One of the obvious primary values that drove the establishment of modern democracies, especially at the time of its spread in Europe and in the founding of the U.S., was the notion of freedom.

But that primary value was not just freedom from oppressive governments.

More deeply and positively, the understanding of freedom that supported the democratic impulse was autonomy, generally defined as the use of reason and evidence to draw conclusions and thus to make one’s own decisions about truth and falsity, right and wrong, for the purpose of people being able to engage in self-control of their lives (which meant rational control. See Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”).

These are primary to human nature under the notion of autonomy. One can find versions of this in John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and others, and through them the Founders of the U.S. system of democracy took their views about the particular aspects of autonomy relating to government. They called the specific political instantiations of autonomy “natural rights,” such as the rights to life, liberty, equality, and property (stated in Locke). These rights themselves are based on “perfect freedom to order their actions as they see fit, within the bound of the law of nature” (John Locke), or what Alexander Hamilton called “natural liberty.” That the Founders followed these notions of autonomy is clear enough when one reads the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and most importantly for the U.S., the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, where each right is a political-moral limit to government power over citizens’ autonomy. But to a person, they held that this rational autonomy is “the one common nature” that animates their view of “natural rights” which was so deeply held by the Founders (Locke originally stated it, and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton both repeated it).

This general philosophical Weltanschauung that grounded the Founders of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights seems to have been forgotten or consciously rejected today.

We can trace this devolution from traditional liberalism to nihilism in three admittedly overgeneralized steps (limited for spatial concerns, and not intended to be a chronological or exhaustive listing).

First reduction of this: make autonomy solely economic. This view of autonomy defines it as the freedom to make money and to consume without government interference (e.g., Friedrich Hayek), and it culminates in neoliberal capitalism (e.g., Milton Friedman; Hayek). This is not Enlightenment nor autonomous rational thinking, both of which see property as one of several necessary elements of autonomy, not the definition of it. This is the reason Locke, Kant, and Thomas Jefferson all reference it as one of the rights humans have. When autonomy is defined as acquisition of capital and material goods, and government policies are advocated in the service of that end (e.g., deregulation of corporations, privatization of government offices and functions, etc.), it destroys the real autonomy of thought and liberty to control one’s life, since it provides more autonomy to those with more wealth and less autonomy to those who do not have it.

Second reduction: Postmodernism, the denial of an inherently cognitive, rationally thinking “subject” or “I,” a rejection of the claim that all humans have and share an innate capacity to think rationally (our “one common nature”), and  rejection of rational objectivity and ethical universality as simply “meta-narratives” or “grand narratives” that only legitimize current socio-political power structures (e.g., Friedrich Nietzsche; Jacques Lacan; Jacques Derrida, et. al.). It aims to break down universal and rational objective norms, to reduce human cognition to language development, and the notion of “truth” to only particular agreed-upon cultural truths (e.g., Richard Rorty). Ethical norms and principles said to be necessary for all humans for their interactions are then reduced to forms of oppression and power, not truths that bind us together. Postmodernism reduced the unity of reason with its principles to a view of reason as disunited and fragmentary (e.g., Lacan; Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker).

In this way the objectivity of facts are rejected, and we have entered a “post-truth” age, as it is called (see Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth). This takedown of the primacy of reason and replacing it with the primacy of a plurality of contingent viewpoints (cultures) has concretely resulted in an ideology that says that truth and knowledge are subjective, which results in claims that are grounded in circumstantial, intuitive, dogmatic, and even emotional attitudes. Since objectivity is taboo, the primacy of reason (rational thinking), logic, facts, and evidence are all held to be contingent. Most important in this is a subjective feeling or sense of self-identification with a given cultural subgroup (“local” groups) and how we are different from each other. Thus, division, not unity, is their unstated mantra. In this way, since there are only “competing narratives,” not objective truths,  the unity of reason is shattered, its normative rules broken, the subjective and contingent viewpoint takes over, and autonomy is ultimately taken as my freedom to believe whatever I want and to be whatever I feel like, bound by no objective rules of thought or ethical limits “imposed” on them. Along with one of the originators of postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, even the basic laws of any thinking, such as the law of noncontradiction, is rejected as oppressive and often “just a male power construct” (see Richard Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason).

