Western Liberalism Is Doomed Without A Shared Understanding Of Reality

In times of political turmoil, images of political unity provide hope for a troubled republic. One such image appeared in Dearborn, Michigan.

As Joy Pullmann reported, conservative Muslims and Christians found common ground in demanding that Dearborn public schools remove pornography from their libraries. While these two groups shared different “general beliefs or convictions,” they found unity in their understanding of what children are and the need to shield their children from accessible porn in school libraries. The “metaphysical dream” of their opposition, which wanted to preserve descriptions of divergent human sexualities to inspire children to adopt such lifestyles, is directly contradictory to that of these religious constituencies.

There can be no common ground or compromise between these two metaphysical dreams, only ideological warfare. Such ideological divides are becoming more common, indicating a crucial question about American political life: Can classical liberalism operate in a post-Christian America? 

Classical liberalism has produced immense civilizational wealth. It’s led to the lowering of trade barriers, which encourages the free exchange of goods, ideas, and people across national borders, and the affirming of human rights through documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s led to unprecedented levels of international collaboration through organizations like the UN, European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, each of which has profoundly affected the world. This way of collaborating in a common political and economic sphere is called classical liberalism.

Classical liberalism tends to produce substantial wealth but cannot explain what societal wealth and individual human flourishing are for. If we no longer have an answer to that kind of grand, civilizational, and teleological question, how long can the liberal order endure? Christianity once framed classical liberalism and provided both a telos (purpose) and a set of moral principles governing the practice of liberalism; Christianity’s decline reveals that classical liberalism cannot provide a moral framework for itself. 

The benefits of classical liberal government are clear. On a global scale, poverty has declined, wealth has grown, technology has advanced, and education is more accessible. At the same time, America has never been more divided on issues of fundamental importance, which weigh more heavily than material prosperity. Questions of abortion, transgender ideology, inflation, and election integrity divide the country. The political turmoil these questions provoke reveals the depths of our disagreement. 

Politicians and pundits use the term “polarization” to describe this reality, often paired with complaints about extremist rhetoric. Typically, this term connotes people operating at the fringe, suggesting they need to moderate themselves. Such a connotation fails to account for the real philosophical difference such polarized discourse reveals. Rather than reflecting attempts to ratchet up the rhetoric for a candidate’s electoral victory, this polarization indicates something deeper about classical liberalism: wealth alone is not enough to sustain a nation, and that reality pushes our consideration to something deeper. For liberalism to survive into the future, it needs a widely accepted moral framework. The tensions of our political moment grow out