Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig

Living Liberalism: A Way of Life Under Threat (w/ Dr. Alexandre Lefebvre)

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We all, conservatives and progressives, are liberals. And, we are living liberal lives. Dr. Alexandre Lefebvre, a renowned professor of politics and philosophy, and author of the book Liberalism as a Way of Life, joins the pod to explain the complex and often misunderstood concept of liberalism, and how liberalism is more than just a political label—it is a framework built on the values of individual freedom, equality, and fairness that influences our daily interactions and societal norms. 

We also discuss the ideological rifts that characterize modern political coalitions, and the critical role of internal criticism in achieving a more equitable society and delves into the philosophical challenges that echo Kierkegaard's critique of Christendom, placing a spotlight on contemporary issues of inequality and moral inconsistency.

Finally, we examine how liberalism might be under threat in the United States - and globally. We talk about the influence of reality TV and social media on societal empathy and How these elements contribute to a politics of resentment and reduced empathy. We dig into the ways in which liberalism is reflected in cultural shifts and language evolution. And, we consider whether liberalism, with its deeply ingrained nature, could be a subconscious safeguard of our way of life - and where it might be vulnerable. 

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Dr. Lefebvre:

Liberals, particularly progressives, particularly kind of the if I can speak frankly, the New York Times set, I think, are pretty clueless on the cost of living issue. I mean, how often did we hear the term of vibe session out of people like Paul Krugman and the rest to basically gaslight the American public into thinking there was no cost of living crisis, or if so, it was passed. So there's an inattention to that kind of bread and butter stuff. No-transcript when they say the wrong thing, quote unquote, and to try to live with a bit more openness of spirit towards ways of life that aren't theirs.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. If I say the words liberal or liberalism, chances are you either lean into them or recoil, and probably for the same reason, because you associate these words with progressives and progressive values, ideals and policies, and you'd be forgiven for doing so. In the past few decades, we've been conditioned by the Republican Party, by right-wing media, echo chambers, to interpret these concepts that way. But liberalism is more than a political ideology or a political philosophy. It's a way of life that shapes how we interact with one another, build our communities and imagine our futures. At its core, liberalism is rooted in values like individual freedom, equality, tolerance and the rule of law, principles that guide how we design our personal relationships, our public institutions and broader societal challenges. But how does this philosophy translate into the routines of our daily lives? How does it influence the way we work, learn and engage with each other? Liberalism manifests in our daily lives in countless ways, often so seamlessly that we may take it for granted. It's present in the freedom to voice opinions on social media or in a community meeting without fear of persecution. It's the underpinning of laws that ensure fair treatment at work, protect against discrimination and guarantee equal access to education and public services. Liberalism thrives in the marketplace, fostering innovation and competition, whether it's a startup challenging established industries, or a new artist or podcaster finding an audience. Even small everyday acts choosing what to read, what to eat, what to believe are rooted in liberal ideals of autonomy and choice.

Shawn:

My guest today is someone who studies and writes about this. Dr Alexande Lefebvre is a professor of politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney and author of the recent book Liberalism as a Way of Life. In our conversation, we explore liberalism not just as an abstract ideal, but as a lived experience that impacts everything from our cultural norms to our decision-making processes. We discuss how its principles create the framework for pluralistic societies, encourage innovation and foster a sense of shared humanity, and, at the same time, we dig into the current moment on the tensions and contradictions within liberalism globally, but particularly in the United States, and especially in an era of increasing polarization and populist backlash. All right, if you like this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive. Dr LaFave, thanks for being here. How are you Good? Thank you, thanks for having me, absolutely so.

Shawn:

I think we've entered an era of time in which liberalism is associated pretty much solely with partisan identification, at least in the United States, and we're conditioned to think of liberalism and being a liberal as a bad thing. It's used negatively, it has negative connotations. The right has really weaponized it to the point that liberal partisans themselves, myself included, avoid the moniker, even if I don't understand why I'm doing that. So when we talk about things like liberal democracy or liberalism, I think the larger theory is lost on people, and again, myself included. But I do think that's unfortunate and maybe even dangerous. Because if you can't see and understand and appreciate the distinctions, then I think that potentially has real implications for how you think about or how we think about, how we should govern ourselves, and could lead to some pretty bad outcomes. So I thought it'd be a good idea to have you here, given your expertise, the arguments you make in your book, liberalism as a Way of Life, to help parse that distinction and explain all of this and maybe save democracy along the way.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Let's see. I like the bill. Let's see what we can do?

Shawn:

Yeah, okay, so I don't know. Let's do this First things first.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Can you just explain what liberalism is and maybe along the way, explain how it shows up in our daily lives beyond just the political sphere. Sure, no problem. And you were right to open the way you did, with the general confusion as to what liberalism means, because you get five liberals in a room and you're going to get 10 definitions of it, so we can play around the edges as to what liberalism might mean, but I think at its heart, it's a social and political ideology with a set of core commitments, and in my interpretation, those are a defense of personal freedom, which is to say that people should be able to live their life how they see fit, within reasonable limits, of course, and not impeding the ability of others to do so, and I also believe it's so. This is an ideology underpinned by freedom, but it's also an ideology, I believe, underpinned by fairness and the idea of trying to provide everyone in a society what liberals like to call an equal opportunity. In Australia, we have a very nice, simple, earthy phrase for this, which is to try to guarantee a fair go. So those are the two main commitments as I understand liberalism freedom and fairness.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And typically, when we think of liberalism, we think of it as a political kind of thing or as a legal kind of thing, something to do with institutions, with laws, with rights, with division of powers, and all of that is fine and well and I don't disagree.

