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August 29, 2005
As is well understood, Liberalism's value pluralism thesis implies different ways of life with the legitimacy of the liberal state resting on not imposing any one way of life on its citizens. Disagreement about the best way of life is accepted as an integral part of the liberal polity.
Hence those who seek to impose a particular way of life in the name of Australian values to counter moral relativism are properly seen as conservatives, not liberals. In contrast, liberal pluralism accepts that separate and distinct etthnic cultures are the fundamental constituents of a liberal political society, and that the liberal state has an obligation to show equal respect and concern toward each.
Consider a world in which fundamental values are plural, conflicting, incommensurable in theory, and uncombinable in practice. We would have a cluster of values from different ways of life A, B, and C. A represents a Millian life of civic engagement, political participation, and open-mindedness, in the face of a wide variety of experiments in living; B represents a life of devotion, orthodoxy, and service, in the name of a traditional or fundamental religion; and C represents a life of self-sufficiency, hard work, and independence, in the name of an entrepreneurial life in the free market. The liberal argument is that there could be no valid reason for a state to promote any of these ways of life among its citizens: since A, B, and C are all good, there could be no compelling reason to impose, say, A over B, or C to the exclusion of A. Thus, the argument runs, the state must allow for A, B, and C, remain neutral between A, B, and C and leave it up to citizens to decide which way of life to pursue. The state has no good reason to do more than protect negative liberty.
Such an argument is not accepted by liberals, because in practice they are engaged in something more than protecting negative liberty. They hold that the liberal state has a good reason to promote A rather than B or C. It will promote Millian civic liberty because A, the Millian way of life, is actually good, and is a better or higher good than B or C. So the liberal state imposes a single way of life on its citizens, shapes the character of its citizens so they can participate in the Millian way of life, and protects the liberal way of life from its critics and enemies by enacting those laws that promote liberal virtues and freedoms.
Hence we have the familiar constitutional provisions of a liberal society: freedom of speech, a free press, property rights, individual protections from interference, a state policy that aspires to be neutral among competing viable moral doctrines, and a representative government in which persons are treated as equal citizens.
As William A. Galston argued in 'Liberal Purposes' (1991) every regime--liberal democracy no less than monarchy or aristocracy or, for that matter, the various forms of totalitarianism--inflects the beliefs, practices, and institutions that live under it on its citizens.
Therein lies the idea of liberal coercion or authoritarianism. The liberal state is seen to be unreasonable, because it is engaged in rank ordering of values, and it is committed to some fundamental value or cluster of values that provides the foundation for the legitimacy of the liberal state. An aspiring tyrant--the national security state---can then say that there are distinctive individual goods to be realized by a life of coerced submission imposed by a centralised political authority to to provide a liberal way of life with security from the threat of terrorism.
A question: should not liberalism, properly conceived, be upfront and give an account of the goods of community and purposes of the state that could meet the above criticism, whilst preserving liberalism's core commitments to individual freedom and human equality?
Should not liberalism be upfront about those liberal virtues--tolerance, self-restraint a certain generosity of spirit--that equip liberal citizens to maintain public order, defend liberal institutions, and enjoy freedom? It is fairly obvious that the preservation of a political society that protects individual freedom is an achievement that depends in part on its citizens' character; and that the liberal state is actively involved in shaping character of its citizens(eg., work-to-welfare programs).
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