How stands the city?

James Buchanan and classical liberal culture

At the end of his last address from the White House, Ronald Reagan spoke of a shining city on a hill. Reagan returned to that idea throughout his career, but he had never explained before what he saw when he thought of the shining city.

What he imagined, he said, was a “tall, proud city” that was “wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace”. Reagan’s city “hummed with commerce and creativity.”

And it was open to all: “if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

Reagan’s genius was to propose an ideal culture of classical liberalism, not just a set of policies. In the shining city, people were free and equal because of their beliefs and behaviors, not just because of rules and regulations.

He appealed to culture before politics.

Although the phrase comes from the Gospel of Matthew, and from the Puritan John Winthrop, Reagan’s vision was classically liberal. These are the ideals of Locke, Smith, Mill, and the Founding Fathers.

The essence of these ideals, in classical liberal economist James M. Buchanan’s words, is that we not only want to be free ourselves, we want others to be free too. We must not want to dominate anyone else.

This is what it would be like in the shining city. We would be less dependent on laws, because the whole culture of the city would be liberal.

Reagan ended his speech by asking “how stands the city on this winter night?” His answer was characteristically optimistic.

More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

That speech was made in 1989. Eleven years later, James M. Buchanan picked up Reagan’s idea in his essay “The Soul of Classical Liberalism”.

But Buchanan was less optimistic than Reagan. He did not think classical liberalism had such strong foundations. George W. Bush, said Buchanan, didn’t understand what made Reagan’s image of the city so powerful. He lacked moral vision, as did too many classical liberals, who were only interested in “the results of scientific inquiry and the dictates of enlightened self-interest.”

That was not enough to appeal to the public. “A vision of an ideal, over and beyond science and self-interest, is necessary.”

This is why Buchanan felt in 2000 that “we have failed to ‘save the soul’ of classical liberalism.”

Although thinkers like Hayek had preserved classical liberal ideas in the autocratic and socialist twentieth century, through the 1980s and the fall of communism, Buchanan thought classical liberalism had been asleep and lost the public imagination.

In nineteenth-century England, Buchanan said, the soul of classical liberalism had appealed to many people. That was why the Corn Laws were repealed, a liberal policy which changed the world. But that belief in the power of free individuals to make the future had been on the defensive ever since the rise of Socialism in 1848.

Reagan’s optimism and Buchanan’s hesitancy both point to a centrally important idea: liberal ideals still rely as much on culture as they do on politics and law.

Although classical liberal ideas have lost votes, it is America’s classically liberal culture that provides checks and balances on Trump, as much as the legal and political system.

It was seeing images of families being separated that caused Trump to reverse that policy in 2018—a small but important change. Trump seems to have changed his mind on H-1B because of the reaction from businesses that wouldn’t be able to find talent. Political dissimulation is often challenged and exposed on Twitter.

This year, Trump reversed course on a policy to pause large amounts of federal spending on federal aid after widespread public opposition. AOC herself said that it was “mobilizing” that stopped Trump’s action. Whether or not you support the federal spending, it is a demonstration of the way government is held in check without formal process.

Classical liberals love to think about society in decentralized terms—we imagine individuals cooperating like a giant nervous system, a great organic web of activity, responsive to each other, but not centrally controlled or planned. As Alice from Queens says, “a ~10% Dow correction can blow Trump off almost any policy.”

In a liberal order, checks and balances come from many places. Reagan and Buchanan’s ideals live in hearts and minds, behaviors and norms, not just constitutions and statutes. We still want others to be free, not just ourselves.

The vision of a shining city on a hill might not have much political force today, but the culture of classical liberalism still runs deep. We have not entirely lost sight of the shining city yet.

As Reagan said of America:

And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

It is not too late to appeal to the shining city again. Like Reagan quoting the preacher, classical liberalism needs a new image, a new imaginative vision of how our ideals can come to life.

The future lies in all our imaginations.