Adrian Vermeule’s Deliberately Distorted Understanding of “Liberalism”: Why Liberalism and Secular Rationalism are, historically speaking, more antonyms than synonyms.

Adrian Vermeule is writing about liberalism again. (For some earlier forays, just follow his twitter feed or read his excellent polemic on strategic Catholicism). Or, I should say, “liberalism,” because, for Vermeule's “liberalism” is a term of art with an idiosyncratic meaning. Vermeulean liberalism is synonymous with the late 18th Century French (not Scottish) Enlightenment and the French Revolution. These movements, according to Vermeule, created a religious passion play in which Reason repeatedly defeats Superstition by liberating individuals from mental as well as political loyalties to rival institutions or beliefs — Christianity or other religions aside from Reason itself, family ties, national cultural traditions, etc. Instead, the individual must follow Reason alone, meaning something fairly abstract like some sort of inductive method, some system of deductive logic, and perhaps some sort of utilitarian ethics. The achievement of such Enlightenment requires that a clerisy of enlightened elites shame superstitious boors, from bakers to florists, into a ruthlessly enforced conformity with whatever is currently deemed to be required by Reason or forbidden as Superstition. Contrary to the libertarian rhetoric of liberalism, this religion of liberalism’s Reason, therefore, is brutally centralizing, intolerant of dissent, and, well, illiberal.

If I had to choose between Vermeule’s version of “liberalism” and whatever Vermeule takes to be its more palatable opposite, then sign me up for Vermueleanism, as-is and sight unseen (and Vermeuleanism is indeed a mystery -- some sort of integralist Catholic Monarchy? A de Maistre-style re-interpretation of our Constitution? Search me). But the choice is a false one -- a rigged agenda designed to produce a Vermeule-friendly outcome. Here, for my fellow conservatives, is a quick reminder of two rival accounts of the meaning of “liberalism” or “liberty” that have nothing to do with Reason’s reign over Superstition and that work just fine for us conservatives who are only occasional readers of First Things.

First, recall that Scot sociologists and philosophers like John Robertson and Adam Smith used the term “liberal” in a political sense a decade before the French Revolution. Far from using “liberal” to denote any universal reign of reason, the Scots generally regarded “reason” as such to be mere deductive logic, devoid of content. (Remember that scotsman David Hume’s aphorism about reason being the salve of the passions? Or his friend Adam Smith's famously derision for systematizing intellectuals?). “Liberal” institutions were not intended to enforce the rule of Reason over Superstition but instead preserve the natural liberties of individuals from both. We call these Scots “classical liberals” today.

Second, recall that, more than a century before that Festival of Reason that Vermeule takes to be the origin of “liberalism,” the noun “liberty” was common usage for 17th century English revolutionaries. (For an exceptional collection of their tracts, see Joyce Malcom's collection). For these polemicists, our “liberties” were both institutional (e.g., Parliamentary, judicial, municipal) and individual bulwarks against the centralizing force of the New Monarchs like Louis XIV and Charles I. Far from being champions of Reason, these “liberals” were avid advocates of tradition (Edward Coke's and John Selden’s “ancient constitution”), religion (Milton’s and Henry Vane’s godly republicanism), or local political charters (James Harrington’s parishes, hundreds, and "tribes"). Against these revolutionary advocates of "libertye" were arrayed advocates of the new science like Thomas Hobbes and Sir Francis Bacon who cheered on the reign of one all-powerful sovereign King and one sovereign scientific method, ridiculing the “idols” of superstition and atavistic loyalty to mediating institutions. (If one balks at the anachronism of referring to commonwealth “libertyes” as “liberal,” then one should really bridle at Vermeule's using the term to describe the “liberté” of Robespierre).

In short, Vermeule has the etymology of the word “liberal” exactly backwards. Our rationalistic elites today, annoying to both Vermeule and myself, descend from Hobbesian and Baconian rationalistic centralisers. Those who first coined the word “liberal” or made “liberty” their central organizing principle of politics resisted the religion of Reason for a humanely traditionalist and, yes, even superstitious pluralism. Vermeule would likely cheerfully acknowledge that he is deliberately hijacking the term “liberalism” in order to crash it. I merely suggest to everyone else that they refrain from purchasing a ticket on that particular flight of fancy. You can be a proud anti-Jacobin conservative with a conservative Christian theology and, like G.K. Chesterton and William Gladstone, among, many, many others) claim the term of "liberalism" as your own.