The Roots of Liberalism

Liberalism is under attack from both left and right, but anti-liberals have failed to understand how liberalism arose in the West. It began not with political philosophers but centuries before, in a set of virtues, institutions and longings embedded in our culture. It’s not an ideology that stands above our practices and judges them, but a practice itself, and its content is found in our memories of moral heroes. Liberalism is not an abstract theory, but a tradition of virtues and customs embedded in our culture. We learned magnanimity from the Code of Chivalry and were taught that brutishness is illiberal from the Code of the Gentleman. Through the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and the novels of Charles Dickens, kindness became a liberal virtue. The Republican Virtue of the Founders can be traced back to twelfth century Sienese merchants. Liberalism was born of the virtues and thus does not threaten them. The anti-liberal cult of wokeness will not survive beyond the current generation. It offers a creed of sin without absolution, of guilt without soul-easing joys, of frowns without laughter. It muffles our moral sense and permits ill-educated louts to take pleasure in the vilest of emotions. It rejects the West’s high culture, its music and literature, and offers nothing in its place. In place of this nullity, without heroes, learning, art, industry or anything that might attract a person, its emptiness will shortly be seen by all and liberalism will continue to provide the civic virtues of our culture.