When conservatives and libertarians speak of “classical liberalism,” they don’t mean “liberal” in a left-wing or progressive sense but rather, are usually referring to a libertarian form of old-school conservatism. The Liberal Party of Australia, for example, is right-of-center, not left/progressive. In his New York Times column, however, Never Trump conservative David French argues that the United States’ Republican Party is abandoning something it once championed: “classical liberalism.”
French, in his column, laments that the far-right MAGA movement — from Tesla/Space X head Elon Musk to Vice President JD Vance to Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller — is openly declaring war on traditional conservatism.
On X.com, French notes, science fiction writer Devon Eriksen posted, “Elon, this is the moment where you’re supposed to wise up and abandon classical liberalism. … Universal suffrage leads to universal suffering.”
French explains, “‘Classical liberalism,’ for those not up on political terms of art, refers to the philosophy of the American founding, the creation of a rights-based republic of democratic rule restrained by constitutionally protected liberties. And what was Musk’s response to this direct assault on democracy and American liberty? ‘I have wised up,’ he said.”
Billionaire tech bro and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel once declared, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” — a statement that, according to French, is antithetical to American ideals.
“Freedom and democracy aren’t incompatible; they’re inseparable,” French writes. “Musk’s and Thiel’s views would be notable enough, especially given their extraordinary political influence on the right, but their views aren’t coming from nowhere. They’re rooted in a profound sense of pessimism and despair that is spreading throughout the right.”
French continues, “From the inception of the MAGA movement, it has attracted a cohort of explicitly post-liberal academics and intellectuals. … America, they believe, is dying — if it’s not dead already — and they hate the nation it’s becoming. How many times, for example, have we heard President Trump say that ‘you won’t have a country anymore’ if he loses or if his plans are thwarted?”
MAGA ideology, French warns, is diametrically opposed to the values that attracted him to conservatism during his youth.
“When you grow up conservative and Republican,” French explains, “you are made keenly aware of the anti-American left — those people who seem to believe that America has been rotten from the beginning, a settler-colonial enterprise, to use a modern phrase, that possesses no inherent virtue and whose many sins are a stain upon humanity. I had not, however, been taught about an anti-American right…. The conservatism of my youth positioned itself in direct opposition to communism in both its Soviet and its Chinese forms. Fascism, and everything like it, was dead, and no one wanted to revive it. How wrong I was.”
The Never Trumper continues, “Parts of the right still posture as patriots, but they have imagined a different kind of patriotism: one that loves the country but scorns its creed. They — like Musk on July 4 — reject the classical liberal founding or at least de-emphasize its importance compared with the ancestral lineage of its citizens.”