A couple of months ago, Providence contributor Paul D. Miller complained on Twitter about people confusing liberalism and progressivism. In this episode hosted by Mark Melton, he explains how the two concepts are different. He specifically makes the case that conservatives wrongly blame liberalism for the excesses of progressivism. He then explains what classical liberalism is, and how this idea can be the solution for the problems progressivism creates. Miller also reviews what he calls “Augustinian liberalism,” which uses the ideas of St. Augustine as a grounding for liberalism, instead of Enlightenment ideas. Miller and Melton then talk about how federalism and localism can help alleviate problems America faces—including the fear that, if “our” side loses a national or presidential election, the country’s over. In fact, he says allowing more federalism and letting subcultures flourish would increase national cohesion, whereas enforcing a common national identity, whether a left-wing or right-wing version, would increase national strife. Miller also reviews viewpoint neutrality, cancel culture, participation in local government, and more.

To read Miller’s articles about Augustinian liberalism, see here and here.

Rough Transcript

Mark Melton
Welcome back to the Foreign Policy Provcast. My name is Mark Melton, I’m the managing editor of Providence. Today, Paul Miller is speaking with us. He is a veteran of Afghanistan, was a National Security Council Staffer, and is now a Professor at Georgetown. He is also a contributing editor for Providence, a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council, and the author of multiple books, including American Power and Liberal Order, and Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy. First, Paul, thank you so much for joining us today.

Paul Miller
Thanks for having me on the show. Appreciate it.

Mark Melton
You mentioned in a tweet a couple of months ago that you were annoyed about people who would mix up Liberalism and Progressivism. What are these different concepts? And how are people mixing them up?

Paul Miller
So what I was responding to is a lot of the thinkers on the Post-Liberal Right, thinkers like Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari, and Adrian Vermeule, have been criticizing classical liberalism. They are, I think, rightly upset at the policy defeats. That is to say, defeat for sort of conservatism, the victories for progressivism. But their responses is to blame the entire sort of political philosophy of Classical Liberalism, the philosophy of John Locke, the philosophy of the American Founders. In their view, the American founding itself is flawed, and it has unfolded naturally inexorably to result in the full flower of progressivism today. And so these thinkers, again, they’re blaming classical liberalism for what I think are the excesses of progressivism. So I want to actually remind ourselves what the distinction is between these two ways of thinking about politics and society. I think liberalism, classical 18th-century liberalism, is very different from progressivism. And, in fact, liberalism is not the problem. It’s actually the solution to progressivism. I’m no fan of progressivism, I agree with Deneen and the others but the problems and the flaws of progressivism. But I think the solution is actually more classical liberalism, not less.

Mark Melton
What is Liberalism then?

Paul Miller
So when I use the word Liberalism, I want to emphasize that I’m talking about classical 18th-century liberalism, not the American Political Left. There’s some confusion, a lot of Americans think that when you use the word liberal, you’re only referring to the Democratic Party. That’s a pretty uniquely American usage, I’m referring to something broader and deeper. In a sense, we are all liberals, we’re all classical liberals. If you believe in democracy and human rights, that makes you a liberal in some sense. So that sort of classical liberalism begins with the idea that individuals have natural rights, and that government exists to help secure those rights and provide order and liberty. In this classical liberal view, freedom is understood as freedom from foreign rule, freedom from internal tyranny, sometimes freedom from our own passions. But also, freedom to participate in self-government is sort of requires a maximum negative liberty, consistent with the same for others. This kind of classical liberalism emphasizes procedural fairness in government over substantive outcomes. Classical Liberalism is majority rule plus minority rights. It emphasizes checks and balances. It emphasizes, I’ll call it “jurisdictional limitation,” that is to say, limited government. The idea that government is only supposed to serve a couple of functions: peace, order, justice, and not much more besides. Again, classical liberalism emphasizes ‘viewpoint neutrality,’ the idea that government shouldn’t take sides and promote one particular viewpoint over others on free speech, free religion, individual rights, equality of opportunity, and so on and so forth. So that’s classical liberalism. And I’d say for most of American history, that was pretty uncontroversial. It was the bedrock for political debate, both the right and the left agreed on these things, and you didn’t have a whole lot of people really disagreeing with the ideas of classical liberalism.