Dr. Lefebvre:

I think it is initially and originally a social and political ideology. But what I try to make clear in my book, which is titled Liberalism as a Way of Life, is that these liberal values have, as it were, entered the bloodstream or gone viral in our culture, such that they're much more now than just a political or a legal thing, but come to inform who we are as citizens, but also more generally as people, in very deep ways, such that we start to live our life through ideals of freedom and fairness and tolerance and reciprocity and irony and a whole bunch of kind of liberal goods, and we live those values in all different manners of life, so how we conceive of friendship, how we are as professionals, how we parent, how we are in romance on a date, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the ambition of the book to try to show just how deeply today, in the early 21st century, our liberalism runs and how it might not just be a political kind of thing anymore but just as impactfully for a lot of people, a psychological one as well.

Shawn:

You know, if you were to tell a contemporary conservative, however they're constituted today, that, while they may not be a Democrat or they may not be quote unquote a partisan liberal, that they are actually living their lives in a liberal way, I think they would blanch at that right.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah, I've seen some eye rolls.

Shawn:

So what's the argument to be made? That, regardless of your partisan identification, that we are living in, you know, we are living liberal lifestyles in a liberal way, and that has that is detached from our politics, or can it be detached from our politics?

Dr. Lefebvre:

I think that's a great question. I think it's a very difficult thing to assess, which takes a lot of care nowadays, as to which kind of conservatives are basically still playing a liberal game or in the same liberal parameters as, for example, I am, just with a different interpretation as to how freedom and fairness and other kinds of things should be played out and other kinds of conservatives which are genuinely post-liberal, that have a different set of commitments at their core. And I'm happy to come about to come at the question of how what kind of criteria we might have to distinguish kind of liberal conservatives on the one hand and then post liberals on the other hand. But first I want to give start with kind of a two cheers for conservatives nowadays, because that's how my book opens. So when I talked about liberalism as not just a political thing but a psychological one, a cultural one and something very liberals, people who identify as liberals, progressives, also classical liberals, don't tend to see liberalism that way. They tend to see it in a more narrow, institutionalist, legal sense that I set out at first. But the crowd, as it were, who really does appreciate what liberalism has become today, this much more omnipresent, much more free-ranging, free-roving kind of value system and moral framework.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Those are conservatives, and the reason I think that they see that so clearly and so acutely is because they're threatened by it. They see that the background culture of places like the United States, where you live, australia where I live, canada where I'm born All of those places have been the background culture, has effectively been colonized in important respects by liberalism. And by background culture I mean stuff like every time we switch on Netflix, we're just greeted with all kinds of entertainment schlock, for example that just plays out ideas of self-fulfillment, individual realization, fairness, equality, all of that stuff such that most people nowadays, I believe, acquire their liberalism not through civics lessons or anything so formal, but just by switching on the TV or going on YouTube or whatever. So I think that that is something that conservatives are quite accurately perceive. I just think that they have a bad judgment as to its value or its quality, which, of course, they very often think is politically destructive and psychologically noxious.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Now, coming back to the idea of conservatives would blanch or roll their eyes if they were described as a liberal. I think that's true sometimes. So my litmus test, as it were, as to who is a conservative liberal and who is a post-liberal conservative would be basically the following question Do you think that your country, united States, australia, whatever is built for all of its members? And if you answer that question with a robust yes, then I think that you are a liberal in some broad sense. And then we could have significant disagreement about details of how to realize that, but we would still be in liberal land, as it were, has kind of a core constituency, as it were, a core identity, a core set of traditions that has to be valued and prioritized above all others. Then I think you're in post-liberal territory.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And what I mean by this is, when I look around the world today, what I see all around the world is a return of what political philosophers would call perfectionism, which in political philosophy means that an ideology or a worldview would be ready and willing to use the powers of the state whether those are soft persuasive powers or hard coercive powers to promote a particular conception of the good life. So, for example, india right now, or Hungary, has gone all in on this idea of using the state to promote a certain kind of subject, a certain kind of selfhood, and tying their legitimacy and their stability to that. So India is all about mashing up some vision of Hindu nationalism. China, too, is always talking about kind of the civilizational model. So in country after country, you have this idea that the state should promote a particular way of life.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And what I think is true about MAGA in the United States or at least it's more kind of committed core is that they believe the same thing. So if you look at a lot of the great post-liberal intellectuals today writing, they really do think that the United States, the government, should be in the business of pursuing a particular way of life, a particular vision of the family, of sexuality, of tradition, of what should be taught in schools in a pretty stipulative kind of way. And I don't know. I mean we can disagree or agree as to whether that's a good or a bad thing, but I think what's clear to me is that that is no longer liberalism and it has become something else. So when people vote for Donald Trump, it's difficult to tell for me whether they're a conservative liberal or they're a post-liberal conservative, which are very different beasts for me but united right now under one political coalition.

Shawn:

So I don't know if this is semantics, but so the question that you ask and forgive me, this may not be verbatim, but the question that you ask is you know, is your country designed to serve all people? Right, that's right. Yeah, is it built?

