Four Corners of Liberalism

Egalitarian Waluigi

Reading Emily Chamlee-Wright’s latest piece for the UnPopulist got me thinking about her Four Corners diagram for understanding liberalism at a glance. She’s used this image before in other works, but I hadn't previously given it much thought.

For each vertex, it strikes me that there is a kind of equality that matters for its proper functioning, or a kind of inequality that can pervert it. I don't think the Four Corners model captures this explicitly, though I also don't think it conflicts with the model.

Political liberalism: You can have political institutions intended to check majority power that instead simply entrench minoritarian rule. The Senate, Electoral College, capped House, and filibuster are examples.

Intellectual liberalism: Lack of representation by women or minorities in scientific and other academic fields can shape the kinds of inquiry that are pursued and taken seriously. In science, especially popular communication of science, this can mean the dogged persistence of ideas that naturalize inequality. In history or philosophy this can mean the submersion of important figures or movements. (Just read a wonderful book on antebellum Black liberals—a category that doesn't really exist in contemporary liberal thought but clearly should—so this is top of mind.)

Civil liberalism: The dangers of freedom of association unaccompanied by an inclusive ethos are pretty obvious. Segregation, marginalization, etc.

Economic liberalism: Extreme inequality of wealth leads to an oligarchic class out of touch with ordinary people. It's pretty well-trod to talk about pay-for-influence sorts of corruption. But our current crop of particularly perverse billionaires have shown the outsized influence they have on the intellectual sphere as well, buying up newspapers and cable networks, taking over social media, erecting elaborate think tank-academic-legislative ecosystems.

Without a practical degree of equality across the various spheres of society, it's pretty easy to get bad results in nominally liberal societies. And without an egalitarian ethic, liberals can too easily find themselves defending these perversities as liberal. But this results in liberalisms leaving whole classes of people languishing and justifying status hierarchies and concentrations of power.

Perhaps this is just my bleeding heart leftism coming out. For rightwing liberals, liberalism promises neither equal outcomes nor any particular threshold of flourishing. There is, after all, the freedom to fail. But another way to look at the equality dimension of the four corners is maintaining the health of liberalism itself.

Political inequality has, in the US, enabled one political party to go all in on electoral chicanery, voter suppression, and even political violence. The result is an explicitly antidemocratic authoritarian at the head of a fascist movement. Liberalism is imperiled. Intellectual liberalism that fails to include the contributions of diverse points of view and fails to sufficiently cultivate a skilled and educated populace leaves a whole lot of human brain power on the table. Liberalism suffers. Likewise for undeveloped economic citizens. Individuals too overwhelmed by debt and unable to find affordable homes near vibrant economic centers are simply less dynamic economic agents than they could be. Liberalism is again weakened.