That liberal ideas rely on culture seems very true. An obstacle to more people adopting classical liberal views is so many people on the left just see Reagan as a president who cut taxes for the rich and helped greedy wall street guys get rich. And so much of Trump's base on the right seem to have these strongly held anti-classical liberal values, for a variety of reasons. Great article though! Fascinating to learn more about Buchanan and that now apocryphal essay.
"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."
I like that very much. Reminds me of what Michael Sandel has said for some years - we've given up on persuasion.
It's something I recall from his book "The Tyranny of Merit". It's been a few years since I read it, but here's passage I highlighted on the last page:
"...if the common good can be arrived at only by deliberating with our fellow citizens about the purposes and ends worthy of our political community, then democracy cannot be indifferent to the character of the common life. ...it does require that citizens from different walks of life encounter one another in common spaces and public spaces. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences."
That's very interesting! It does seem like we don't encounter people from different walks of life as much as we should. Was just reading about the growing education disparity between Democrats and Republicans, with the former much more likely to have a college degree (https://countdown2026.substack.com/p/what-new-jersey-tells-us-about-2026)
I guess I don't see Reagan and Hayek as the best exemplars of "classic liberalism" though of course the phrase can mean lots of things to lots of people. You seem to be tilting towards libertarianiam which is a very different thing to me.
Reagan destroyed many concrete institutions that sustained the culture of liberalism in the twentieth century. His lip service to some nebulous ideal cannot compensate for that.
I think a larger point of the argument is that institutions are, in the limit, insufficient for sustaining a classically liberal society (unless we are engaging a sort of degenerate definition of institution that begins to encompass things like family units, etc.)
I am sceptical, as a corollary, that the destruction of such “liberal institutions” would be possible, especially by a single individual, in the absence of a preceding apathy from the public.
That seems to be the crux of the idea; that there is some emergent social order which checks government’s overreach in such instances, yet has seemingly dissipated over time.
So at the least, I find this claim is wanting.
All that being said, I think there are certainly critiques of Reagan that are valid, but denying him the right to hold certain aspirations because _conspicuously unnamed_ institutions may have degraded on his watch is a little silly.
I will name two institutions: labor unions and the welfare state. If he did not personally destroy them, the movement he led delegitimated them, and prepared the way for their piecemeal disintegration.
There is no free floating “liberal culture” outside such institutions, and if there is, it is nebulous and fragile, unlikely to resist any overreach, governmental or otherwise. Liberal culture is produced within and sustained by institutions of a certain kind. The American religion, for example, is not a liberal institution, but the American labor union is. Reagan, or his movement, destroyed such institutions with uncanny precision.
That liberal ideas rely on culture seems very true. An obstacle to more people adopting classical liberal views is so many people on the left just see Reagan as a president who cut taxes for the rich and helped greedy wall street guys get rich. And so much of Trump's base on the right seem to have these strongly held anti-classical liberal values, for a variety of reasons. Great article though! Fascinating to learn more about Buchanan and that now apocryphal essay.
Thanks! Yes I think we need to recover the philosophical basis that Reagan appealed to!
That certainly turns off a lot of people like myself who in many other contexts are the folks you need to have in your coalition
"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."
I like that very much. Reminds me of what Michael Sandel has said for some years - we've given up on persuasion.
Everything is rhetoric!
That's interesting what Sandel said. Is there more to what he was referring to?
It's something I recall from his book "The Tyranny of Merit". It's been a few years since I read it, but here's passage I highlighted on the last page:
"...if the common good can be arrived at only by deliberating with our fellow citizens about the purposes and ends worthy of our political community, then democracy cannot be indifferent to the character of the common life. ...it does require that citizens from different walks of life encounter one another in common spaces and public spaces. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences."
Highly recommend the book.
That's very interesting! It does seem like we don't encounter people from different walks of life as much as we should. Was just reading about the growing education disparity between Democrats and Republicans, with the former much more likely to have a college degree (https://countdown2026.substack.com/p/what-new-jersey-tells-us-about-2026)
I guess I don't see Reagan and Hayek as the best exemplars of "classic liberalism" though of course the phrase can mean lots of things to lots of people. You seem to be tilting towards libertarianiam which is a very different thing to me.
Reagan destroyed many concrete institutions that sustained the culture of liberalism in the twentieth century. His lip service to some nebulous ideal cannot compensate for that.
I think a larger point of the argument is that institutions are, in the limit, insufficient for sustaining a classically liberal society (unless we are engaging a sort of degenerate definition of institution that begins to encompass things like family units, etc.)
I am sceptical, as a corollary, that the destruction of such “liberal institutions” would be possible, especially by a single individual, in the absence of a preceding apathy from the public.
That seems to be the crux of the idea; that there is some emergent social order which checks government’s overreach in such instances, yet has seemingly dissipated over time.
So at the least, I find this claim is wanting.
All that being said, I think there are certainly critiques of Reagan that are valid, but denying him the right to hold certain aspirations because _conspicuously unnamed_ institutions may have degraded on his watch is a little silly.
I will name two institutions: labor unions and the welfare state. If he did not personally destroy them, the movement he led delegitimated them, and prepared the way for their piecemeal disintegration.
There is no free floating “liberal culture” outside such institutions, and if there is, it is nebulous and fragile, unlikely to resist any overreach, governmental or otherwise. Liberal culture is produced within and sustained by institutions of a certain kind. The American religion, for example, is not a liberal institution, but the American labor union is. Reagan, or his movement, destroyed such institutions with uncanny precision.
Buchanan is referring to George H.W. Bush, not his son, in the passage about “that vision thing”.
ah typo, thanks!