Thank you for the post, which was an interesting read.
But these atrocities were largely driven by fanatical anti-communism (especially on the US side) that divided the world into an existential struggle between good and evil… They represent failures of liberal democracies to live up to their own principles, not evidence that those principles caused the violence.
If liberalism simply has temporary failings—is this not something of a no true Scotsman? Marxists might (and often do) say similarly that the examples you cite were the result of the leaders not living up to communist principles in practice. It would seem to undermine the idea that these are ‘time-tested bulwarks’ if the principles do, and have, failed periodically.
Similarly, the Nazis may have been anti-enlightenment, but they rose to power in a fairly liberal society, including by exploiting the classically liberal value of free speech to spread propaganda. So it seems a bit difficult definitionally to judge this only by what the Nazis did when in power, rather than the (liberal) conditions that enabled this to happen in the first place.
I recognise I’m oversimplifying things quite a bit here, but I think speaks to the difficulty of drawing neat lines around whether some ideologies are inherently more stable than others—or at least in assuming that the values typically counted within the classical liberal bucket (and it’s a wide bucket) are all inherently anti-fanatical, rather than some being more likely than others to be a source of instabliity over time. (See for example leftist critiques of individual economic liberty to this end.)
Fair point. But I think there’s a genuine structural asymmetry here. When liberal democracies commit atrocities, they do so by violating their own safeguards—secrecy, executive overreach, circumventing checks and balances. The CIA’s Cold War operations required hiding what they were doing from Congress and the public, precisely because the actions were incompatible with the system’s principles. And liberal democracies contain built-in self-correcting mechanisms: free press, independent courts, elections, public accountability. The US eventually declassified the documents and the atrocities became part of the historical record that we can openly discuss and condemn. This self-correction is a core feature of classical liberalism.
The “not real communism” defense has the opposite problem. Concentrating all power in a vanguard party, suppressing class enemies, and eliminating institutional checks aren’t deviations from Marxism-Leninism, they’re core features. Once you’ve done all that, totalitarian horror isn’t a failure of implementation but a foreseeable consequence of the design. (Also, the CCP is still putting Mao on all their banknotes.)
”Time-tested” doesn’t mean “never fails”, it means better outcomes on average, less catastrophic failures, and mechanisms to recognize and correct its own failures. The right question isn’t “does liberalism guarantee safety?” (nothing does), it’s “which system produces the best outcomes and has the strongest safeguards?” The historical record is pretty clear.
On the Nazis exploiting Weimar democracy
The argument seems to be essentially: “Nazis rose to power in a liberal society, therefore liberalism enabled Nazism.” But this arguably confuses background conditions with causation. The Nazis also exploited elections, but most people still seem quite partial to them.
The actual causal story involves the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, Weimar’s specific constitutional weaknesses, the mutual radicalization spiral between communists and Nazis, and the political establishment’s catastrophic miscalculation in thinking they could “control” Hitler. Free speech was a minor ingredient, if that.
The fact that safeguards sometimes fail doesn’t mean the safeguards are the problem. Some people die in car crashes even while wearing seatbelts.
The wide classical liberalism bucket
I agree that not all values in the admittedly wide “classical liberal bucket” are equally anti-fanatical. For what it’s worth, I’m quite concerned about extreme wealth inequality, partly because it enables potential oligarchs to subvert the very system of liberal democracy. But the core claim is about the procedural principles—separation of powers, rule of law, universal rights, institutional checks—and those seem pretty robustly anti-fanatical to me.
Thank you for the post, which was an interesting read.
If liberalism simply has temporary failings—is this not something of a no true Scotsman? Marxists might (and often do) say similarly that the examples you cite were the result of the leaders not living up to communist principles in practice. It would seem to undermine the idea that these are ‘time-tested bulwarks’ if the principles do, and have, failed periodically.
Similarly, the Nazis may have been anti-enlightenment, but they rose to power in a fairly liberal society, including by exploiting the classically liberal value of free speech to spread propaganda. So it seems a bit difficult definitionally to judge this only by what the Nazis did when in power, rather than the (liberal) conditions that enabled this to happen in the first place.
I recognise I’m oversimplifying things quite a bit here, but I think speaks to the difficulty of drawing neat lines around whether some ideologies are inherently more stable than others—or at least in assuming that the values typically counted within the classical liberal bucket (and it’s a wide bucket) are all inherently anti-fanatical, rather than some being more likely than others to be a source of instabliity over time. (See for example leftist critiques of individual economic liberty to this end.)
Thanks for the comment!
On the No True Scotsman concern
Fair point. But I think there’s a genuine structural asymmetry here. When liberal democracies commit atrocities, they do so by violating their own safeguards—secrecy, executive overreach, circumventing checks and balances. The CIA’s Cold War operations required hiding what they were doing from Congress and the public, precisely because the actions were incompatible with the system’s principles. And liberal democracies contain built-in self-correcting mechanisms: free press, independent courts, elections, public accountability. The US eventually declassified the documents and the atrocities became part of the historical record that we can openly discuss and condemn. This self-correction is a core feature of classical liberalism.
The “not real communism” defense has the opposite problem. Concentrating all power in a vanguard party, suppressing class enemies, and eliminating institutional checks aren’t deviations from Marxism-Leninism, they’re core features. Once you’ve done all that, totalitarian horror isn’t a failure of implementation but a foreseeable consequence of the design. (Also, the CCP is still putting Mao on all their banknotes.)
”Time-tested” doesn’t mean “never fails”, it means better outcomes on average, less catastrophic failures, and mechanisms to recognize and correct its own failures. The right question isn’t “does liberalism guarantee safety?” (nothing does), it’s “which system produces the best outcomes and has the strongest safeguards?” The historical record is pretty clear.
On the Nazis exploiting Weimar democracy
The argument seems to be essentially: “Nazis rose to power in a liberal society, therefore liberalism enabled Nazism.” But this arguably confuses background conditions with causation. The Nazis also exploited elections, but most people still seem quite partial to them.
The actual causal story involves the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, Weimar’s specific constitutional weaknesses, the mutual radicalization spiral between communists and Nazis, and the political establishment’s catastrophic miscalculation in thinking they could “control” Hitler. Free speech was a minor ingredient, if that.
The fact that safeguards sometimes fail doesn’t mean the safeguards are the problem. Some people die in car crashes even while wearing seatbelts.
The wide classical liberalism bucket
I agree that not all values in the admittedly wide “classical liberal bucket” are equally anti-fanatical. For what it’s worth, I’m quite concerned about extreme wealth inequality, partly because it enables potential oligarchs to subvert the very system of liberal democracy. But the core claim is about the procedural principles—separation of powers, rule of law, universal rights, institutional checks—and those seem pretty robustly anti-fanatical to me.