Again, there is a spectrum of both liberal and conservative that are differentiated by those axioms. So, it shouldn't surprise you to see that libertarianism, an extreme form in that it rejects government action except in very constrained areas, such as enforcing laws, with a focus on enforcing contracts, that would not serve the homeless, regardless of identity, but a liberal conservatism would.
In fact, it was primarily libertarianism that helped destroy the American fabric that had created the middle class, through the income tax with high upper marginal rates, and in their "selfishness is a virtue" axiom argued for laissez-faire that included offshoring to low wage labor markets to provide low cost to consumers while it destroyed well paying jobs in American community.
So, I am not defending liberalism in total, I have no use for libertarianism, but only it as a whole due to its foundational axioms. And I attack conservatism because it was the original rot in this nation in that its rejection of those axioms led to slavery, Jim Crow, Segregation, ethnic cleansing and massacres of Indians, the authoritarianism that we're experiencing now, the unconstitutional SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs and Trump, etc.
We would be far better off with progressive liberalism and liberal conservatism, but we are here.
Apologies for the delay in responding to your interesting comment. Australian politics is very much a contest between ‘progressive liberalism and liberal conservatism.’
I don’t think, for example, that anyone would describe Premier Mark McGowan as libertarian, he is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), those constitution states
‘The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields’ (https://www.alp.org.au/media/3572/alp-national-constitution-adopted-19-august-2023.pdf ).
In the Australian context almost everyone is a liberal, elections are contests between progressive liberals (the ALP) and economic liberals / liberal conservatives (The Liberals https://www.liberal.org.au/ ), the other participants, Greens, Nationals, Teals would also be liberals in that they emphasize individual outcome and equality of opportunity, albeit in a slightly more communitarian guise.
Libertarians are like communists; they exist but are pretty much shut out of the political system, which is essentially a contest between rival forms of liberalism.
Voting is compulsory which ensures a high turn out (over 90 percent) and this, in turn, pushes both sides towards the centre, punishing either if they move too far to the left and the right.
While this ensures stability and continuity it also creates a strongly majoritarian system in which the needs of disenfranchised groups can be ignored, of which homeless people are a pre-eminent example. I suspect this is why late 19th / early 20th century Australia combined liberal, or even radical, policies, for example votes for women, secret ballots, the world’s first socialist government (Queensland 1899) with genocide of Indigenous people and the White Australia Policy.
During the 1980s we had the same economic reforms you had under Regan, however they were pushed through by a federal Labor government and accompanied by socially liberal reforms, which blunted opposition from the left. However the end result was the same, a growing gap between rich and poor, industry moving overseas, a declining middle class, young people being priced out of the housing market etc*. While the Liberals criticized Labor’s social policies they also supported economic rationalism so there was no real opposition.
Hence my view that liberalism is very much to blame for our current plight, both sides are liberals and both have championed policies that have contributed to large numbers of people sleeping in doorways.
"Hence my view that liberalism is very much to blame for our current plight, both sides are liberals and both have championed policies that have contributed to large numbers of people sleeping in doorways."
I agree 100% but with the caveat that certain conservatives fully supported the false trickle-down economic paradigm because libertarians believe that the rich are makers, more industrious, and everyone else are takers, including workers, and conservatives believe that they are more righteous and their wealth is god's reward for their righteousness.
Both libertarians, liberal extremists, and conservatives believe the same thing for different reasons, both saw taxation as theft and so worked together in the GOP to reduce taxes on the wealthy. It was the progressive income tax with its high upper marginal rates that created our extensive middle class, it ended the Gilded Age, and so it was the target of the GOP since its inception.
Understand that I am not arguing that liberals are better, only that the liberal axioms are what changed life, ended monarchism, but it also set the stage for the false belief that is libertarianism that rejects that we are social animals and so have obligations to others in preference for their "selfishness is a virtue" in which the poor are slackers and so simply must act more like the rich to change their station in life. The problem is that unless wealth is controlled it aggregates, it never trickles down as shown by EVERY civilization that ever existed. Ideology is the enemy of reality.
I suspect that we agree on more than we disagree. To paraphrase Churchill ‘liberalism is the worst form of social organisation, except for all the others,’ which makes it puzzling as to why liberalism is in such dire circumstances across the democratic world.
