Not since WWII has the fight for liberalism been this urgent

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less,” says Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale. I’ve been revisiting this quote lately because, in many ways, I feel Western democracies have gone fully through the looking glass when it comes to how we discuss politics.

The words we use to describe our positions and those of others often sit on shaky perches. They shift — not just in implication but sometimes even definitionally — based on the context, speaker, and audience, leaving us without a clear sense of what people mean. And perhaps no other word in politics today sits on a shakier perch than liberalism.

Consider that in the United States, a liberal is someone who stands on the political left, probably voted for Joe Biden, and may subscribe to some lite socialism (another Humpty Dumpty term, but one at a time). Despite that, some self-described leftists and progressives in the U.S. view liberals as political opponents. Across the pond in Europe, a liberal may support policies best described as conservative, centrist, or even libertarian in the U.S.

You’d think all prefixes and adjectives we solder onto the word would clear things up, but they only deepen the definitional morass. For instance, classical liberalism is markedly different from social liberalism, but not necessarily economic liberalism. Neoliberalism is a label used almost exclusively by people who disagree with it, and calling someone an “establishment liberal” tells you more about their bank account than their beliefs.

Now, one can argue that this is how words evolve naturally. They take on different, sometimes competing, definitions over time, and liberalism has definitely put in the years. True, but in the realms of politics and civil society, we can’t afford to talk past one another like Humpty and Alice. Doing so leaves proponents of liberalism struggling to explain the value it offers societies and their citizens, while giving opponents free rein to mischaracterize the political philosophy.

Cass Sunstein wants to change that. In a popular 2023 New York Times op-ed, the legal scholar and former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs warned that “[m]ore than at any other time since World War II, liberalism is under siege” from both the left and the right. To push against these anti-liberal forces, we need a “clear understanding of liberalism” and “its core commitments” alongside “what it can be.”

He has since expanded that op-ed into a book, On Liberalism (2025). In it, Sunstein not only sets forth an impressively comprehensive definition of liberalism but offers a defense of those ideals in the hopes that we can reinvigorate this aging political philosophy into one that is again “full of fire and hope.”

The six commitments of liberalism

Before we can discover a newly impassioned liberalism, we need to crack this egg and see what it is fundamentally. During an interview, I asked Sunstein how we can more firmly define liberalism. He answered that at its core, the political philosophy connotes a set of six commitments. Those being freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, democracy, and the rule of law.

Simple but, of course, never that simple. Each of these commitments comes nestled in a bramble of thorny questions that societies have been debating for the last, let’s round it off at, 250 years.

Freedom, for instance, encompasses principles such as freedom of speech. However, should we interpret these principles to be unbounded, or are we to limit them within both lawful and cultural norms? If the latter, where should these boundaries be placed? Similarly, liberals prize free markets for their ability to promote individual agency and pluralism in a society, but what role should governments play in regulating these markets? One more example: For a liberal, Sunstein writes, the law must be “clear, general, and publicly accessible rules laid down in advance” so people can plan accordingly and feel secure. But how far can any law go before we should overturn it because it abates the other five commitments?

Sunstein certainly has his own answers to questions like these, but he isn’t arguing that you have to agree with him to be a fellow liberal. Instead, he wants to show readers that when we pull back from the minutiae and consider liberalism from the 100,000-foot view, we can see it for what it is: a “big tent” tradition that brings together many people who disagree sharply with one another on many issues. What binds them together is their adherence to these six commitments.

Look inside the tent, and you’ll find a variety of modern and historical thinkers engaged in this quarter-century conversation. They include, in no particular order, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Hamilton, Milton Friedman, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Nozick (to name but a few). Sunstein even says Ayn Rand can be found among their ranks despite his belief that her philosophy was incredibly misguided — he once wrote that her books  “produced a sense of claustrophobia.” Nonetheless, she was committed to protecting freedom and securing human rights as she thought best.

“[Ronald] Reagan and [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, for all their differences, shared a commitment to freedom, to respect for individual dignity, to pluralism, and to the rule of law,” Sunstein says, adding, “We’ll think of instances in which Reagan and Roosevelt didn’t comply with the rule of law. That’s completely fair — even Homer nods. They were imperfect, but they were broadly committed to it.”

Crucially, however, the six commitments aren’t so sweeping as to let any ideological camel peek its nose under the tent. Liberal authoritarianism, Sunstein writes, “is an oxymoron,” which rules people like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini right out. 

“I would have thought 15 years ago that, [it] would be a little too much to invoke them, but I don’t think it’s too much now,” Sunstein tells me. “Hitler saw liberalism as the enemy. Stalin was emphatically anti-liberal. Neither of them believed in freedom of speech. Neither of them was enthusiastic about pluralism, and those are defining liberal ideals.”

However, he quickly adds that this isn’t “just about history’s villains.” Modern leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are anti-liberal. So is Karl Marx. Despite his cachet in some academic circles, his philosophy supports the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” an inherently illiberal goal.

And in modern American culture, liberalism is being squeezed from both sides of the political aisle. During our conversation, Sunstein pointed to the censorial side of wokeness and its lack of respect for pluralism. Meanwhile, President Trump’s second-term agenda has included many anti-liberal line items. Of note, Sunstein expressed great concern over the administration’s targeting of law firms simply because they represented causes Trump doesn’t personally support.