Mark Melton
So what is Progressivism? And how does it differ from Classical Liberalism?

Paul Miller
Yeah, so that’s a great question. And it can be a little hard to answer because, unlike classical liberalism, unlike conservatism, and other isms, it’s a little bit hard to find a classic text that really lays out progressivism. I went back and I read Herbert Croly’s book, The Promise of American Life published in 1909, which was one of the few texts that can be said to found or define the Ideology of Progressivism. There’s a few others by Woodrow Wilson, by John Dewey. But then you have to add in the kind of progressivism of the 1960s, the 1990. So it’s gonna be a bit complicated. But I think, in my view and my understanding, progressivism starts with this idea that government exists to help achieve a national purpose and enable our own individual self-expression and self-realization. Right off you see a difference from liberalism. Liberalism is about individual rights and things like government exists to help us secure those rights. And progressivism said, it’s not about rights, it’s about self-expression, self-autonomy, self-realization, under the umbrella of some grand national purpose. From there, you get very different understandings of freedom. Again, liberalism thinks that freedom is freedom from foreign rule, freedom to participate in government. Progressivism thinks that freedom fundamentally is freedom of self-expression and self-autonomy. I think of the famous line from the Supreme Court decision, I think it was in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that Justice Kennedy wrote, he said, “At the heart of liberty, is the right to define one’s own concept of existence of the meaning of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” That’s a great one-sentence description of progressivism, not liberalism. Right there in constitutional law, that freedom is all about defining the universe in the mystery of human life for myself. Coming to my own understanding of what those things mean. And so progressivism, from this novel Understanding of Freedom and the Purpose of Government emphasizes less procedural fairness and more substantive outcomes. It really is keen on ensuring that policy actually results in specific outcomes, namely: the outcome of individual self-expression for all people, particularly for those deemed to be disadvantaged or who have not been able to express themselves previously. And that means progressivism actually emphasizes democracy less. Majorities can be overridden by courts’ understanding of what they would call ‘evolving standards of morality.’ They emphasize efficiency over checks and balances. Progressivism emphasizes expert knowledge and technocracy over the wisdom of the people in over-tradition. Progressivism results in an ever-expanding scope of government instead of jurisdiction limitation, it creates the administrative state instead of the rule of law. Progressivism, instead of viewpoint neutrality and free speech, progressivism results in political correctness and speech codes, and what we’re seeing today what people are calling ‘cancel culture,’ the idea that we kind of don’t actually have free speech, we have instead kind of regulated speech to ensure no one is offended by our speech. And if we want to prevent people from being offended and enable everyone to have their identity validated in the public squares, that’s definitely progressivism. So again, I see these two as very different worldviews, progressivism, and liberalism, and we see that in a whole host of policy issues.

Mark Melton
You have written in Providence about an Augustinian Liberalism, where you bring up St. Augustine’s ideas and add a liberal lens to that. Could you describe what Augustine Liberalism is? And how you concluded that Augustinian thought could support Liberalism?

Paul Miller
So, what I’m trying to do here…many of the Post-Liberal Thinkers have criticized liberalism, for its enlightenment, assumptions, and what they think of it as naivete, and even utopianism. And I think there might be a…I agree with part of this critique. I do think that liberalism founded solely on a secular enlightenment basis is probably unsustainable. Although I still think it’s vastly superior to progressivism. My response, though, is not to throw out liberalism, but you try to salvage it and even reconstruct it on different philosophical basis. And I’m, by the way, I’m not original in doing this. At least as far back as Reinhold Niebuhr and his book, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. He’s been trying to do the same thing and many others as well. The idea here is that we can still arrive at liberal institutions and liberal arrangements, and a liberal understanding of public life coming from an Augustinian viewpoint, not merely an enlightenment or locking viewpoint. That is to say, as Christians, I think we can affirm the basics of a free and open society for different reasons than John Locke did. But still, the end result is still valid. You know, as Christians, we believe in original sin. Since I believe in original sin, I do not want to trust power in the hands of any one person or any one institution. I very much…I think we all want to be suspicious of great concentrations of power. And so, that leads me to support a diffusion of power through things like voting in elections, through checks and balances, but also through minority rights. I think it’s actually very good for us to have rights enshrined in the constitution to protect minorities from mob rule from the tyranny of the majority. So these are all liberal institutions that I believe in for Christian and Augustinian reasons.

