“When you do see a kind of progressivism that’s full of political correctness and has no limits on government at any state, and then Trump’s populism, which also has very few limits on government,” Kristol said. “People might relearn the lesson of limited government, the rule of law. There’s a reason why we don’t want government meddling in every aspect of our lives.”
Former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, a Democrat, raised the point that Trump’s deviations from the traditional conception of liberty reflect the desires of his voters. “Voters…[say] ‘You know what? He’s using the power of government to defend me’,” Ford said.
“I think you correctly describe the current public mood,” Kristol responded. “My only point is that’s a mistake. People should mind more about government in their lives, and even if it benefits them in the short-term, they should think a little bit more about the longer term consequences of having a president of the United States pick winners and losers.”
The discussion was built off Kristol’s recent editorial in THE WEEKLY STANDARD (from which co-host Mika Brzezinski read an excerpt) calling for a “party of liberty.” Read some of that editorial below:
Well, one lesson of 2016 is that it’s time to worry about liberty again. For to say the least, neither of this year’s presidential candidates made liberty a theme. To say more, neither seemed particularly enamored of liberty. Indeed, to the degree Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, “Stronger Together,” was anything but anodyne, it had a tone slightly hostile and menacing to individual liberty. As for her policies, they were more “progressive” than liberal—more committed to bringing about (enforcing?) “progress” than preserving an old-fashioned liberal polity. Indeed, 2016 seemed to mark the definitive eclipse of “liberalism” by “progressivism” as the banner under which the 21st-century left marches. And that was merely the culmination of the hollowing out of a rights-based and nature-based liberalism in favor of a History-based commitment to a future that has to be achieved, punctilious concerns about liberty be damned. It’s true that progressivism has, sometimes, been willing to work to achieve its goals through the institutions of a free society. But when the going gets tough, progressives get going toward illiberalism, not to say authoritarianism. Naïve about History and overconfident about Progress, progressives are easily disillusioned. Instead of learning from their disillusionment and becoming less naïve and less confident, they double down on the project of rational and central control, i.e., their control, over what had been a free society. On the other side, Donald Trump claimed he would Make America Great Again. But very little of that agenda seemed to involve making America freer again. His effective retort to Clinton’s creepily regal “I’m With Her” was the creepily populist “I’m With You.” So if the left worships at the altar of History, the right now bows before Vox Populi. If the left’s project is one of rational control, the right’s response now tends toward impatience with what’s reasonable. If the left’s progressivism culminates in the imposition of political correctness, the right’s populism culminates in the removal of conservative barriers to vulgarity and demagoguery. A left populated by arrogant know-it-alls has produced a right led by a narcissistic know-nothing. The 2016 election featured a contest between authoritarian progressivism and authoritarian populism. The party of liberty had little purchase in either camp.
