In her 1989 essay The Liberalism of Fear , Judith Shklar made an important point about the preservation of liberalism. It was a grave mistake, she said, to imply that the liberal state can ever have an educative government that aims at creating specific kinds of character and enforces its own beliefs. It can never be didactic in intent in that exclusive and inherently authoritarian way.

Liberalism, as we saw, began precisely in order to oppose the educative state. This does not leave liberalism defenseless, but it does put the onus on those who support it. It means that liberalism needs liberals.

When Shklar says that liberalism began to oppose the educative state, she’s referring to the story of liberalism that emerged out of opposition to religious wars and the fight for freedom of religion. Once upon a time, religion was the packaging in which values came, but today, freedom of religion is better thought of as freedom of conscience. Since freedom of religion protects our right to reject every particular religion, it can’t demand that we draw them from any religion at all.

Even a requirement that beliefs be religious to warrant protection undermines it. Sign up for Liberal Currents Enter your email below to see our patron tiers or simply get our essays in your inbox for free. Or make a one-time donation.

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Unsubscribe anytime. And, of course, some beliefs are political. Shklar is just hardcore enough to say that political beliefs count when it comes to a liberal government’s commitment to neutrality.

Too many liberals—especially classical or market liberals—have fallen into the trap of thinking that because a liberal state must be neutral about morality and the good life, liberals can’t have anything to say about the way of living or beliefs that support it. Some liberals have fallen into the trap of thinking that they have to draw on other ideologies, like conservatism or socialism, for their moral goals. This is staggeringly mistaken, and buying into it would be devastating to liberalism.

It is precisely because liberalism cannot take sides that liberals must. Liberalism defends individuals, and it depends upon them. Part of the confusion might come from the 20th-century fusionist coalition between libertarians (many of them “classical” or market liberals) and conservatives.

Frank Meyer declared that libertarianism has no moral beliefs of its own, and so had to lean on conservatism to fill the gap. With this argument, Meyer rigged the game. There are plenty of conceptions of morality and the good life that are not conservative (as people who are moral but not conservative will readily inform you), but he defined those out of the coalition.

With Meyer’s framing, fusionists who were not conservative were neutral. Charitably, Meyer may have been misled by his own limited understanding of liberalism. (He was, after all, a conservative.)

In her book The Lost History of Liberalism, Helena Rosenblatt traces the history of liberalism from ancient Rome to the present day, and finds that liberals have not historically confined themselves to concern about individual rights. She argues that the post-war purging of liberalism in the Anglosphere, especially of the French and German liberal traditions, robbed it of the tools that Meyer says it can’t do without. Sign up for Liberal Currents Enter your email below to see our patron tiers or simply get our essays in your inbox for free.

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No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. What this modern conception of liberalism (ironically, given the moniker “classical”) can do is blend seamlessly with conservative support for free markets.

This sterilization of liberalism to eliminate friction from the fusionist coalition made liberals more vulnerable to Meyer’s argument. Outside of this narrow band of the liberal tradition, liberals have advocated, and do advocate, for values and virtues, especially civic virtues. Some examples that Rosenblatt includes are advocacy of traditional (but not specifically Christian) virtue, but also public-mindedness, generosity, education, and civility.

Liberals who display and advocate for these values are better equipped to support liberalism. Aaron Ross Powell has the same idea in mind when he argues that liberalism would be most secure if we could cultivate sympathetic joy , or to teach ourselves to be pleased for others with very different preferences based on our belief in the goodness of other people finding their own good life, no matter how much it differs from our own. This is a more demanding standard, but certainly one that would provide strong support for a state that defended freedom of conscience.

Speaking of demanding, back to Shklar. She argued that There is a very clear account of what a perfect liberal would look like more or less. It is to be found in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue, which gives us a very detailed account of the disposition of a person who respects other people without condescension, arrogance, humility, or fear.

He or she does not insult others with lies or cruelty, both of which mar one’s own character no less than they injure one’s victims. All three of these arguments provide guidelines that go beyond an impersonal political system. They offer guidance for people living within that system.

In none of these cases are the virtues or values merely incidental to liberalism. In every one, they support it. Shklar is explicit that this is what’s needed.

She says that “Liberal politics depend for their success on the efforts of such people, but it is not the task of liberal politics to foster them simply as models of human perfection. All it can claim is that if we want to promote political freedom, then this is appropriate behavior.” These fuller conceptions of liberalism are inconvenient for liberals’ partners in political coalitions, like 20th-century fusionism. This is especially the case when those arguing for a coalition claim that there is some true, natural compatibility between liberalism and their own beliefs—that liberalism really just is conservatism, or that liberalism is best supported by people with socialist values.

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Of course, there are liberal conservatives, like George Will, and liberal socialists, like Matt McManus. And some liberals find conservatism or socialism compelling. There is fertile ground for political cooperation with any group that embraces liberal political institutions, depending on the challenges liberalism faces.

Arguing (successfully!) to market liberals that there is no liberal version of morality, virtue, or the good life tethered many liberals to conservatives for those things and robbed them of an important part of their political life—the part that we have with each other, rather than through the state. But liberals have their own principles, ones that can give us direction when previous coalitions fall apart, or when coalition partners pursue illiberal goals.

There is no disadvantage to having a political philosophy that doesn’t argue for the government to take responsibility for our morality or take charge of our search for the good life. The fact that conservatives and socialists aren’t moved by liberalism doesn’t mean that it’s not moving. History is full of people who fight for freedom.

People are fighting for it right now. Neither are liberals constrained from making arguments about morality or the good life. We’ve only put these arguments into the private realm—these are topics we reckon with in our private lives and in the groups we constitute together.

Liberals should recognize what types of morality, which conceptions of the good life, and which civic values support liberalism. It is good to let others alone to do what makes them happy, so long as it does not harm others. It is good to find joy in the joy of others.

It is good to respect one another without condescension. It is good to learn enough not to fear difference, and to understand that it benefits us. It is good to want others to be empowered to pursue the projects that make them feel alive.

It is good to be a liberal. You should be one, too. We’re the only defence liberalism has.

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Featured image is "A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance." by Josh Howard.