I am just reading the latest edition of the British conservative magazine ‘The Spectator,’ and if you champion a liberal society it makes grim reading. In the UK Reform has a real chance of replacing the Conservatives as the main right wing party, and Reform, unlike the Tories, is proudly illiberal pledging mass deportations of illegal immigrants and nationalization of key industries. In France President Macron is losing ground to the illiberal left and the illiberal right. In Germany ADF may well replace the Christian Democrats as the main party of the right. Here in Australia we had mass marches against immigration, attended by open fascists and nazis. The response from our left liberal government and right liberal opposition has been muted, both condemning Nazis but saying that there were ‘good people’ at the rallies (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-03/anti-immigration-rallies-anthony-albanese-sussan-ley/105720568 ).
Why?
Is it because people are frustrated by ineffective governments while their lives are getting worse? For example in the UK both the Conservatives and Labour came into office pledging to halt illegal migration, both have been ineffective, opening the way for Reform. Here in Australia our health and social welfare systems have been crumbling, under both Labor and Liberal governments.
Is it because liberalism was only ever intended to protect the interests of wealthy, white people, doing nothing for those who are neither? George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slaveholders, a Whig, Lord John Russell presided over the Great Famine, and the men who drew up the Australian constitution profited from, and in some cases led, the dispossession of the Aboriginals. They also believed that the exclusion of ‘coloured’ people was imperative if Australia was to remain a liberal democracy, so liberalism has frequently coexisted with and even driven racism and segregation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy ).
Or is it, depressingly, that the people who drafted our constitution were right when they supported a White Australia, multicultural societies a too diverse to support liberalism, I'm hoping this isn't the case, but it's worth noting that the 2017 Same Sex Marriage vote did poorly in culturally diverse inner city Melbourne and Sydney.
Or is there some other reason, for example elites deciding to dismantle the liberal society when it no longer serves their needs? This would certainly explain MAGA but is less applicable to Australia and the UK where both major parties are liberal.
Whatever the case we are in a dangerous time, with liberal societies endangered in a way they haven’t been since the 1930s.
a) Conservatives are highly reactive, they reject change, especially when it impacts their worldview, the order that they consider "normal". For example, look at the conservative reaction to the liberal view that slavery was evil inthe US in the 1800s. They seceded from the Union. After the South lost the war, conservatives continued their racist ways through Jim Crow, Segregation, Separate But Equal and then leaving the Democratic Party for the Republican Party at the signing of the Civil Rights Act because of the Republican Party's state's right plank that would allow them to fight those changes to their world that they didn't agree with at the state level.
b) Libertarianism ruined everything. As a progressive, I blame the success of libertarianism starting with Reagan/Thatcher as ruining the order that workers enjoyed due to the progressive income taxes that coerced the wealthy into not taking their excessive earnings in the first place thus allowing that wealth to flow to workers thus creating our extensive middle class. However, as libertarians and conservatives believe that the wealthy are better people, that they earned their wealth from being more industrious, libertarians, or righteous, conservative, they joined forces to reverse the progressive income tax thus allowing workers' earnings to flow to the top again.
Many conservative workers support this because they too believe that the wealthy are better people and thus supported the losses that they now whine about. Ironic.
Unfortunately, progressives have been pushed to the side if not called "communist" or "socialist" because most people, liberal and conservative, have lost the true meaning of anything, as we were discussing previously. Ironically, MAGA voted for Trump in large part because they falsely believed that he cared about them, indicating that progressives can win big because progressive policies are what would remake the middle class. They just need to wrest control from the corporate Clinton Democrats and remake the party to reflect FDR and his pro-worker, pro-"little guy" values.
Does that explain though why large numbers of people (and not just in the US) vote for authoritarian candidates, knowing that they are authoritarian? Rejecting not just left liberals but right liberals as well (i.e. ‘small l’ liberals / conservatives).
My suspicion is that liberalism is primarily a mechanism for ensuring that conflicts among the elite, thus breaks down when elite dissention reaches the point where it can no longer be resolved within the liberal framework, as happened in the US over slavery in 1861 and almost happened in Australia with conscription in 1916-17.
