Liberalism didn't just make "the west", liberalism made a better world.

The pursuit of the common good has little place in liberalism, for liberalism is principally concerned with the maximisation of individual freedom. Liberals have always tended to underestimate how the freedom of the rich and powerful can undermine the freedom of the poor and powerless. But it is only now that this reality is becoming so blatant, prevalent and, in the eyes of many, inevitable and even legitimate.

This argument, that the pursuit of individual liberty somehow runs counter to the common good, has been a companion to liberalism since its first days on the street of Paris, the salons on Philadelphia and the lecture halls of Edinburgh. It say that in some way people being free runs counter to the common good, that the existence of the rich necessarily requires the presense of the poor, and that liberalism is about the application of power over others not the exercise of choice.

The quotation above comes from Nick Timothy, erstwhile advisor to Theresa May and renewed advocate of anti-liberal, social conservatism. Timothy joins a growing crowd, on both left and right, that has drifted (in some cases fled screaming) away from the consensus that people being free to exercise choice is a good thing so long as that choice doesn't harm others. And the prop that such people have reached for to hold up their argument is this idea of the 'common good', that we can in some alchemical way divine this thing and make it real. But who decides what that common good might be? How do we ascertain the general will? And how do we respond when a minority refuse to accept the definition - can it still be called common or general?

The worst take on the 'common good' is that which is implicit when Timothy talks about diversity - "...the more diverse a society becomes, the less trust and reciprocity there is, and less willingness to pay taxes to fund universal public services and welfare systems." We read from this that the common good is, in some way, a homogeneity, the sameness of people, and that a functioning society is only possible where diversity is minimised.

The mistake that Timothy (and many others) lies in the corruption of liberalism in American usage rather than our traditional understanding of liberal. If liberal means, as it mostly does in the USA, 'progressive, left-wing, identity politics', then Timothy and others' objection to the idea is justified. So much of this 'liberal' assault on institutions does not reflect a love of liberty but rather a view that the power of government should be used to enforce a majority view onto a minority so as to protect group rather than individual interests. This is not liberalism.

Talking, however, about the common good or the general will, especially in language that seems to exclude difference and diversity, does not seem to me to be championing western values but rather to see the common good as oppositional to religious freedom, antithetical to sexual choice, and opposed to the idea of open markets. A common good doesn't come about from the limiting of liberty or by a policy of reducing diversity. If the general will becomes about killing market freedom because the distribution of the riches it makes isn't even then we should begin to worry that this will, this common good, doesn't serve the people but instead satisfies compliance and adherence to rules defined by our betters. We are supposed to make more sacrifices for this common good - pay higher taxes, accept limits to our liberty - because it will be better for the nation.

Timothy and others set nations as greater than the sum of their parts, semi-mythical entities rather than temporary arrangements in the churn of human history. Rather than it being a shared place with a shared history (however contested), nation becomes a thing itself symbolised by flags, hymns and rituals not an association between free people to largely mutual benefit. We cannot know the common good, Rousseau was wrong about there being a general will, and those who lay claim to knowing the will of the people - even in a newspaper article - open up the doors to a less free, more controlled and less pleasant world.

Liberalism, for all that it is misused to justify oppression by the left, is the thing that made the world we have today. Not just "the west" but all of it. Moreover liberalism is the thing that will make our world even better - free speech, free assembly, free exchange, these are the most important things for us to champion. Limiting any of these for fear of diversity or because your religion is dying out does not serve the common good. The common good is served by remembering the mutual benefit that comes from our selfish interests - as one of liberalism's founders, Adam Smith, put it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages".

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