Experiments in living

What do we stand to lose if liberalism falls out of favor? Sunstein doesn’t paint a pretty picture: “We lose freedom, and we lose security. We lose freedom in the sense that we can speak [our ideas freely] and avoid punishment. We lose our ability to live secure lives [knowing] the government can’t do with us as it wishes. Those are all gone.”

He adds, “I think it’s fair to say pockets of our country are experiencing fear. People I know are experiencing fear that they could be targeted. That’s a kind of small version of what the loss of liberal protections would mean.”

We also stand to lose what Sunstein calls “experiments of living constitutionalism.” Drawing on the tradition of Mill, the concept is an expression of liberalism’s commitment to pluralism. It encourages people to live their lives as they see fit. Rather than by the demands of tradition or authority, we can choose our own paths.

“In objecting to slavery, Lincoln said that no person is fit to govern another without that person’s consent,” Sunstein tells me. “That’s the sheet anchor of American democracy: the idea of self-rule, which means you get to run your life.”

There are, of course, limits, he adds. You don’t get to punch people in the nose, and you may have to buckle your seatbelt in a car.

Life is, as the phrase suggests, an experiment. Once the data has come in from thousands of individual experiments, we may decide that certain rules need to apply to everyone for the benefit of our larger society. Seatbelts save thousands of lives and billions in medical care, so you have to buckle up. Importantly, the governed have consented to being governed and to live by the laws of the land. Perhaps more importantly, anyone is free to disagree with a law without punishment as long as they follow it, and they have the right to try to change the rules if they can sway public opinion to their cause.

As Robert Jackson once penned, “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard,” Sunstein couldn’t agree more: “I think it’s the best sentence any Supreme Court justice ever wrote.”

A work in progress

While liberalism may anchor modern democracies and individual liberty, that’s not to say any particular implementation of it has so far culminated in its gold standard. “Liberalism is a work in progress,” Sunstein writes. “Liberals are not sad about this.”

For instance, in a now obscure 1944 speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt argued that the American Revolution remained an incomplete project. To advance it further, the 32nd president proposed what he called the Second Bill of Rights. This Second Bill would enshrine in our society the freedom to live one’s life without want and fear. To secure this ideal, the country would need to establish necessities such as education, employment, decent shelter, medical care, and recreation as human rights — rights to be as inalienable as the freedoms of speech and religion are today.

“Roosevelt’s emphasis on freedom should be underlined. He was a liberal,” Sunstein writes in On Liberalism. “He was committed to free markets, free enterprise, and private ownership of property. He was not an egalitarian. While he insisted that the wealthiest members of society should bear a proportionately higher tax burden, he did not seek anything like economic equality. It was freedom, not equality, that motivated the Second Bill of Rights.”

During our conversation, he further noted how advances such as the Social Security Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the right to education (at the state level anyway) come directly from this ethos and show how much a society can improve people’s lives when we set liberal commitments as our North Star. However, he adds, American culture has grown neglectful of this influential element of our heritage. Rather than building off these monumental achievements, we’ve become locked in a seemingly endless tug-of-war over “government intervention” — with many ignoring the fact that their “own wealth and opportunities exist only because of that intervention.”

“The best form of the liberal tradition, as I understand it, is to help people who need help,” Sunstein tells me. “Montesquieu, a great liberal thinker, said something like that. So did James Madison.”

You may disagree with Sunstein on this point. Maybe you think he goes too far or not far enough. That’s fine. There’s plenty of room in the liberal tent for debate and discussion. But to open that discussion and strengthen the liberal tradition, Sunstein recommends two essential practices.

“One is to show appreciation of and respect for people whose views you dislike a lot,” Sunstein tells me. “There are limits, of course. If someone thinks that Stalin was fantastic, that’s not something you want to admire. [But] I really like to show respect and admiration for people, even when I think their views are quite wrong.”

The second is to be willing to buck the social pressures of the day and say what you think. If the organization you work for is right of center, don’t be afraid to offer a dissenting opinion. If your friend group is more to the left, don’t think you have to always agree. At the same time, it’s wise to foster a healthy sense of curiosity and intellectual humility.

Channeling the words of another famous judge, Learned Hand, Sunstein reminds us: “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” (His emphasis.)

Putting it back together again

Returning to Humpty, before parting with Alice, the girl asked her eggheaded conversation partner how one could make a word mean so many different things. To which Humpty counters, “The question is […] which is to be master.”

After speaking with Sunstein, I’ve come to think that one of the problems facing liberalism today is just this mentality. In our polarized times, too many liberals have fractured into their niche tribes — each claiming their brand of the philosophy to be the preferred path and shooting down any other who may dissent, even over trivial distinctions (what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences”). While healthy debate is acceptable, even required, this master mindset too often prevents us from working together to solve our problems, and it leaves liberalism feeling old and emaciated compared to other ideologies. 

And when liberalism seems weak and people are impatient for change, authoritarianism or anarchism can seem suitable alternatives to many.

Conversely, Sunstein’s project is a reminder of the principles that liberals must commit themselves to and what we may lose if we let other ideologies unmoor society from them. It isn’t trying to be the final word in the conversation. It wants to reinvigorate the conversation by inspiring more people to join and reminding them that the political philosophy has — and still can — improve society for the better. Far from having “outlived its purpose,” as Russian President Vladimir Putin once claimed, liberalism has more to offer us now than ever. If we want to secure its gifts for those who come after us, we need to fight for it.

As Sunstein told me, “There’s a difference between liberalism as a defensive crouch and liberalism that is full of fire and hope, and we like fire and hope. Liberalism has always been young, and that’s what we need to recover.”