Dr. Lefebvre:

for everyone.

Shawn:

Is it built for everyone? Sure, and I feel like that is substantively different than a word that you used later in your response, which is should the country be designed a certain way? And I feel like there is an inherent threat present in the should question that isn't necessarily in the is question, and I wonder if that's semantic, if there's a distinction here and if it's important.

Dr. Lefebvre:

No, I think you're very right too. You pounced on the right thing and I think I was a little careless with my is shoulds, as no philosopher should be. So let me be clear no country I believe does into our economic, social, legal systems. So in that case I really don't want to say that some people live in this kind of la-la land of liberalism where they do think that everything is just kind of playing out according to fairness and its ideals of reciprocity. I don't think any serious liberal could believe that, but liberals believe that it should be that way, and that should involves a very important critical power or capacity, because if you start to think that your country should be a fair system of cooperation but manifestly isn't, then you can start to motivate what I would call internal criticism of your country, saying, hey look, united States, australia, whatever, you profess these ideals, but what the hell? You're not living up to them in any appreciable manner.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And I think that internal criticism is a very powerful kind of criticism, because then you reproach something, someone, some institution with departing from their own ideals, the convictions that they already have.

Dr. Lefebvre:

So that's what I think that liberals are doing they don't believe that our countries are fair or are in fact built for everyone, but that they definitely immediately must be.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Now conservatives, on the other hand, like post-liberal conservatives, I don't think would accept so they would agree that the country is not currently built for everyone, but perhaps they would also think that the country should not be built for everyone and that they want to recover a particular moral framework, and that will vary from country to country. But let's call it Christian conservatism. For the United States, that certainly favors not just a type of person but also just a core set of commitments how life should be lived and how relationships between the sexes should be have, about homosexuality and heterosexuality, about all that stuff. And so once you start to hold that point of view, then I don't think that you are still in the liberal camp of the country should be for everyone, but rather the country should be inclined to a certain vision of the good life, and that is what will make for a stable, flourishing nation and population. On their view.

Shawn:

I want to dig a little bit into this latter group or this last group that you mentioned, which is Christian conservatives, and it's probably fair to say this is a bit of an oversimplification and an overgeneralization, but it's probably fair to say that they make up a pretty large and stable base for Trump and Trumpism, as much as we could coherently define what it is Maybe that'll come into further clarification over the next couple of years but fully admit that this is a leading question, or at least the framing of it is. But do you think that this Christian conservatism, as it's packaged and grown into Trumpism, in reality poses a true threat to liberalism as we understand it?

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yes, I do think that that's not to listen.

Dr. Lefebvre:

I'm not, it's not to condemn it, I'll just say it's bad straight up, but I do think it's attacking frontally certain core commitments about liberalism.

Dr. Lefebvre:

But listen, let me start off with a bit of sympathy, because I get where the conservatives are coming from. So when they look at the United States but really any liberal democracy currently, they don't see a state that is neutral and inclusivist and welcome for every particular kind of viewpoint, particular kind of viewpoint. They see what, in a sense, I see as well, which is my strange agreement, or my, the weird bedfellow I have between myself and conservatives, which is that they see that we live in a comprehensive liberal world and that its values saturate all walks of life, and they see that as a threat and they see that it's driving out their own values and their own ideals and their own practices. So what they conservatives, I think think is that it's time to fight fire with fire, and you see that a piece that was very revelatory for me was one written in 2016, published in the Claremont Review, called the Flight 93 Election Flight 93 or 96?

Shawn:

You remember it, Tom? Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah, the Flight 93 Election, and that was the perception that 96 will come in the next part two of that article.

Dr. Lefebvre:

So the 93 election is that if conservatives didn't rush the election and come out in masses for Donald Trump, then, like Flight 93, they would be flown into the ground, and that, I think, is an enduring perception on the part of conservatism that their way of life is threatened.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And so that's what happens. When you read, for example, project 2025, this document that is kind of half avowed, half disavowed by the Trump administration right now. But when you look at that document, what you see what I see, at any rate and I've had a look at most of it and I fed it all through chat, gpt, because it is a very large document and what I see when I look at that document isn't so much a movement that is hostile to or critical of the deep state, but one that is envious of the deep state and wants to reappropriate that state to its ends and purpose and put the right kind of people in it. It's a question of staffing, not a question of principles. And so that's what I would say is that when the conservative movement wants to take over the administrative state and push it towards its own ends, then we are in a different territory than we have been, and so, in that respect, then, I do believe Christian conservatism, at least in that dispensation, is a threat to liberalism.

Shawn:

Something I've been thinking about is the commitment that Christian conservatives I mean I'm saying Christian conservatives, but we could also say, you know, Trump supporters, or at least the base, the MAGA supporters of Trump the commitment that they have to, whatever their vision is of a way of life, of an American way of life that is so antithetical to liberal values or the values of liberalism, values of liberalism, and I think that those conservative values are very antithetical to proponents of a liberal way of life that I find it very hard to imagine a peaceful society or world or country in which they both exist, and if that's the case, then one has to exist and the other doesn't, and that to me seems to be a recipe for disaster, for chaos, for violence. And so the question here is is there something built into liberalism that can account for and abide some form of conservatism that doesn't pose a pure threat?