Mark Melton
How would Progressivism and Viewpoint Neutrality differ?

Paul Miller
Yeah, so I think we see the difference between pertain progressivism, and all kinds of liberalism, Augustinian liberalism, or otherwise. Especially on this issue of how they treat speech in the public square. As I mentioned earlier, liberalism is supposed to uphold viewpoint neutrality and allow free speech by everyone, the government’s not supposed to take sides. And again, as an Augustinian liberal, I think that’s true because I think that we as Christians should have a certain amount of humility as we enter the public square. Humility means, I believe what I believe and I’ll advocate for it, but I also don’t think I have the right or the authority to enforce my point of view with a government’s course of power. I think it’s quite arrogant to try to do that. To try to say “my view is so certainly right, that I’m going to compel everyone else to agree with me,” right? So that’s, again, the liberal and even the Augustinian liberal viewpoint. What I’m just what I’m bothered by is increasingly on both the right and the left. I think progressives do this, I think nationalists do it as well, is that they are coming dangerously close to throwing out this idea of viewpoint neutrality and trying to enshrine their view of things in law and use the government to enforce their viewpoint. Again, whether it’s on the progressive left, so speech goes on campus or the idea of hate speech. You know, of course, there’s quite a lot of hateful speech out there but to create a category of law that penalizes speech because of its hatefulness, I’m quite wary of that because of how that could be easily abused. Who’s to say what counts as hateful, of course. And then, of course, just these last couple of weeks, we’ve seen this sort of controversy over a so-called canceled culture. You know, there’s an open letter by a bunch of folks who published in Harper’s Magazine, calling for greater tolerance and public dialogue. I think that was a really good thing. And I’m kind of baffled by the critique of these folks writing a letter, they simply said, “Hey, when we have public debate, let’s have a free, open, honest dialogue, and not try to punish people for thinking wrong,” right? That’s the whole basis behind that letter. And what they’re responding to is, we’ve seen examples of where people have been fired from their jobs, for espousing a politically unpopular belief. And I’m sort of appalled that such a thing could happen in the United States, that people could be fired for their political beliefs or their religious beliefs. I think that’s appalling and sort of unAmerican. And I, again, I see this both in the progressive left but also in the nationalist right, I think that there’s a form of political correctness on the right. If you say the wrong thing if you criticize America, or the President, you know, you can get in trouble with it, right? And again, I think we all ought to have a bit more humility and a bit more tolerance for disagreement. We should practice disagreeing well. You know, the solution to our never-ending culture war isn’t to force everyone to agree with me. It’s to learn how to disagree better, and with more charity, more grace, [and] that I think will stand us in better stead. And it’s more in keeping with the best of American tradition.

Mark Melton
If I’m not mistaken, Barack Obama spoke against canceled culture. And his position was that instead of silencing people you disagree with you should come up with better arguments. Am I mistaken in that? Or like, Did he say that or something else?

Paul Miller
He did. It was I think earlier this year, he gave a speech kind of criticizing canceled culture by a different name. But yes, I think he did… which goes to show there are people on the right and the left who are increasingly concerned by the rise of illiberalism on the right and on the left. I think David French has said this, the increasingly the biggest dividing line in America is not between right and left, but between classical liberal and illiberal, right? And we see illiberals on the right and the left, whether it’s socialists or progressives, or nationalists or the alt-right, they’re all illiberal. And it’s deeply concerning to see them gaining ground on both sides of the political spectrum.

Mark Melton
Why do you think we see this rise of illiberalism on the far right or alt-right? Was it always there? Or is it a reaction to a illiberalism on the left? In other words, if my enemy does this, then I get to do the same thing too.