I also wonder if liberalism, as a method of resolving disputes among the ruling class, has as much to offer to those outside the charmed circle of power, particularly as liberalism can co-exist with violence (sometimes extreme violence) against those without power? The liberal US constitution, for example, was drawn up by slave owners, the (equally liberal) Australian constitution underpinned genocide against Aboriginals and exclusion of non-whites, the grandfather of liberal constitutionalism, the UK, was a ruthless empire builder. Looked at from the bottom (or the outside) the liberal order looks less like a system to ensure ‘liberty and justice for all’ and more like a means of legitimising exploitation.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the liberal order isn’t the best option available*, but we have to acknowledge the possibility that those voting for authoritarians are doing so because the existing order doesn’t work to their benefit, at least voting for Trump allows them to express their anger and distain.
Of course I'm very much the sort of person (white, male, bourgeoisie adjacent) who benefits from the existing order.
*It is unlikely that MAGA, or any of the other neo-authoritarian movements will be any improvement, in fact they will probably be worse.
"Does that explain though why large numbers of people (and not just in the US) vote for authoritarian candidates, knowing that they are authoritarian?"
In my opinion, it isn't a class thing, it is a conservative thing. Conservatives have little to no tolerance, they do not like the social change, especially when people refuse to accept the reality of the "approved" social order, as conservatives define it, and demand change to that order. For example, look at the history of black people demanding that their rights be recognized and respected. Conservatives violently objected, including lynching blacks, throwing rocks through their windows when they moved into white neighborhoods, claiming that "all lives matter" simply because they couldn't even say that "black lives do matter".
Liberalism is the polar opposite of conservatism. That in and of itself compels authoritarianism because a strong conservative leader will enforce the social order that conservatives demand, such as forcing people to be the sex that "nature", god for those religious, created and force the sexes to act as their gender demands, males act masculine and females act feminine.
Humans, being social animals, are evolved to live in groups and so have evolved a certain capacity to balance their nature, tolerance, to get along with others. Conservatives have little to no capacity to deal with differences between how they think the world should be and reality. Conservatives have no tolerance, liberals do.
Again, there is a spectrum of both liberal and conservative that are differentiated by those axioms. So, it shouldn't surprise you to see that libertarianism, an extreme form in that it rejects government action except in very constrained areas, such as enforcing laws, with a focus on enforcing contracts, that would not serve the homeless, regardless of identity, but a liberal conservatism would.
In fact, it was primarily libertarianism that helped destroy the American fabric that had created the middle class, through the income tax with high upper marginal rates, and in their "selfishness is a virtue" axiom argued for laissez-faire that included offshoring to low wage labor markets to provide low cost to consumers while it destroyed well paying jobs in American community.
So, I am not defending liberalism in total, I have no use for libertarianism, but only it as a whole due to its foundational axioms. And I attack conservatism because it was the original rot in this nation in that its rejection of those axioms led to slavery, Jim Crow, Segregation, ethnic cleansing and massacres of Indians, the authoritarianism that we're experiencing now, the unconstitutional SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs and Trump, etc.
We would be far better off with progressive liberalism and liberal conservatism, but we are here.
Apologies for the delay in responding to your interesting comment. Australian politics is very much a contest between ‘progressive liberalism and liberal conservatism.’
I don’t think, for example, that anyone would describe Premier Mark McGowan as libertarian, he is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), those constitution states
‘The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields’ (https://www.alp.org.au/media/3572/alp-national-constitution-adopted-19-august-2023.pdf ).
Of course the ‘socialist objective’ is a dead letter, the ALP is, for all intents and purposes a liberal party, which didn’t stop Mr McGowan from being ruthless towards homeless people in the lead up to the State Election (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-23/tent-city-shut-down-in-fremantle-by-state-government/13085620).
In the Australian context almost everyone is a liberal, elections are contests between progressive liberals (the ALP) and economic liberals / liberal conservatives (The Liberals https://www.liberal.org.au/ ), the other participants, Greens, Nationals, Teals would also be liberals in that they emphasize individual outcome and equality of opportunity, albeit in a slightly more communitarian guise.
Libertarians are like communists; they exist but are pretty much shut out of the political system, which is essentially a contest between rival forms of liberalism.
Voting is compulsory which ensures a high turn out (over 90 percent) and this, in turn, pushes both sides towards the centre, punishing either if they move too far to the left and the right.
While this ensures stability and continuity it also creates a strongly majoritarian system in which the needs of disenfranchised groups can be ignored, of which homeless people are a pre-eminent example. I suspect this is why late 19th / early 20th century Australia combined liberal, or even radical, policies, for example votes for women, secret ballots, the world’s first socialist government (Queensland 1899) with genocide of Indigenous people and the White Australia Policy.
