Get Tucker Carlson to oppose your preferred policies
In which I explain how the recent de-liberalisation of the Right might represent a unique opportunity for Classical Liberals to raise the salience of their points
In a recent post,
outlined three primary motivating ideologies in politics over the past few centuries: Socialism, which is propelled by the pursuit of Equality; Conservatism, which cherishes tradition and national unity; and Liberalism, which prioritizes individual liberty. It's a common misconception to view True Liberals as mere Centrists, a midpoint between Conservatism and Socialism, but this oversimplifies their stance. Liberals possess distinct core values which are so ingrained in Western societies, that their significance is often overlooked. These societies (largely) thrive on liberal principles, allowing us to dismiss these foundational values as mundane, much like a fish oblivious to the water it swims in. Echoing Nate's perspective, the political landscape should be envisioned in two dimensions, with Liberals marking their unique territory within a triangle, rather than being confined to a simple point on a linear spectrum.
In recent years, academia and most of our major institutions have become increasingly left-leaning, a trend that has been discussed at length in the context of “education polarisation” debates. This means that a large majority of young educated people now lie somewhere on the Socialism - Liberalism axis, with a disturbing (for me) trend of more of them approaching the Socialist side (and with increasing disregard for Liberal principles). Some of this has had consequences that are not at all pleasant, including a growing distrust in academia from a population feeling increasingly at odds with the values of the intellectual elite. In parallel to this, there is another growing trend, recently highlighted by The Economist: Conservatives themselves are polarising and becoming more extreme, increasingly departing from the liberal pole (and weirdly enough embracing some aspects of socialism but under the strong, macho aesthetics cover):
In the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher built a new conservatism around markets and freedom. Today Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western politicians have demolished that orthodoxy, constructing in its place a statist, “anti-woke” conservatism that puts national sovereignty before the individual. These national conservatives are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. They sense that they own conservatism now—and they may be right. Despite its name, national conservatism could not be more different from the ideas of Reagan and Thatcher. Rather than being sceptical of big government, national conservatives think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the state is their saviour.
Let’s call this faction National Conservatives, as they have been dubbed in the Economist. They are relatively heterogenous, but broadly NatCons map to MAGA types in real life and various shades of so-called “trads”, neoreactionaries and religious extremists among the Online Right. This illiberalisation has been going on for a while, but has become extremely obvious during Tucker Carlson’s recent travels to Russia and his simping for her regime.
Some might consider these trends entirely negative: I am not pleased with them myself. In a recent column for Bloomberg, columnist Adrian Woolridge warns of an impending deliberalisation of society, comparing it to what we have seen in Europe pre World War II. However, I do not think liberals should despair. Indeed, some of the developments within the National Conservative camp might be beneficial for liberal ideas. There are three factors which are particularly important here:
Politics is based mostly on Vibes, so people will automatically like things opposed by their “enemies” and vice-versa.
Elite institutions are mostly left-leaning, especially on social issues, and this puts them at extreme odds with National Conservatives.
National Conservatives care even less about personal freedom than Leftists - see recent abortion bans.
Given these considerations, there exists a potential for Liberals to cleverly frame policies that limit freedom as conservative-coded, and thereby, undesirable. Numerous policies rooted in the principle of freedom could be envisioned as in principle unappealing to staunch Leftists, such as commercial surrogacy. Yet, because Conservatives have recently started to hate them so much, they have become somewhat Left-Coded. See for example the following tweet from prominent feminist writer Jill Filipovic, where she instinctively reacts to the Uber Conservative designation of surrogacy as Evil, reluctantly defending the practice:
More importantly, I think some of the more insane positions National Conservatives are adopting might make the importance of freedom more salient and actually meaningfully shift educated people towards the side of Liberalism. And, as Tyler Cowen recently put it, we, Classical Liberals, need to be always ready to jump at such opportunities.
Perhaps the underlying model is this: classical liberals often seem out of touch, because the world is too negative to respond to their concerns. Most of the time classical liberals are shouting into the well, so to speak. But they need to keep at it. Every now and then a window for liberal change opens, and then the classical liberals have to be ready, which in turn entails many years in the intellectual and ideological wilderness.
Tucker Carlson falls in love with Russia
In "King Lear," the monarch decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, based on their expressions of love for him. Cordelia, the youngest, refuses to offer false flattery like her elder siblings, Goneril and Regan, resulting in her disinheritance. Despite this, she marries the King of France, who values her honesty, and eventually returns with an army to aid her father amidst the turmoil caused by her sisters' deceit and treachery. I see Liberalism as a Cordelia of politics: its promises are less grand and utopian than those of Conservatism and Socialism, but ultimately it did create the abundance that we see now and its importance shines through in times of need, when contrasted to the awful results of a lack of freedom. Indeed, as Nate points out, Liberalism in the West was particularly vigorous during the Cold War era, mainly because it was seen in opposition to The Soviet Regime. I think something similar is happening now, with National Conservatives (& the online right more broadly) increasingly embracing totalitarian tendencies and thus making left-leaning elites more likely to realise how bad these are.
