Think of a constitution for a moment as the rules for a footrace, a nice or nasty one. Liberals by any definition have agreed since the 18th century that rules such as “Kings always win” or “Women always lose” are to be replaced by rules of justice as fairness for all. Equality is the watchword, though not the old equality of oppression under our betters.
And so new rules for the race of life have been ordered up since liberalism was first widely articulated.
The modern political left since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sometimes calling itself liberal, has promised for life’s footrace a rule of equality of outcome. We are to cross the finish line together, arms locked. It’s a lovely vision, proper for a family or a group of loving friends. But attempts to apply an equality of outcome to larger groups regularly fail economically, and then politically. People free ride.
The modern political middle since John Stuart Mill, recognizing this, recommends a rule in the race of life of equality of opportunity, the same starting line. Then it’s race on, yet prudence and justice are served. Splendid. No Cinderella is held back while her sisters race for the hand of the prince. Again, it should and usually does work for small groups, such as families.
Yet modern liberalism of any sort claims to be ethically cosmopolitan. Under the ambition for equality of opportunity, a child born in South Sudan is of course in ethics to be valued equally with a child born in São Paulo. Nationalism violates cosmopolitan ethics. But no compensation short of immediate emigration to São Paulo can put the South Sudanese child anywhere in the neighborhood of the same starting line as the Brazilian child.
A true er liberalism, then, should promise in the race of life only an equality of permission. Wherever you start the race you may, as the sporting British put it, “have a go.”
And go the world did. When applied generally, true liberalism had most gratifying results. World real income per person from 1776 to the present has risen by a gob-smacking 3,000 percent, decisively falsifying Malthusian predictions. The powerful coercing the powerless has more and more been acknowledged as evil, even by the powerful, if insincerely.
Let’s cherish it.
Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.