In Search of Liberalism
I spent part of the week at Liberalism for the 21stCentury—LibCon 2026—an annual conference put on by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, a relatively new organization headed by my friend Shika Dalmia, long associated with Reasonmagazine and now publisher of the UnPopulist.
I am interested in opportunities for right-left collaboration on issues such as the rule of law, free speech, free trade, and similar things that traditionally fall under the heading “liberalism,” and so I try to go to things like this when I can. They are, as we say around here, worth our time.
The lineup presented some opportunities for political intermixing: There were familiar libertarian types such as Dalmia and Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, left-liberal types such as Ezra Klein and Danielle Allen, idiosyncratic liberals such as Francis Fukuyama and Yascha Mounk, and a fair number of regular ol’ conservatives, including me, David French, and Bill Kristol. I can hear the keys clicking as emails are written denouncing the last of these, or, at the very least, tartly informing me that he is no longer a conservative; about that I will write only that while he and I may have some wide and deep disagreements about the best way to approach the current political moment in these United States, in conversation Bill Kristol strikes me as being, if anything, more conservative in the genuine sense of that word than he was 20 years ago—more skeptical, less ideological, free from party feeling, more interested in preservation and continuity, etc.
It is a good mix, but an uneasy one.
I try to put on a friendly face when I encounter some of the lefty types here, many of whom I have exchanged some pretty harsh words with in the past. There is nothing in particular that I wish to retract, but this is a conciliatory occasion. My efforts meet with decidedly mixed results. I do not blame my interlocutors for this: My attempts to be friendly must seem as disturbing and unnatural to them as it does to me.