A recent example of this is Tucker Carlson, who has long flirted with semi-illiberalism. This week his anti American/anti liberal bias reached unexpected heights during his visit to Russia - which, to be clear, is a corrupt dictatorship. He got incredibly excited about the low price of groceries (completely disregarding that Russians spend more on food than Americans as a percentage of their earnings). And perhaps most hilariously he fawned over a shopping cart coin mechanism that is ubiquitous in Western supermarkets. Tucker is not alone: his attitude is mirrored by a lot of people on the right who perceive Eastern Europe, and Eastern European dictatorships in particular, to be these virgin paradises of traditionalism, healthy relationships and “sanity” (and of course, whiteness- the part that goes unsaid). Most of this is not based in reality, as
points out in a recent article:
And right as videos of Tucker simping for Russia were circulating online, tragedy struck: long-time Putin critic Alexey Navalny was found dead in prison, after “he fell sick from a walk”. I feel somewhat ambivalent about using what is essentially a tragic event to make a point, but the timing is too fitting:
Liberals and until more recently, Conservatives, have long complained about Leftists’ active downplaying of the achievements of Western Culture. Prominent leftist thinkers like Noam Chomsky have popularised an excessively anti-American and to some extent anti-liberal mindset among the younger generations. As someone coming from a country that used to be very non-liberal (and also very non-American), this stuff seems very naive. I always had to hide my exasperation with people at top institutions espousing these simplistic views. But it seems that more recently, National Conservatives like Tucker Carlson are becoming much more egregious than Leftists in their hate of America: he is openly declaring his love for a regime that US is fighting a proxy war with and fuelling discord at home in the process. This is very consequential! The silver lining to this is that the benefits of Liberalism and Western Values might become more apparent to our left leaning intelligentsia. Most of them are not ideological socialists or tankies: they are influentible and can be brought closer to the liberal side depending on the vibes.
Given how much current politics works based on polarisation, and how negatively the National Conservatives are seen in elite circles, titles like the one below might make left leaning elites more likely to espouse pro-Western and pro-Liberal sentiments. I have seen this already happening: emboldened by the insane love for totalitarian regimes displayed by the Online Right, left of center pundits like
have spent a lot of time propping up America recently. Five years ago that might have looked unforgivably right wing coded, whereas now it’s no longer the case.
It’s not just the broad concept of Liberalism that might appear in a more appealing light. There are specific policy initiatives where being hated by the Right might actually become a positive.
Compensation for organ donors
“Our current organ procurement system relies solely on altruism to motivate donation. Altruism is a fine thing but it is in short supply. We may hope for love but should plan on self-interest.”
(Alex Tabarrok)
Libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok has long advocated for the advantages of financially compensating organ donors to boost organ availability, arguing that it creates a mutually beneficial outcome. This policy aligns well with Liberal principles, emphasizing the right of individuals to partake in free and mutually advantageous transactions. However, it clashes with more paternalistic perspectives, leading to its exclusion from serious consideration for an extended period. More recently,
has published a very good article detailing how we could incentivise organ donation in an ethical way, and one of the proposed measures is donor compensation. In the process they also showcase some pretty horrifying facts about how dire the organ shortage situation is:A hundred thousand people are waiting for an organ transplant in the US. Fifty-eight thousand are waiting for one in Europe. Many hundreds of thousands more people are waiting around the world. To say their experience waiting is unpleasant would be an understatement. Three-quarters of those on the waiting list are waiting for a kidney, and most of them are on dialysis – hooked up to a machine to filter waste products in blood for many hours a week with a myriad of side effects (…) The main medical challenge is not the transplant procedure but getting enough organs (..) For both live and cadaveric organ donation, we rely on donor altruism, often at a personal or financial cost to the donor themselves. We need a better way to increase the rate of organ donation. Why don’t we incentivize it?
It seems to me at the moment that the case for creating a “market for organs” (with proper regulations) is pretty strong, and it’s only because of a lingering “ick factor” caused by exploitation concerns that this is not happening; The ick factor has been given fuel by the priestly class Leftists tend to respect: Bioethicists. It does not matter that none of this makes sense under a trade-off analysis and that people are being “exploited” to death by horrible, naturally occuring afflictions: we are ruled by vibes and the vibes are still against compensation for organ donors. Thankfully, there seems to be appetite from left-of-centre smart people for allowing organ donors to be compensated. See for example this tweet from
(the OP deleted the tweet, but it was about how compensating doctors & medical device providers but not organ donors seems incredibly unfair).
My solution to provide some impetus to this? Get National Conservatives to absolutely HATE the idea of compensating organ donors. National Conservatives have a huge leg up Bioethicists, because they can come up with levels of cringe that the latter can only dream of. Just take a look at the response to Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Travis Kelce, which they also somehow turned into a left-coded couple.
Let the online right come with the worst memes about why organ donation is bad: how it’s not trad, how women cannot make their own choices about their kidneys because they do not possess agency, how we are becoming meat legos (in the style of Mary Harrington). This will make opposition to this very desirable policy seem low-status and Conservative coded and hopefully will decrease the “disgust response” from the educated left leaning folks who power most policy movements.
Setting up financial incentives to boost organ donation rates and save lives in the process is just one of the areas where Right Wing opposition could end up having beneficial effects. Given the state of the National Conservative faction, I believe the sky is the limit in terms of exactly what types of good policies they might advocate against. Maybe they become very against FDA reform?
If you want to make embryo selection acceptable, the best way to do it is to show liberals and progressives just how much conservatives/Rightoids hate it. Show them every Mary Harrington article and RapeGroyper9000 tweet about the matter.
Truly brilliant (and hilarious). I like your (completely factual) idea that we are ruled by vibes. I’ve felt recently that classical liberals are virtually the only principled political thinkers. Most people who think about politics are complete ignoramuses when it comes to social science and policy analysis. It’s nearly 100% vibe-based and fact-free.