The American experiment is an experiment in liberalism. Not “liberal” in the modern left-right divide of American politics, but liberalism in the sense captured by Adam Smith’s concept “of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality.”
Or, perhaps closer to home, it is the liberalism expressed in the simple yet profound statement of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
What exactly is liberalism?
Famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama described liberalism as “an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity … of peacefully managing diversity in pluralistic societies.”
Writer Scott Alexander, in what may be my favorite description, likened it to “an amazing piece of alien machinery … that, when tuned just right, let people live together peacefully without doing the ‘kill people for being Protestant’ thing.”
This is what the Constitution was designed to do: create a political order in which people who profoundly disagree could still live together.
Liberalism had been developing for some time prior to the founding of the United States, at least since the Protestant Reformation, though its foundations can be traced back even further.
The American founders inherited this developing liberal order and built it into the constitutional structure of the new republic.
Yet, the structure itself was the product of compromise. It continued to accommodate profoundly illiberal practices, most notably slavery.
‘A glorious liberty document’
The tension became increasingly difficult to ignore in the decades before the Civil War. Anti-slavery advocates began pushing a particular reading of the Constitution, one that emphasized its use of the word “persons” rather than “slaves” and explicitly linked it to the individual rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” found in the Declaration.
This anti-slavery constitutionalism sought to restrict the expansion of slavery and choke it out of existence, arguing that slavery was a local institution rather than a national one. Only through positive law and government interference at the local level, they argued, could enslaved people be labeled as property in contrast to the Constitution’s recognition of their personhood.
Beyond the borders of the slave state and into federal territory, freedom should prevail. In short, the Constitution was understood by these anti-slavery advocates to embody the principles of a liberal society, making it what Frederick Douglass eventually described as “a glorious liberty document.”
Turning against liberalism
But some Americans thought liberalism itself was the problem.
George Fitzhugh was one of the most sophisticated pro-slavery intellectuals in the years leading up to the Civil War. He attacked what he saw as the unnatural liberal culture of the North, describing liberalism as an “exuberantly false,” “arborescently fallacious,” “unphilosophical,” “presumptuous” and “infidel philosophy of the 18th century.”
Fitzhugh’s complaints have some disturbingly familiar echoes. He argued that liberalism had produced a society in which “the rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer.” He worried about social fragmentation, stating that “universal liberty has disintegrated and dissolved society, and placed men in isolated, selfish, and antagonistic positions.”
This diagnosis sounds strangely contemporary. And his solution was to retreat into illiberalism.
Like Fitzhugh, some today see liberalism as an acid on the traditions, customs and culture of any particular people or place; a kind of “mono-anticulture,” as one author put it.
Don’t let go of liberalism
But this is where the Constitution matters. The Constitution — and the liberal society it maintains — encourages cooperation, competition and compromise amid the messiness of diversity and disagreement.
Liberalism does not mean we have to abandon our convictions. It is not opposed to orthodoxy. It is simply opposed to a dominant and coerced form of orthodoxy.
Think about your own associations. Universities have honor codes and academic standards. Churches have beliefs and practices. Clubs have membership rules. Families have traditions. Each has its own way of being and encouraging alignment with these expectations.
Liberalism does not require us to eliminate these little pockets of orthodoxy. It allows people to choose among them.
Political philosopher Chandran Kukathas described this kind of pluralistic society as an archipelago: a series of solid, somewhat illiberal islands floating in a sea of liberalism. These associations can have strong beliefs and demanding rules because people are generally free to join them, leave them, form new ones and persuade others to join them.
James Madison understood this well. In his defense of religious liberty, he warned that government interference could corrupt “the purity and efficacy of religion,” turning it into a tool for political power.
People must be free to worship, he argued, because genuine faith cannot be manufactured by the state.
The same principle extends beyond religion. Liberalism creates space for competing orthodoxies without allowing any one of them to reign unchecked.
Power politics isn’t the answer
This is what makes the Constitution especially relevant today. The political left and right disagree about many things, but both contain voices increasingly skeptical of the liberal project itself.
When society seems fractured, political power can look like the easiest way to “fix” it. Instead of tolerating institutions we dislike, we can control them. Instead of living with disagreement, we can try to eliminate it.
But the Constitution was built for this kind of messiness.
It does not require Americans to share the same religion, politics or vision of the good life. It gives us a way to act and live together despite our disagreements.
The Constitution never meant to force Americans to think alike. It instead built a structure that gives people who vehemently disagree a way to remain neighbors, citizens and equals.
That is the American experiment, and it is worth preserving.