During the 1980s we had the same economic reforms you had under Regan, however they were pushed through by a federal Labor government and accompanied by socially liberal reforms, which blunted opposition from the left. However the end result was the same, a growing gap between rich and poor, industry moving overseas, a declining middle class, young people being priced out of the housing market etc*. While the Liberals criticized Labor’s social policies they also supported economic rationalism so there was no real opposition.
Hence my view that liberalism is very much to blame for our current plight, both sides are liberals and both have championed policies that have contributed to large numbers of people sleeping in doorways.
*‘…Keating-era policy contributed in the longer term to poorer wages and conditions for workers. Labor is predictably loath to acknowledge this. Keating also underestimated the detrimental impacts of economic rationalism on other vulnerable groups in the community’ (https://theconversation.com/how-paul-keating-transformed-the-economy-and-the-nation-131562
Now my turn to apologize. You said:
"Hence my view that liberalism is very much to blame for our current plight, both sides are liberals and both have championed policies that have contributed to large numbers of people sleeping in doorways."
I agree 100% but with the caveat that certain conservatives fully supported the false trickle-down economic paradigm because libertarians believe that the rich are makers, more industrious, and everyone else are takers, including workers, and conservatives believe that they are more righteous and their wealth is god's reward for their righteousness.
Both libertarians, liberal extremists, and conservatives believe the same thing for different reasons, both saw taxation as theft and so worked together in the GOP to reduce taxes on the wealthy. It was the progressive income tax with its high upper marginal rates that created our extensive middle class, it ended the Gilded Age, and so it was the target of the GOP since its inception.
Understand that I am not arguing that liberals are better, only that the liberal axioms are what changed life, ended monarchism, but it also set the stage for the false belief that is libertarianism that rejects that we are social animals and so have obligations to others in preference for their "selfishness is a virtue" in which the poor are slackers and so simply must act more like the rich to change their station in life. The problem is that unless wealth is controlled it aggregates, it never trickles down as shown by EVERY civilization that ever existed. Ideology is the enemy of reality.
I suspect that we agree on more than we disagree. To paraphrase Churchill ‘liberalism is the worst form of social organisation, except for all the others,’ which makes it puzzling as to why liberalism is in such dire circumstances across the democratic world.
I am just reading the latest edition of the British conservative magazine ‘The Spectator,’ and if you champion a liberal society it makes grim reading. In the UK Reform has a real chance of replacing the Conservatives as the main right wing party, and Reform, unlike the Tories, is proudly illiberal pledging mass deportations of illegal immigrants and nationalization of key industries. In France President Macron is losing ground to the illiberal left and the illiberal right. In Germany ADF may well replace the Christian Democrats as the main party of the right. Here in Australia we had mass marches against immigration, attended by open fascists and nazis. The response from our left liberal government and right liberal opposition has been muted, both condemning Nazis but saying that there were ‘good people’ at the rallies (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-03/anti-immigration-rallies-anthony-albanese-sussan-ley/105720568 ).
Why?
Is it because people are frustrated by ineffective governments while their lives are getting worse? For example in the UK both the Conservatives and Labour came into office pledging to halt illegal migration, both have been ineffective, opening the way for Reform. Here in Australia our health and social welfare systems have been crumbling, under both Labor and Liberal governments.
Is it because liberalism was only ever intended to protect the interests of wealthy, white people, doing nothing for those who are neither? George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slaveholders, a Whig, Lord John Russell presided over the Great Famine, and the men who drew up the Australian constitution profited from, and in some cases led, the dispossession of the Aboriginals. They also believed that the exclusion of ‘coloured’ people was imperative if Australia was to remain a liberal democracy, so liberalism has frequently coexisted with and even driven racism and segregation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy ).
Or is it, depressingly, that the people who drafted our constitution were right when they supported a White Australia, multicultural societies a too diverse to support liberalism, I'm hoping this isn't the case, but it's worth noting that the 2017 Same Sex Marriage vote did poorly in culturally diverse inner city Melbourne and Sydney.
Or is there some other reason, for example elites deciding to dismantle the liberal society when it no longer serves their needs? This would certainly explain MAGA but is less applicable to Australia and the UK where both major parties are liberal.
