liberals and liberalists

Liberals defend the value of freedom of speech, but they are silent when asked what that speech ought to contain. Liberals fight in favor of the rule of law and due process, but when asked what the law ought to be, they have no preference. Liberals believe in free markets and private enterprise, but when asked for what purpose the accumulated wealth ought to be allocated, they remind us that such decisions must remain a private affair. Liberals prefer to deal exclusively with means; the question of ends, for the liberal, ought to be left out of the public domain altogether. The liberal approach is unfit for any lasting collective enterprise which, if such an enterprise aims to be effective in achieving its ends, ought to make a claim regarding what those ends are.

Liberalism, by contrast, offers answers. Whereas liberals are primarily concerned with process and means, liberalism as ideology, like any actionable body of thought, makes normative claims on what a good life ought to look like. When conflicts of a political nature arise, as they inevitably do when people live together, liberals propose open debate where all sides air their grievances in the hope that a compromise might be found. Liberalism presupposes that there is a right way and a wrong way, judged according to whichever way increases individual autonomy, the supreme guiding light of human life. Liberals don't know the best course of action - their temperament forbids such hubris - but liberalism does. And like any ideology, the most zealous proponents will use their positions of power and influence to enforce orthodoxy.

A liberalist, paradoxically, can be deeply illiberal.