It must be,
after the experience of this Coalition government, a small “l” but the word,
often used as a term of disparagement in the United States, is one that still
resonates in Europe where it is almost always a term of praise.
It is the
spirit which animates, in Gladstone’s century, works like John Stuart Mill’s On
Liberty and Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy and its work is still not done
because its antithesis – authoritarianism, hierarchy, power-worship, is still
very much with us.
It is in
two areas that liberalism matters to me (since I have little interest in
economics): freedom of thought and freedom to live in the way one wishes. The liberal wants to permit, to allow, to
grant freedom, believing that the very concept of toleration is in itself a
social, moral and intellectual good.
Pluralism, toleration, multiplicity, are, by contrast, what the
illiberal mind finds odious. The
authoritarian or the dictator is stirred by visceral feelings of hatred,
resentment, anger at the proliferation of what it cannot control. The illiberal
mind wants there to be only one way: its way.
Liberalism,
by contrast, wants to see freedom, diversity, multiplicity, the absence of
unnecessary constraint. It trusts people
to work out their own salvation. The illiberal
mind, often fuelled by religious or sectarian or race hatred is maddened by the
prospect of free minds exercising themselves according to their own principles
and values. The dictator is for this
reason a ridiculous figure, a strutting absurdity who knows nothing beyond the
limits of his or her own mind.
Liberalism
is tolerant. It does not see any virtue
in imposing only one way, in declaring some lifestyles, preferences, beliefs,
practices to be impermissible.
Liberalism, however, is weak – it can be seen to vacillate – when it
merely tolerates and does not engage with what it knows to be wrong. Some beliefs and practices must be challenged
and contested, but not with illiberal weapons of repression. Open debate, vigorous advocacy, dissent, challenge,
dialogue are the tools of liberalism.
Censorship, bullying, suppression, closure of debate, are the tools of
its enemies.
I am a
liberal because I want to live in a free society and live in my own way, in so
far as this is compatible with social responsibility and respect for
others. I am a liberal because I believe
in human freedom, in the fathomless resources and creativity of the human
spirit when it is unconstrained and can follow the laws of its own being. To be free is to be fully human.
Nicholas Murray's blog
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