Whatever the case we are in a dangerous time, with liberal societies endangered in a way they haven’t been since the 1930s.
Why is liberalism losing?
I think in large part because:
a) Conservatives are highly reactive, they reject change, especially when it impacts their worldview, the order that they consider "normal". For example, look at the conservative reaction to the liberal view that slavery was evil inthe US in the 1800s. They seceded from the Union. After the South lost the war, conservatives continued their racist ways through Jim Crow, Segregation, Separate But Equal and then leaving the Democratic Party for the Republican Party at the signing of the Civil Rights Act because of the Republican Party's state's right plank that would allow them to fight those changes to their world that they didn't agree with at the state level.
b) Libertarianism ruined everything. As a progressive, I blame the success of libertarianism starting with Reagan/Thatcher as ruining the order that workers enjoyed due to the progressive income taxes that coerced the wealthy into not taking their excessive earnings in the first place thus allowing that wealth to flow to workers thus creating our extensive middle class. However, as libertarians and conservatives believe that the wealthy are better people, that they earned their wealth from being more industrious, libertarians, or righteous, conservative, they joined forces to reverse the progressive income tax thus allowing workers' earnings to flow to the top again.
Many conservative workers support this because they too believe that the wealthy are better people and thus supported the losses that they now whine about. Ironic.
Unfortunately, progressives have been pushed to the side if not called "communist" or "socialist" because most people, liberal and conservative, have lost the true meaning of anything, as we were discussing previously. Ironically, MAGA voted for Trump in large part because they falsely believed that he cared about them, indicating that progressives can win big because progressive policies are what would remake the middle class. They just need to wrest control from the corporate Clinton Democrats and remake the party to reflect FDR and his pro-worker, pro-"little guy" values.
Does that explain though why large numbers of people (and not just in the US) vote for authoritarian candidates, knowing that they are authoritarian? Rejecting not just left liberals but right liberals as well (i.e. ‘small l’ liberals / conservatives).
My suspicion is that liberalism is primarily a mechanism for ensuring that conflicts among the elite, thus breaks down when elite dissention reaches the point where it can no longer be resolved within the liberal framework, as happened in the US over slavery in 1861 and almost happened in Australia with conscription in 1916-17.
I also wonder if liberalism, as a method of resolving disputes among the ruling class, has as much to offer to those outside the charmed circle of power, particularly as liberalism can co-exist with violence (sometimes extreme violence) against those without power? The liberal US constitution, for example, was drawn up by slave owners, the (equally liberal) Australian constitution underpinned genocide against Aboriginals and exclusion of non-whites, the grandfather of liberal constitutionalism, the UK, was a ruthless empire builder. Looked at from the bottom (or the outside) the liberal order looks less like a system to ensure ‘liberty and justice for all’ and more like a means of legitimising exploitation.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the liberal order isn’t the best option available*, but we have to acknowledge the possibility that those voting for authoritarians are doing so because the existing order doesn’t work to their benefit, at least voting for Trump allows them to express their anger and distain.
Of course I'm very much the sort of person (white, male, bourgeoisie adjacent) who benefits from the existing order.
*It is unlikely that MAGA, or any of the other neo-authoritarian movements will be any improvement, in fact they will probably be worse.
"Does that explain though why large numbers of people (and not just in the US) vote for authoritarian candidates, knowing that they are authoritarian?"
In my opinion, it isn't a class thing, it is a conservative thing. Conservatives have little to no tolerance, they do not like the social change, especially when people refuse to accept the reality of the "approved" social order, as conservatives define it, and demand change to that order. For example, look at the history of black people demanding that their rights be recognized and respected. Conservatives violently objected, including lynching blacks, throwing rocks through their windows when they moved into white neighborhoods, claiming that "all lives matter" simply because they couldn't even say that "black lives do matter".
Liberalism is the polar opposite of conservatism. That in and of itself compels authoritarianism because a strong conservative leader will enforce the social order that conservatives demand, such as forcing people to be the sex that "nature", god for those religious, created and force the sexes to act as their gender demands, males act masculine and females act feminine.
Humans, being social animals, are evolved to live in groups and so have evolved a certain capacity to balance their nature, tolerance, to get along with others. Conservatives have little to no capacity to deal with differences between how they think the world should be and reality. Conservatives have no tolerance, liberals do.