Dr. Lefebvre:

Definitely. Yeah, I certainly think that's true. So for I mean one of the things I do I talk about this a little bit in the book, but I like to read widely in conservative media and one of the things I do read all the time is Brett Bart, the far right Steve Bannon outlet, and when I read that and when you read Brett Bart you don't really read the articles, you read the comments, because that's where all the action happens, that's where kind of voices are on display. And when you read Brett Bart, um, I think you get two kinds of voices going on in the comment section on any uh, on any piece.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Half of the comments I think are just like straight up antithetical, hostile to liberalism and very often just homophobic, racist etc. Etc. Nativism kind of stuff. But okay, let's say that's 30-40% of Breitbart comments, just like let's shelve those. The rest I think are liberal reproaches on the part of conservatives of our liberal societies for not abiding by its visions of fairness. So, for example, breitbart is super anti immigration, but the reason why is that I mean some people just think that, like, brown people are inferior. But the other kind of 60, 70% is an argument motivated out of fairness, namely that illegal immigrants are coming to the United States, jumping the queue, taking advantage of social services and diluting the culture in all kinds of ways, and for them, as people who are native, born Americans, who have pitched into the system their families have, et cetera, et cetera, that strikes them as deeply unfair. Now, we may disagree as to their interpretation of that, the values they assign, the weight of those values, et cetera, et cetera, but I still think that that is a conversation taking place within liberalism, and so I think that when Trump wins pretty decisively I mean, he won the popular vote, which is a surprise to me and then all three branches well, the House, the Senate and the presidency what I see him winning at is just really bread and butter stuff that liberals should take a much better, should take much better care of.

Dr. Lefebvre:

So I just wrote an article on this, published like a popular article, but I think that liberals need to do a much better job taking care of the cost of living crisis, because that manifestly doesn't live up to its notions of fairness, and I think it was a genius move, for example, on the part of Trump, to declare or propose a 10% cap on credit card debt. I mean, that's just such an easy, identifiable cost of living punish the benefactors of usury kind of move, and I think that Americans by and large want a lot more common sense quote, unquote on the border and I think that that's something that even a progressive like me could get on board with. To have a more controlled immigration policy. The point is, the point I'm trying to make again is is that I definitely think that coalitions can be built between liberals and conservatives. I just think that liberals aren't paying enough attention to their core values, and that's why we are hemorrhaging support on a day-to-day level.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Liberals, particularly progressives, particularly kind of the if I can speak frankly, the New York Times set, I think, are pretty clueless on the cost of living issue. I mean, how often did we hear the term of vibe session out of people like Paul Krugman and the rest to basically gaslight the American public into thinking there was no cost of living crisis or, if so, it was passed. So there's an inattention to that kind of bread and butter stuff. But there's also the tendency of liberals to moralize constantly and to claim that they are superior, that their values are superior, that the other ways of life aren't worthy, and I think that that is just kind of illiberal. On the one hand it's an ungenerous attitude, but be it's electorally suicidal to do that. So I think liberals need to reground themselves on their commitment to not just freedom but to generosity social provision, generosity like welfare, kind of like everyone getting a fair go, but also hermeneutic generosity and not jumping down people's throats when they say the wrong thing quote unquote and to try to live with a bit more openness of spirit towards ways of life that aren't theirs.

Shawn:

This has me thinking and this is my fault to some degree in that when we talk about liberalism as a way of life and as a theoretical concept and then we have a conversation about conservatives and those on the right, we pit those against each other, which I think is fair. But at the same time, I think what that does is it automatically, without digging into it, creates the assumption that progressives and those on the left are in pursuit of liberalism, and I think inherent or in the response that you've just given, and you know I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but it does make me wonder if it's fair to say that progressives and you know the Democratic Party and the values and the policies that they pursue right now, are not just necessarily amiss but are perhaps also maybe not equally, but failing to pursue liberalism and its values.

Dr. Lefebvre:

I would agree with that assessment. I think. Listen not to, not to revolve around my book, but I try to create a word to name this situation. So what I think is very, what I think is very odd about our world, especially its mainstream public face, is that we profess a whole bunch of really nice values and then we deliver a world that manifestly doesn't just not live up to them but hardly even seems to try to live up to them either in terms of its policies, but also just in terms of how we you and I as individuals live on a day-to-day level how we you and I as individuals, live on a day-to-day level. So one of the main authors of the book forgive me for this brief excursus, but is the theologian Soren Kierkegaard.

Dr. Lefebvre:

So Kierkegaard probably everyone probably knows is a Danish theologian, lived in the 19th century and he lived in a super, super Christian world and he lived in Copenhagen, and when Kierkegaard walked around his Danish Copenhagen world he saw Christianity everywhere. He saw a Lutheran church on every corner. Everyone was professing that good life of Christ and so great in a sense. But then what Kierkegaard did is look a little closer at how the actual people that he was observing live and like what they actually want in their deepest desires and in their daily practices, and he saw that none of them were authentically Christian. Really, what the standard Dane in the 19th century wants, just like us, is basically social respectability and moderate pleasures, like a nice roast on Sunday, and then that's the good life, hanging out with friends, and none of them, while they profess the conscious unworldliness and brotherly love of Christ. It's all just fine words. And so Kierkegaard coined a word to describe this situation, and that word that he described, that he coined, was called Christendom Christendom at the end. And then for him what that signified is a world that was play acting at its Christianity, that was just not even just going through the motions, but just hypocritically kind of saying one thing and doing the other, not just again in its institution but in the lives of its members, and that, I think, is a very true and very youthfully destructive concept.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And what I do in the book is I don't think we live in a world where Christianity is the public morality and there's a separation of church and state, of course. But what I do in the book is I just paint by numbers Kierkegaard, I say we don't live in Christendom anymore. But we definitely live in liberalism. We live in a world where we profess ideals of fairness and reciprocity and freedom but deliver a world that seems designed to counteract those very values.

