Welcome to The Pursuit of Liberalism

Liberalism is awesome. People have lost sight of this. Classical liberals need to refocus on the arts and philosophy alongside economics.

On many counts, now is the greatest time to be alive.

Across the world, people are experiencing longer, healthier, and wealthier lives. At least in the USA, real wages are doing fine. New technologies offer answers to what seemed like intractable problems. Reusable rockets will soon take us far into the solar system.

The liberal order still protects and promotes our rights, and meets our needs and wants, in a way no other system can offer.

Yet politically, we live in angry, disappointed times. It’s still a liberal world. But we might not have a liberal future.

The big inspiring principles of liberalism changed the world. These principles brought down dictators and ended slavery. They gave women the vote and children an education. They established peaceful political settlements, and drove innovation and progress. These principles demand equal freedom for all, and make real the dream of peace and prosperity.

These principles still hold true. They are classical liberal principles of autonomy and pluralism; commitment to free speech as well as free trade and free enterprise; support for democracy and the rule of law.

But to many people, all this simply isn’t obvious anymore.

In part, this is because the classical liberal project has become too narrow. It is too often perceived as overly economic and technocratic: as something that ignores the deepest problems of human life, and is unable to speak to the whole human experience.

This is wrong! Alongside its advantages for growth and prosperity, liberalism offers greater meaning, dignity, and a sense of community than any of the political alternatives.

The rise of Trump, Mamdani, Reform, and their fellow illiberals, has come at a time of decline for liberal culture. Liberalism needs new energy — new advocates to push for a return to its former breadth. We need to use the whole of liberalism to ensure a liberal future. As T.S. Eliot said, the new culture flowers on the stem of the old.

Liberalism has never been owned by philosophers and politicians. It’s also the concern of poets and merchants. The original liberals knew this.

Adam Smith was an economist, philosopher, literary critic, and scientific writer. Locke was a medic as well as a theorist. When J.S. Mill recited Shelley’s Ode to Liberty, he became so overwhelmed he rocked in his chair and tears came to his eyes.

Classical liberals need to revive this wide-ranging spirit. A narrowly Benthamite approach to culture doesn’t offer anything serious.

Liberalism is already gaining new cultural and practical relevance. New interest in the liberal arts is coming from technologists and others online. Classical liberal answers are emerging to solve today’s problems. AI is disrupting the old order of intellectuals, just as the internet once did.

The Pursuit of Liberalism is an experiment in this spirit.

We are as committed to advocating for human flourishing, as to describing economic reality. We will argue for the enduring relevance of the arts and philosophy to classical liberalism.

Our aim is to revive the broad classical liberal tradition. We will argue for its place in an innovative world. We don’t need a new liberalism. We need a new way of helping people to see it for what it is.

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Who are we?

We are Rebecca Lowe and Henry Oliver — a political philosopher and a literary critic. We write other Substacks (the ends don't justify the means and The Common Reader). Here we want to talk together about the present and the future of classical liberalism. We are fellows at the The Mercatus Center, an academic research organization dedicated to classical liberal ideas.

Henry takes a historical and literary view of things, and has an unreasonable love of J.S. Mill. Rebecca is obsessed by philosophy, but is made deeply anxious by a cult-like attachment to any particular thinker. So you can expect some of these differences to play out on the blog too…