The liberalism of fear is the liberalism that starts with an ‘assumption, amply justified by every page of political history, …that some agents of the government will behave lawlessly and brutally in small or big ways most of the time unless they are prevented from doing so’. It is the ‘quiet sister’. Liberalisms dedicated to universal rights or unending progress get a lot more attention. This causes problems. One problem is that critics of liberalism who lack precision forget about the liberalism of fear entirely, focus only on the other types, and so miss their mark. Another problem is that liberals can have only a partial understanding of liberalism, and so twist it into something illiberal.
This neglect is not easy to fix because it occurs at the level of political mythology: in the underlying stories that structure essays, arguments, research, and political life. The liberalism of universal rights and the liberalism of development have hugely successful myths. The liberalism of fear does not.
So I have written a parable for the liberalism of fear. Unlike the stories of natural rights and personal development, it is not a tale about the dignity, autonomy, or goodness of humanity. It is a story of bad people who nevertheless achieved some measure of good, and of how that good came to be neglected and lost. It promises nothing and offers no comfort. The liberalism of fear is a liberalism for adults and its bedtime stories should not be gentle.
Long ago in a faraway land, there was a cruel king. The fields were empty, but he demanded heavy taxes from the people; and when they could not pay, he devised heavy punishments for them. Even the Lords did not escape. If by wealth, fame, or skill one attracted the King’s eye, they knew that they would attract the torturer’s hand next. In time, even the Crown Prince, a meek and loyal boy, vanished into the dungeons. He was not seen again.
When the King died without an heir, the surviving Lords met to decide what would become of the land. They were few in number and lacking in trust. Each eyed the others warily, counting the crimes that they had committed to survive. None of them could tolerate the thought of another on the throne, free to avenge the betrayals of the long tyranny; yet none of them could tolerate the thought of sitting on it, surrounded by fearful vipers ready to pounce. For weeks they sat in council, deadlocked.
At last one broke the silence, saying ‘any man who has power is led to abuse it’. The Lords looked at one another, their history, and their hearts; and none disagreed. The speaker continued, ‘so that one cannot abuse power, power must check power by the arrangement of things’. Again, none disagreed. Making mutual distrust their guiding virtue, they tore the throne from the palace declared the land a Republic.
As water trickles from the heights, so distrust flowed from the Lords into every part of the new Republic’s constitution. The common folk did not mind. Tyranny had not taught them to trust one another; and the Lords, vying with each other for portions of power, caused them less trouble than the King. As the years passed, ‘power must check power’ became a truth no right-thinking person could doubt.
Only a decade after the Republic’s birth, a young peasant compared his landlord’s outrageous rent increases to the dead King’s taxes. The judges, seeing unchecked power behind the landlord’s abuses, created a new Rents Tribunal. The Home Minister, fearing the judiciary’s growing influence, created a Sub-Minister of Rents to keep the new court in check. The Senate Committee for Business, fearing the Home Minister’s growing popularity, drafted a law curtailing the new Sub-Minister’s powers. A similar pattern unfurled again and again. Power was checked, and each checking power was checked in turn.
Generations passed and society changed. To prevent unchecked power, laws and powers slowly infiltrated every zone of life. Society was as closely controlled as in the distant days of the King, but the new age was different to the old tyranny. The many powers, accustomed to checks and controls, were domesticated and predictable. The savagery and fear of the old regime was replaced by bureaucracy and boredom.
Into this new society, a new kind of person was born, one who would proudly say that theirs was ‘a government of laws, not of men’. They disliked unchecked power, but the sentiment was merely inherited. Living amongst predictability and paperwork, they had never felt the old fearful mistrust. Instead, they felt ambition. There were so many small powers that they could grasp and use to reshape a part of the world. Although the ensuing competition for powers had winners and losers, they were not concerned. After all, there were checks and balances to ensure that the race was fair.
All the while, a quieter kind of person was still being born. One that had lived before the new kind of person, before the Republic, and before the King. Numerous, they tolerated the powers without craving a portion, for they cared more about their families than about reshaping the world. The new kind of person was not troubled by them. After all, the quiet kind were not part of the great race for powers. They spent little time with them though. They found the lives of the quiet kind stifling, and their lack of ambition frustrating. As the generations went on, the new kind of people spent more and more time among their own: arguing among themselves, but marrying among themselves too. They could live and work together because they had forgotten mistrust; and, having forgotten mistrust, they merged their powers freely to better reshape the world. By tiny steps, their many powers became one: not in a single individual like the King; but in a single class, the Elite. Unchecked, the new power turned hungry eyes to the quieter kind of person. They, in turn, learned the old lessons of fear and mistrust.
*Text in quotes is by Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XI.5 or John Adams, Novanglus Papers, 7.
Image: ‘tyranny’ by rachaelvoorhees. Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0)