Dr. Lefebvre:

An extremely unstable kind of world, because on the one hand, you have inequality on the ground and then, on the other hand, you have moralism coming from the pulpits of correct liberal opinion, and that is almost a rage-inducing machine. So when we say that liberals aren't living up to their values and indict the Democratic Party, I think that's correct and I think, because liberalism puts such a premium on fairness in this world, it's effectively playing with fire. You're telling people how they ought to think of themselves, on the one hand, and then delivering a world that counteracts or violates that sense, that self-conception, on the other hand, and that is not a good place to be if you're a liberal or a Democrat in the American sense.

Shawn:

This is going to sound like a really stupid question, but bear with me, we'll see how it plays out. Does liberalism as a concrete, tangible thing require proactive attention to survive?

Dr. Lefebvre:

liberalism is a demanding moral doctrine. I think it's as demanding and I think it's as worthy as any religion and I think that it's easy to backslide into just. I mean, like we've been talking about, to giving a notional commitment to these values but not living up to them. But listen, just think of how, if you believe that your society should be a fair system of cooperation, think of all the ways in your day-to-day life not not your country, obviously does does all kinds of bad things, not the, not the United States, but one's country, australia. I feel like uh country does all kinds of bad things, but you too, in your day-to-day life and desires do all kinds of bad things. So I have I have a bit of an oversharing moment in the book where I talk about my sins from the perspective of liberalism, and there's a bunch, but I mean the main one for me, the one that just really jars at my own self conception, is that I send my kid to private school.

Dr. Lefebvre:

In Sydney about at least in the part I live, 50% of kids go to private school and I think that that is manifestly unfair.

Dr. Lefebvre:

It perpetuates intergenerational injustice, it costs a ton of money and basically some schools get the really smart kids who test well. Other schools get the rich kids and then the public schools get the kids who are neither test particularly well nor are particularly wealthy, and that will just go on and perpetuate endemic injustice very high. It would be to deny my daughter what I think is an important set of opportunities and capabilities that I can provide for her. So that's one way in which I don't live up to my liberalism, and you can nominate others that are just as easily. Some of them will have to do with, I don't know people who want to pay lower taxes and not support social provision, other people who are quick to judge others and are illiberal in their kind of temperament. So that's what I'm trying to point out that it's a demanding creed and one that requires real training and real work, but so does any worthy way of life. You can't just kind of float into any great religion or value system and hope it'll just go on autopilot.

Shawn:

It requires I don't know, maybe this is speaking too strongly, but a kind of ascetics of existence, a certain kind of training and discipline that you have to apply to yourself and also apply and seek and promote in your wider circles and your politics and the rest, which is, if the left and you know Democrats have gone astray as it relates to, you know, functional liberal policies that produce liberal outcomes, and if the right is outright hostile to liberalism, at what point are we past the Rubicon or approaching it?

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah, that is. I mean, that's a really, that's a deep question. If you're a betting man I wonder what you would say. But that this is a really, really old problem, that's a really that's a deep question. If you're a betting man I wonder what you would say. But this is a really, really old problem.

Dr. Lefebvre:

It's the oldest, in a sense, problem of political philosophy, and we have a name for it. It's called stability, which is to say, how can a regime reliably reproduce itself from one generation to the next? And the most common way in which a regime can reliably reproduce itself from one way to the next is by having a shared conception of the good life that I and my kids and my kids' kids will all believe in, a certain kind of excellence of what it means to be human, maybe a certain metaphysics as to God, et cetera, et cetera, and we'll pass that down and it will be enshrined in our laws and our constitutions and that will be a very kind of stable system. Now the problem for liberalism is it can't do that. It cannot because of its commitment to pluralism, to tolerance and the rest. It can't just nominate a particular way of life, whether that's liberal or anything else, and say, okay, this is the game plan, we're going to do this. And so then liberal regime has to anchor its stability in concepts of fairness and of right, and if it's not living up to those which I think we can agree, it's not then, to use your language, a Rubicon, if not has been crossed, then will be crossed, and so I think that that's why I mean this is why my book is in a sense kind of a cry from the heart. But for liberals to realize what they threaten to lose if this shit goes sideways, they not only threaten to become to live in a liberal country, but they threatened to have their morality displaced as the public hegemonic morality of their time, and that is destabilizing again, not just at the macro level, but for one's values, for one's commitments, as to whether one can live up to them and the rest.

Dr. Lefebvre:

But as to whether the Rubicon has been crossed, I think it's a very difficult question, one to answer question by country by country. In Australia, for example, I definitely do not believe any Rubicon is not just crossed but cited. We have, I think listen, I'm Canadian so I didn't grow up with this but in Australia we have what I think is the greatest institution of all, which is mandatory voting and that has kept, I believe, both political parties within a fair degree of centrism. I mean, you have the Labour Party that's on the left, the Liberal Party that's on the right, but they're kind of like I could vote for either of them sort of with a good conscience. Now I think that in different countries, and the more and more you have polarization, which plagues the United States especially, then you get into a very destructive kind of spiral that may be difficult to recover from. But from where you sit, s, what do you think?