Paul Miller
It’s…you know, all of the above. I think quite a lot of the political radicalism we’ve seen over the past decade is a response. First of the 2008 financial crisis, like whenever there’s economic hardship, there’s a rise in political extremism that’s kind of a law of political science. And so to have the one-two punches of the 2008 crisis and then the 2020 crisis, the coronavirus pandemic coupled with the economic collapse has convinced a lot of people that the system is broken and must be fundamentally changed. Now, obviously, there’s quite a lot of problems in the United States. And I do agree with a call for reform, but I think the solution is more classical liberalism, not less. I think trying to replace the system with something illiberal with, you know, with something that is just tearing up the system root and branch is not the answer, I don’t think. So, yes, it’s a response to the economic crises. It’s also a response to the extremism on the other side. So you suggested there and I think you’re correct about this, that the extreme left is a response to the extreme right, and vice versa. The problem here is that each side’s critique of the other is essentially correct. When I listened to the nationalist and I listened to them complain about all the problems of the progressive left, I think they’re basically correct. Then, when I listened to the progressive left and all of their critiques of the nationalists, I think they’re basically correct. But agreeing with their critique does not validate their positive program. I can agree with the critique and not endorse everything else they have to say. And so we have this spiraling conflict is kind of almost like a verbal arms race where each side sees correctly the flaws of the other, but not the flaws of themselves, and so they keep on escalating their rhetoric describing the other side as unAmerican, illegitimate, and extremists. And there’s no way out, it’s a little bit discouraging.

Mark Melton
Does our news media also contributes to this trend? We get our headlines on social media using software that tracks what we like and click. So Facebook and Twitter can cartel our news feeds to keep giving us what we want to hear. So we’re put into new silos and don’t encounter views from those we disagree with. Is this another factor?

Paul Miller
Yeah, so social media and technology, the media landscape is a factor we create our own informational bubbles where we only seek out the things we already agree with. It’s also reflected in where Americans are living. Since 2004, I think, people have been talking about the big sort, as journalists, Bill Short, called it. Where people are living in neighborhoods only with other people who are just like them, socioeconomically and politically, where red-state Americans live with red-state Americans and blue-state Americans live in blue-state Americans. So our demographics, our geography, our informational choices, our technology is all pushing in the direction of emphasizing and reinforcing this polarization and this sort of isolation into sort of extreme ends of the political spectrum. But the thing is that most Americans if you look at public opinion polls, it’s still a minority of Americans who actually truly believe the ideologically pure version of their respective political party. In other words, if you want to find like, who are the people who are truly the progressive kind of zealots, they’re a pretty small portion of the population and so are the national zealots. Most Americans are kind of squishy in their beliefs, that should be an encouragement, I think that we need a bit more squishiness and not less, or at least I should say that squishiness, we need more tolerance. And we need to, we need to recover the idea of a loyal opposition. Perhaps you recall, Mark back in 2016, the famous or infamous flight 93 essay, when Michael Anton argued that the 2016 election was the flight 93 election, that we need to charge the cockpit or we die. And if you look at his analogy there, he’s saying that Hillary Clinton was a terrorist in charge who had hijacked the airplane of America. And that we real Americans, that is to say, we republicans and conservatives, needed to charge the cockpit and try to take over the government by electing Trump, otherwise, America would die, right? That’s what his argument was. And that’s not what the analogy meant. I think that kind of logic is pernicious. I think that kind of logic is dangerous for democracy. I think it’s wrong, just flat-out wrong. I don’t think it’s true at all that if the other side wins, Americans over. But that flight 93 logic has taken over the right and now increasingly, the left as well, where they see if the other side wins an election or wins a policy victory, that it’s all over. So the stakes become existential and the rhetoric becomes tantamount to civil war. Again, I just think this is extraordinarily dangerous for democracy and I would want all Americans, but particularly Christians, to step back and to realize that the stakes are not existential and that we can suffer policy defeats and still live. That’s exactly what democracy is all about, is being able to lose and yet still coexist with the people who have defeated us at the ballot box.

