-style communism. In one way, that was a good thing: it helped concentrate minds on the virtues of a liberal order. Today, few in the West can even imagine desiring any such alternative. So announcing the failure of liberalism arouses no fears, and elicits no urgent reflection on what life is like in an illiberal regime. ("Obviously, when I say that liberalism has failed and morality is collapsing, I don't mean that we should repudiate our civil liberties, tear up the constitution and install an authoritarian regime." No, quite, of course not. But then, what do you mean?) Yet another form of modern, house-trained anti-liberalism is emerging from what used to be the socialist left. For several decades, apparent failure of communism sapped this movement's animating spirit. Then, when communism collapsed altogether, the jolt was such that even leftist politicians who had never been communists had to rethink their ideas. Popu opinion has turned against planning, exaggerated concern with economic equality, grandiose schemes of public spending and the grandiose taxes needed to pay for them. The left must therefore shift its ground accordingly. Now deprived of its economic distinctiveness, it is seeking a big new idea to mark out its territory. One such idea is to question the naive liberalism, as the left would call it, of the political right. A favourite theme is to depl classical-liberal emphasis on self-interest. This is worth a moment's pause. The notion is especially popular just now in Britain, where Tony Blair's Labour Party is trying to shape a new post-socialist political vision. The liberalism of the political right, says Mr Blair, puts the individual too much at the centre; it glorifies selfishness and naked competition; it allows too small a role, if any, for altruism or the common good. Margaret Thatcher and Adam Smith were wrong: there is such a thing as society. By all means let there be a vigorous argument between liberals who want to promote new forms of social co-operation and liberals who do not. That, in itself, would be fine. But it will be a great pity if ex-socialists come to rest their case solely on a repudiation of liberal self-interest--because that argument can succeed only if people forget what liberals actually mean by self-interest. Adam Smith was no 18th-century precursor of Gordon Gekko, pronouncing "Greed is good." To say that individual self-interest promotes collective welfare is not to glorify selfishness, but merely to explain how a market economy can work. And, by the way, Margaret Thatcher was quoted out of context. When she said, "There is no such thing as society," she was replying to a questioner who had argued that society should bear the cost of some new initiative. Mrs Thatcher was merely pointing out that individual taxpayers, not some disembodied "society", would still have to pay. No liberal--indeed, nobody with an ounce of sense--ever denied that man is a social animal, and that social virtues such as trus willingness to co-operate are essential to man's well-being. When classical liberals praised self-interest, it was not to contrast it with altruism or virtuous self-sacrifice, but to recommend it in preference to blind habit and irrational passion (such as racial or religious bigotry). Implicitly, self-interest always meant enlightened self-interest. As Hobbes, a "pre-liberal", argued, if men had always been rational pursuers of self-interest, history would not have been an endless tale of savagery and mayhem. For the classical liberals, moreover, the idea of self-interest had a crucial moral component, always neglected by modern anti-liberals. To recommend self-interest as a guide to behaviour is to acknowledge that no individual's interests have priority over another's. What goes for you goes for everyone. That claim, in turn, is the cornerstone of the case for constitutional government. Tacit approval of illiberal regimes abroad, grandly paradoxical denunciations of liberalism at home, casual attacks on liberal virtues--none of these may pose an immediate threat to our liberal freedoms. The West's modern anti-liberals, sof-ties by comparison with their predeces such agenda. Indeed, they are nearly all liberals like the rest of us, if only they would admit it. Yet, unalarming as they may be, they are still to be opposed. Their arguments help people to forget why liberal freedoms matter. That is a pity in itself, and it eases the way for any bolder followers who may come along. In the West, by and large, we are all liberals now. Instead of ignoring or affecting to deplore this, we should be recognising and reaffirming it. Or else, you never know, it might one day no longer be true.