Shawn:

The more we talk, actually, the more cynical I get. Oh good, I think in this context we perhaps have passed the Rubicon and maybe that's just my lack of imagination. The first step is realizing the fault.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah.

Shawn:

And I don't know that anybody is even ready to do that right now, much less willing on the right or the left. What would you nominate as the fault? Well, that's a good question. I don't know.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah, I think there's different strokes for different folks, different faults for different. I don't know what the rhyme here would be you can fill it in but I think a giant fault line is just what I've been talking about. Is this cost of living business or this idea, bunch of support for Magaj types and maybe recover some sort of of of future? But listen, it's such a difficult. So my hero in this book is the American philosopher John Rawls, and John Rawls thought about a great many things beautifully and impressively, um, but he had something very kind of like elliptical and scary to say about the problem that we're talking about right now. And so Rawls has.

Dr. Lefebvre:

In Rawls's mind, the world is divided into two kind of people. Let's put it this way there's reasonable people on the one hand and unreasonable people on the other hand. By reasonable, he means basically people who believe in fairness and reciprocity and unreasonable people who don't or who only believe that fairness and reciprocity should have, like their friends and family. Basically and it's not to say that unreasonable people are irrational or dumb or anything like that, they're just playing with a different moral compass. And so Rawls has a question, which is what do we do about unreasonable people in a liberal democratic society, like people who don't want to play this fairness game anymore. And his answer which I think could be given in 1990s, when liberalism was partying, like it's 1999, and everything seemed like kind of unipolar, single ideology kind of world he said that what liberal democracies need to do with the unreasonable people within them is and this term is just shocking, not for its exaggeration but for its restraint he says we need to contain them, quote unquote. And by contain, I think Rawls, he didn't mean round them up in camps or anything crazy like that. What he meant is ensure that their kind of opinions don't get widespread uptake, don't get widespread social approbation and approval.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And so if the unreasonable people of a country remain contained to a fringe of like I don't know, I'm just spitballing here, but 10%, then that's manageable. Then a society, a liberal society, can basically like, tolerate that and not give its views airtime, but it'll be okay. But if the Rubicon then becomes for me 30, 40%, if a society starts to think otherwise, then you get. Then I think a Rubicon has been crossed, because then you get retaliation on both sides. Then you say the liberal side starts to say, well, fuck it If they're not playing by these fairness rules? We're not going to either, and so, then, what was once a moral consensus starts to fissure into kind of brinkmanship of uh, moralities of people both denying that the other side is playing by the rules that they set out, and that is not a stable place to be.

Shawn:

It's interesting. One of the things that you mentioned here is, as in contain them. It triggered in me this. So when you first asked what I consider to be the fault, I don't know that I would consider this to be the fault, but one of the things that I've been playing with lately, or thinking a lot about, is the role that I I mean you probably think I'm going to say social media and I would put that in this bucket but the role that reality TV has played in shaping how we embrace or reject empathy and how we feel about ourselves in comparison to other people. And, and, and. And. Just go with me for a second, although I'm not exactly sure where I'm going, so that might not be smart.

Dr. Lefebvre:

No, I'm with you. I agree.

Shawn:

I'm nodding, there's a market shift around like 2000,. 2001, in how we voyeuristically look at other people and the way that they live their life and gave ourselves a lot of license to judge people for things that we ourselves could not do. Yeah, and I think that, coupled with social media, has created over time what I've started to notice in the last couple of years, which is, I don't know if there's a schadenfreude, but a sense of willingness to cut off your nose, to spite your face. I feel like once you've crossed that boundary, it's really difficult to come back and see your neighbor as somebody that you give a shit about, and I'm starting to see that this, like this hardening and this, this glee and joy in harm for other people, even if it causes harm to ourselves, and to me that feels particularly threatening.

Dr. Lefebvre:

I think that that's right. Yeah, I'd like you to say more about that, because it seems um, it seems to drift towards nihilism. That's what it seems to me a valuing of negative ideals rather than positive ones. This is a little bit sideways to what you're saying, but for me, the very best book that I've read, written on Trump, on Trump the man but Trumpism but Trump the man especially, is by actually, the New York times TV critic, which is the name is kind of complicated James Poniewoski. Anyways, the book is called Audience of One Donald Trump television and the fracturing of America and he really reads Trump as, first and foremost, as a TV star and as shaping his politics through a certain kind of reality television, through things like pro sports and wrestling in particular, and then how that starts to influence what cable media is like and that what we really have in politics today is it's becoming the genre of reality TV and of social media, and that Trump is just such a phenomenon because he was on the ground level of that and very good at being, at being a media presence and as an entertainer he's kind of like he's perfect, he's terrific, and so I think that that's right and I think that there's a lot of works on this in kind of media theories, so, like Mark poster, entertaining ourselves to death.

Dr. Lefebvre:

I haven't thought enough about this, but I think you're right.

Dr. Lefebvre:

They come at it more as the creation of the 24 hour news cycle and the nowification of everything, that then everything becomes tribal and da da da.

