IS LIBERALISM INCOHERENT?

Contemporary American liberals have been characterized as holding two distinct and potentially conflicting commitments rather than “a single, articulate political creed.” On the one hand, liberals “are heirs to the liberalism of the American Founding Fathers, a liberalism that is expressed in the Bill of Rights, to the extent that they believe in the importance of freedom of expression, association and religion, and in civic equality” On the other hand, “they are heirs also to the liberalism of the New Deal in their conviction that the state has a part to play in guaranteeing the basic welfare of all citizens and in protecting employees from exploitation by powerful corporations.” This conjunction may seem self-contradictory because it prescribes a high level of state intervention in one aspect of the lives of citizens, their material well-being, while proscribing a similar level of state intervention in another – the formation and expression of their intellectual, political, and spiritual beliefs and attitudes. At the same time, contemporary conservatives also seem to hold equally self-contradictory principles, since they too both prescribe and proscribe a high level of state intervention in the lives of citizens, although they reverse the liberal assignment of values – they recommend a high level of state intervention in the formation and expression of beliefs about matters that liberals would regard as essentially private and privileged, while advocating a low level of state intervention in matters of property and economy, those matters of welfare that liberals regard as preeminently suitable for public and political intervention and regulation in the name of the common weal.