Let me convince you: we must defend liberalism

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
John Stuart Mill

In this strand of mini lectures, we have asked one speaker to convince YOU the audience of an unpopular opinion.

The guest lecturer will have 12-15 minutes to make their case before the session chair and audience members are invited to push back, scrutinise, pull apart their arguments – or explain why they agree with them. The aim is for these quick-fire exchanges to allow attendees – and indeed the speaker – to robustly defend positions, develop critiques beyond caricature and ad hominem attacks, and steelman their own arguments. This should allow us to dig deeper into contested issues beyond today’s soundbite-and-meme culture. And perhaps – just perhaps – some in the room might be convinced to change their minds.

Liberalism is the radical – and dangerous – proposition that human beings can be trusted with freedom. But today, both Left and Right are united in championing a misanthropology that questions this. An array of so-called science from biology to evolutionary psychology is marshalled to ‘prove’ that people are simply too fragile, irrational or stupid to be trusted. Because much of what passes for ‘liberalism’ today is profoundly illiberal, people mistake our managerial order for liberalism and end up championing its underlying premises: that ordinary people cannot be trusted, bad speech must be suppressed and institutions should engineer the ‘right’ behaviours.

At its heart, a defence of liberalism – and freedom – means a defence of uncertainty, responsibility and the necessity of judgment. The inherent difficulty of this position produces the persistent temptation to deny its reality, for us to flee into our animal nature and the old certainties of identity, clan and authority. Let me convince you that we must defend liberalism, and universal human reason against this retreat into particularism.