Liberalism is the rebellion now

Belief in individual freedom and dignity is being driven underground.

Note: I accidentally sent out an incomplete version of this post earlier today. This is the complete version.

Of all the posts that I’ve had to write, this one scares me the most. There’s a certain irrational feeling that to write about something makes it more real, and this is something that I wish was just a bad dream.

When I was growing up in the 1990s, liberalism — the idea that society should be based around the rights, freedoms, and dignity of individual human beings — was ascendant. Here in the U.S. and in other rich democratic nations, there was little question that we were more free, and our rights better protected, than at any point in our history. Every politician talked about freedom as the paramount value, and even if Republicans and Democrats had slightly different ideas about what that entailed, the differences of opinion were not too stark. Whether you were fighting for abortion rights, low taxes, gay marriage, or deregulation, it always helped to couch your arguments in terms of individual freedom.

Liberalism’s ascendance was global. Even though Russia was a chaotic basket case and China had cracked down on its people at Tiananmen Square, both countries were recognizably more liberal than they had been in ages past. International organizations agreed that freedom — freedom of speech, democracy, free enterprise, and so on — was advancing all over the world. And alongside the soft power of liberal ideals stood the hard power of the U.S.A., the world’s most powerful nation, which had won the Cold War and World War 2 in the name of liberal democracy.

What a difference a couple of decades make. Since around 2005, social and political freedoms have been eroding around the world:

Source: Freedom House

If you don’t believe Freedom House, of course, you can look at any other number of data sources showing the same trend, though they disagree on exactly when it began. I wrote about it in a post back in 2021, and things have only gotten worse since then:

The Darkness

You can feel the decline of liberalism here in the United States. Very few leaders on either side of the aisle talk about freedom anymore.¹ Progressives tend to couch their appeals in terms of justice, conservatives in terms of greatness. Americans still pay lip service to freedom of speech, but no one seems to really want it — Elon Musk has increased X’s censorship on behalf of foreign governments and suppressed content he doesn’t like, while Democratic leaders like Tim Walz and John Kerry have called for legal crackdowns on “hate speech” and “misinformation”.

Abortion was legal everywhere in America three years ago — now it’s illegal in thirteen states. DEI statements — essentially, professions of ideological conformity — are now mandatory at many universities. Even free enterprise is slowly becoming a casualty of the culture wars, with progressive antitrust crusaders shifting their focus from economic harms to corporate political power, and Republicans threatening retaliation against businesses that promote progressive values. (Of course, don’t even get me started on the Palestine movement and its fantasies of violent conquest and ethnic cleansing.)

And this is all before Trump Round 2. Francis Fukuyama, one of liberalism’s most ardent defenders, has a good rundown of how things could get much worse under a second Trump term. Obviously we’ll have to wait and see, but Trump’s disdain for democratic norms, his fixation on political vengeance and punishment, and his recruitment of new, more competent allies don’t exactly bode well.

Globally, the situation is even worse. The three most powerful countries in the world are China, the United States, and Russia, and there’s a case to be made — in fact, I made it a month ago — that with the election of Donald Trump, all three are now illiberal powers. While Trump’s stance toward democracy and individual freedoms within the U.S. have yet to be seen — his first term was pretty benign, except for the time he tried to overturn an election result and encouraged a violent attack on Congress — there’s little doubt that internationally, Trump and his allies are sympathetic to Russia’s campaign of imperial conquest.

The most recent illustration of this fact is Trump’s nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard, a leftist-turned-rightist, is a vocal and active supporter of authoritarian regimes around the world — especially Russia and Syria. Tom Rogan of the Washington Examiner explains:

If you thought about the worst possible choice for director of National Intelligence, former Democratic-turned-Republican Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard would be high up there…On Russia, Gabbard opposed Trump’s removal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty in response to rampant Russian breaches of that treaty. She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship…On Syria, Gabbard has gone far beyond Trump’s skepticism for continued U.S. military presence in the country. Regurgitating propaganda from Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime, she has blamed Trump for Syria’s challenges and expressed sympathy for Assad’s leadership.

In fact, the only foreign country that Tulsi has warned about is America’s liberal ally, Japan, which she has accused of militarism simply for rearming itself in the face of the increased Chinese and North Korean threat.

Whether Tulsi is or ever was actually working with the Russians, as some have alleged, isn’t clear. But the Russians themselves are very convinced that she is on their side:

This is the woman Trump has picked to oversee all of the U.S.’ intelligence agencies. It is hard to imagine her mounting a serious attempt to counter the considerably espionage attempts of China and Russia. And it’s hard to imagine America’s allies, especially the Five Eyes intelligence services, wanting to share intelligence with the U.S. when that would mean sharing it with someone who’s deeply sympathetic to the empires that threaten them. The end of Five Eyes would be devastating for America’s efforts to counter China’s unprecedented espionage campaign.

If that isn’t a clear enough sign of Trump’s attitude toward the global tide of illiberalism, imperialism, and conquest, just wait. More signs are coming.

What all this means is that liberalism — the dominant global ideology of my youth — is now an underground rebellion. If you believe that individual human freedom and dignity are paramount, you’re now facing a world that wants to crush your ideals and enslave you to the will of various authoritarians. In America, you’re watching powerlessly as Trump remakes the country’s institutions, while in Eurasia you’re warily eyeing the suddenly unchecked power of China and Russia.

How did we get here? How did it get this bad?

Who conquered liberalism?