Dr. Lefebvre:

But you point a different trajectory which I find interesting and I haven't thought enough about, about the winnowing or the starving of empathy in a new kind of entertainment age and I think that and the rise of a politics of resentment, and I would definitely think that that kind of politics of resentment is always tied to Trump and Trumpism and MAGA, like the conservative backlash, the, the, the whole phrase, the cruelty is the point. But I definitely think that the left does cruelty as as aggressively with its cancel politics and it's it's, it's a wagon circling and the rest. So I think that you're right and I think that you're talking at the right. I mean for me, for me and my kind of analysis of liberalism, not as a political thing but as a, as a zeitgeist, as a culture, as a psychology, I think that the pitching it at the level of empathy is the right level and if that's what you see, and that's probably what I see then I agree with me. I think we're we're, I think we're talking each other into mutual cynicism here, so I'll stop there.

Shawn:

That's how it goes right. I just bring you down.

Dr. Lefebvre:

No, no, yeah right.

Shawn:

This is a bit of a pivot, but were we to be staring down the passage of a Rubicon or, you know, looking back at one? I guess that begs the question, like what that looks like. So where would you point as an example of liberalism decline or collapse?

Dr. Lefebvre:

I think it would cover. I think here I'm going to tread sort of the same ground that I've been talking about, but I think that if liberals are poor at taking care of the bread and butter of fairness and equal opportunity and the ability to have meaningful freedoms in your life, that sends it on a terminal decline. When then conservatives look at that and they see a monoculture caused by liberalism, and then all kinds of wreckage caused by liberalism, and then they start to react as I don't know what statesman it was in Latin America who said this, but something like for my friends and family everything, for my enemies the law. And then you get the politicization or the weaponization of government. You saw this in the silliest, the dumbass, if I can speak frankly, pardon of Hunter Biden the other day and then that just codes it right into Trump using government as his own kind of political apparatus, his own personal apparatus. And so that's where I think there's a lot of rubricons being crossed, but where I would say, I mean where I would try to here's let me try to, let me try to pivot towards hope a little bit more is. I want to try to just give a sense of how deep our liberalism runs in so many respects and how unconsciously held it is, because that's where something, that's where an ideology really grips. You not when, when you say it, statements out loud you like, find yourself agreeing with the kind of moral sentiments, but when you're just on autopilot in your life and you're doing all this kind of stuff that just seems like human nature or plain decency or whatever and how that's, and in fact that's just an ideology acting through you, well then you know that is doing a really good job of this, of being an ideology, of running deep into your bones.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And so what I try to do in the book is show all kinds of moments in our culture or in our sites better word in which we are liberal in a very deep way and don't recognize it. So one of my favorites and I'm just giving this as a, for instance is I have a discussion on the nature of swear words and the evolution of swear words, which I find a very fascinating topic, because by looking at the history of swear words you can very quickly reverse, engineer what a society thinks are its main moral commitments and what it thinks is good and decent and normal, and so in some eras it's sacrilegious words that are really no-nos. You can't say that out loud like God, damn it Jesus those kinds of words that evoke and bind you to God. In a very God-fearing kind of culture, those words are absolutely dangerous because, well, for all kinds of obvious reasons. And so when we see that those are the kinds of words that are censored, we can say pretty quickly oh okay, this is a culture that cares very deeply about religion, cool.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Now, on the other hand, you have different moments in time when obscenities become the major swear words and words like shit or fuck or things like that, and then you have kind of religion recedes into the background and we have a different kind of conception as to what is good and bad and normal in everyday life and what should be brought out in public, what should be hidden and take place behind closed doors and all of that stuff. And now, what I find so interesting about our own era right now is that both those kinds of swear words the shit words and the holy words the holy shit words, as it were are both kind of okay to say now, like I can say them on this podcast, I'm not afraid of getting canceled, I can say them in class and it looks a little like when I lecture in class. It looks a little unprofessional, but no one cares. But if I were to say a different kind of word then all of a sudden everyone would freak out and I would be canceled within a week. And those are, of course, slurs. So slurs are the swear words of our time. So the N word, but not just the N word, but all kinds of words around sexuality or race or even ableism, like a tame word that I would say as a kid and now would be an absolute no-no, it would be like calling someone a spaz. That was like totally a fair game in when I was a kid or teen. Now it is not okay.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And my point, with all this excursus into the history of swear words, is to ask well, why are swear words, why are, excuse me, why are slurs our major swear words of our time?

Dr. Lefebvre:

And the answer, I think, is very direct and very telling it's because we're liberal, because what a slur is is a slur, is a missile directed at what is the main moral commitment of liberal societies, which is to try to create an environment in which everyone can flourish and in which everyone can achieve a good sense of themselves, have a robust sense of their own self-worth and self-respect.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And so if we've outlawed slurs basically as a society, not by any kind of explicit agreement, but just by tacit attunements of how we talk and the kinds of words that we wouldn't think of using, then that shows just how deeply our liberalism runs.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And so Trump could get away with it, for example, when he ridiculed that reporter that had a disability I forgot his name from the New York Times, but that was a major flashpoint and it turned out that about 30 percent of America didn't care. And so for about 30% of America that slur was fair game, and maybe they don't believe in a fair society. But given that that is still such an outrage and still recalled over and over, and that ordinary people, most of us just don't dream of using slurs, not just because we're good, virtuous people, just because it's so contrary to who we hold of ourselves, then that shows a certain kind of stability of liberalism. That may show that the Rubicon to continue the metaphor might be farther off than we think and that liberalism might have its hooks in us more than perhaps we realize, which, for our line of conversation here, would be a very good thing indeed.