Mark Melton
It seems to me that federalism is a good way to guarantee that if you lose a national election or a presidential election, the next administration can’t overturn all of the policies you like. If your state or local government has certain rights, then they can have more power to keep the policies you may like in place. For instance, if you don’t like the idea of defunding the police, you have more control over local police funding because you have more control over your local government than you do over Washington DC. As a case in point, I’ve seen reports of some local governments and other parts of the country that want to defund the police but where I live activists recently demanded the government, which in our area is very liberal. They wanted them to reverse plans to build a new police facility, but the authorities essentially said, “well, thank you very much for participating in democracy and telling us what you think, but we’re still building the new facility because we need it.” In contrast, if most consequential decisions were made centrally in DC, which could force states and local governments to enact policies they strongly disliked, then losing a national or a presidential election becomes a major crisis. I know you’ve written elsewhere and in Providence about the benefits of federalism. So would you agree with that assessment? Or would you add something else?

Paul Miller
No, I completely agree, federalism is, should, or could be one of the great solutions to our political crisis. And I’d say that’s what it was intended to be 200 years ago, there’s some problems because states abused their authority and the federal government rightly stepped in to expand its authority to protect individual rights. But now, I think it’s also equally clear that the federal government itself has overstepped its authority as over-centralized government, and is wrongfully stamping out subcultural pluralism. I think allowing greater subcultural pluralism is essentially the solution to our never-ending cultural war. Where if the people of San Francisco want to change their school curriculum to teach one version, American history. Well, I disagree with it but I don’t live in San Francisco, and I’m not gonna send my kids to school there. And if the people of Texas want to have a different way, then that’s fine and I think allowing that kind of regional diversity, state diversity, and subcultural diversity would be a wonderful thing that would help keep America…how do I put it. By allowing greater diversity at a lower level, it actually will increase national cohesion because if your nation allows your particular community to flourish, I think it’ll increase our bonds of affection to the nation as a whole. If our nation is always trying to kind of bully us and tell us that our culture has to conform to some national template, whether it’s the right-wing version of it, or the left-wing version of a national template of progressive morality if we’re constantly feeling bullied by the national government, will actually decrease national cohesion, and decrease patriotism. I think that the government could actually increase our patriotic loyalty and sentiment if you’re kind of laid off a little bit and allowed our local communities in our subcultures to flourish.

Mark Melton
Last year, I wrote about how Christians can be patriotic as a form of neighborly love, which would mean loving those who live around you and loving your community. Yet many people who have strong opinions about presidential elections and national news often don’t know who their local elected officials are. They don’t know what type of local government they have, whether it’s a strong mayor or weak mayor municipality, a council-manager system, or whatever. They also don’t vote very often in local elections or primaries. I would think that increasing federalism would mean that citizens need to participate more in state and local governments, especially Christians. Would you agree with that?

Paul Miller
I do, I absolutely agree. I think we spend quite a lot of time fretting, stressing, and worrying about the national politics for good reason. The government has so much power, that we ought to be concerned we ought to be educated, we ought to vote in national elections. The Supreme Court has handed down some very consequential decisions just in the past few weeks, as we rightly got to be concerned about that. But look, if you’re concerned about police brutality, you need to vote in local elections. You need to vote for mayor, for city council, for your state legislature, for your state senator, for your governor because they have pretty much all the power over-policing. The federal government has very little power over-policing. So if you’re concerned about police brutality, if you participated in a martial protest, if you want to say, Black Lives Matter, then you need to participate in local politics because that’s where the real change happens on those particular issues. Prison reform, criminal justice reform, a lot of that happens at the local issue. Education, entirely a local issue. If you’re complaining about education and you’re not aware of your local school board, you’re doing it wrong. So yes again, localism is an important part of the solution here.

Mark Melton
Paul, thank you so much for talking with us this morning and explaining the differences between liberalism and progressivism, as well as Augustinian liberalism and the benefits of federalism. I really appreciate it.

Paul Miller
Thanks for having me on the show, I appreciate it.