Shawn:

It strikes me that if liberalism is so deeply embedded in our culture and our society that it's quite possible that we are acting and reacting in ways where maybe it's subconscious or unconscious that realizes that liberal way of life in such a way that it could be our savior in spite of ourselves Could be.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Yeah, I mean, that's what I hope In a sense. What I'm trying to do in my work and my book is just try to describe what I believe is hiding in plain sight, namely that this liberal way of life is just all around us. It's how most likely you live, most likely many of the listeners of this podcast already live and try to mark more explicit what is so deeply ingrained in us that it goes without mention. And so what I'm trying to do with that is, first of all, it's an old philosophical project of self-knowledge, of trying to understand, kind of like know thyself and where you get your moral framework. But second, it's kind of sounding alarmist to what I was saying earlier what we threaten to lose should that moral framework be under threat and displaced in America, but more worldwide as well. And so it might be.

Dr. Lefebvre:

This thing that is the most ordinary and common may in fact be the most reliable bastion of our liberal order right now. And that's not something that, like, I'm coming up with on my own. That's what great political sociologists always observe, and that's the one lesson I think I've really learned from the founder of political sociology, which is Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America and where he said that a democracy or any regime lives or dies is basically if that regime and its principles are embedded in what he called its mores. But it's habits, it's just day to day practices, and he thought that America was so promising because it had sunk down to that kind of unconscious level. But while that may be a strong level and a stable level, it's not an invulnerable one, and that's what I think liberals have to recognize.

Shawn:

All right, final question you ready for it? Yeah, let's hear it. What's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, and it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Lefebvre:

So I've actually been taking a deep dive into non-liberal ways of life. In particular, I've been trying to read great critics, contemporary critics, of liberalism, coming from China, coming from the United States and coming from the rest. And what I'm really trying to get at I hope our conversation didn't suggest otherwise is I do think that these illiberal peoples, regimes, personality types, if you like do uphold great human goods. I do think that they are decent and worthy models of being human. I just think they run afoul of liberalism in all kinds of ways. But what I'm trying to unpack right now is the positive core of these ideologies and why they're able to attract so much support in this day and age. Because what drives me really nuts is what you're saying. What am I learning from right now? Let me tell you what I'm not learning from right now, and the kind of book that drives me nuts are all these kind of takes.

Dr. Lefebvre:

And I'm thinking of people like let me name some names here Timothy Snyder I wrote a critical review of his new book on freedom just recently or Anne Alperbaum, who's autocracy ink I put in the same thing, and the other kind of people that believe that these illiberal regimes rule strictly through repression and that the tyrants, as it were, are in it just for the goods of tyranny money, power, women, whatever. And I just think that that is sure it's part of the picture, but it is a very small one, and so what I'm going to try to do in my next work is reconstruct the positive vision of the good life in these other regimes China, india, united States, right wing Russia, iran and I really don't want to say that it's just inspired by fear and cruelty and all that stuff and I'm trying to see what the positive human core is in them, and not how they can all cohere in one big happy framework, because I really don't think that's possible, but try to see what the genuine pull of these things are for people who think different than me.

Shawn:

So it's a liberal trying to make sense of an illiberal world okay, well, well, not to be salacious, but do you really do you think Trump has a depth to an ideology beyond power, wealth? I do know, okay.

Dr. Lefebvre:

You're right. Good, that's a good follow-up. Last question so no, listen, if I could just wish my um interview list my interview. So I want to. I want to actually work, talk with these people, uh, face to face. And if I could somehow get the security and and uh clout to talk to trump, I wouldn't really want to, because he, I just think he's such an opportunity. So I agree with your question, but the kind of people I'd be talking about in that regime are, I don't know, steve bannon, kevin roberts, um, what's his name? Uh, miller, was stephen miller? Um, those kind of people who strike me as true believers, and we may hold that their core values are the causes of oppression, but they don't see it that way and they just see it as a much more worthy moral framework. And so what I want to do is I want to work with this word sounds pejorative, but I don't think it should ideologues, people who are committed and internal to that worldview, but, as Hugh rightly said, trump ain't one of them.

Shawn:

Dr Lefebvre, thanks for the conversation. I appreciate it and I know you had mentioned that you aren't sure people are going to be interested in your book post-November 5, but I think this might be the exact moment that we should be interested in it.

Dr. Lefebvre:

Thank you, here's hoping.

Shawn:

Try as some might to relegate liberalism to the ash heap of history, liberalism isn't just a philosophy of the past. It's a vital living framework that guides how we coexist in a free and open society. It's deeply embedded in the very framework of our lives, our culture and, yes, our politics, the way we govern ourselves. Yet in today's polarized political climate, liberalism is under threat, not just in the United States, but globally. Attacks on freedom of speech, the erosion of voting rights and growing intolerance challenge the very principles that underpin democracy. And with Donald Trump, the living embodiment of anti-liberalism, set to take office in a few weeks, this moment calls for both reflection and action to reaffirm the values of equality, justice and individual freedom that define liberalism, because, as we discussed here today, liberalism needs proactive investment to function. None of us can afford to sit back and hope it does the work for us All. Right. Check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks. Thank you, thank you, you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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