The practical/social result from this set of views is that narcissism becomes the primary value. Not “me too,” but “me first.” Subjective identity and personal emotions are the condition of any truth, and the only “truth” is my own (see Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue; see also Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism). 

Third reduction: Identity Politics. The reduction of reason to empirical and contingent factors in human cognition results in its replacement with a primacy granted to emotions and an intuited sense of identity with a small group of others who feel victimized and oppressed by the prevailing power group (usually held to be white males. The literature is rife with examples, but for just a couple of examples, see feminists Andrea Dworkin; Andrea Nye; and Jennifer Marchbank and Gail Letherby, in their Introduction to Gender. For more arguments and examples, see Wolin, cited above). In this way, personal identities are not and cannot be defined by common characteristics of humans themselves such as autonomy, because no identity is said to exist in isolation from the social and linguistic (external) forces that brought it about. More, they are concerned only with “intersectionality,” a common feeling of victimization.

The complete breakdown of the objective and the rational opened the door to a view of our relationships as based on power arrangements in society (e.g., Michel Foucault). This is where the amoral and nihilistic turn of postmodernism and identity politics can best be seen. It culminates in the power ideology called DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), focused only on a predetermined goal of a power arrangement in social institutions that gives minority voices an equal power sharing with majority (white) voices. It uses race as a bludgeon to gain power for identity groups. It is largely not based on evidence, just claims of oppression of certain identity groups through their dogmatic and dubious claims, self-focused, with the use of special vocabulary as “microaggression,” “trigger warning,” “labelling,” etc., used to charge others with racism and/or insensitivity to an oppressed minority group, together with the demand to give them a numerical equality (“equity”) with those in power.

In effect, identity politics and DEI are anti-liberal viewpoints because they in no way align with rational autonomy as shared by all humans and as a necessary condition for not only liberalism but democratic theory in general, since autonomy is decidedly not about race, not about “freedom to align with a group of co-victims,” not about group rights, nor about its more recent devolution into a “freedom to be whatever I feel I am.” Rational autonomy, again, is the ability of persons to control their lives and beliefs based on the self-ownership that comes through reasoning things out according to objective rules of logic, facts, evidence, and principles of ethical behavior. By definition, such reason is universalist or else no principles can exist. Of course, that is just what postmodernism, identity politics, and DEI seek to devalue if not eliminate, in favor of the subjective feeling of being “systemically” alienated and/or oppressed by others as the foundation of the demand that others change their ways (not them). It becomes the narcissism of victimization: “my feeling, my feeling persecuted, and my feeling is the truth” (see Mark Goldblatt, I Feel, Therefore I Am).

The problem is that justice is not defined in any of three ways in modern democracies. Rather, justice regards a universal conception of what is ethical or right, coupled with or implying the claim that this conception is to be instantiated in particular social practices and political arrangements because we are all human beings. One can see this not just in Enlightenment thinkers like Kant and Locke, but also modern defenders of liberal democracy such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and many others. In the tradition of substantive studies, justice always has to do with equality and fairness as norms for institutional structures and procedures, not equity and self-identity. Equality is an objective ethical norm that applies to all persons, and refers concretely to opportunity, while equity is primarily a racial definition and uses a predetermined numerical outcome to advantage certain racial group(s). Claims to the contrary are refuted by the actual practices in U.S. society under this claim of equity, both in business and education. The focus on identity politics is on differences between subgroups of people, not what humans or even citizens share in common. Even their cherished notion of “intersectionality” is not all-inclusive. Such a focus is provincial and wholly inadequate to a conception of democratic justice (see Joseph M. Schwartz, The Future of Democratic Equality).

The cumulative consequences of these reductions of autonomy is a breakdown of citizen unity and national cultural commonality. Since the main values of modern Western democracy (e.g., human autonomy, reason, and human rights, etc.) outlined above are rejected by most postmodernists, identity politics devotees, and DEI followers, the result is a view that radically changes and distorts democratic autonomy from thinking correctly and in dialogue, to individual independence from all norms that limit one’s self-understanding of the freedom to believe and to do what one wants, feels, how they identify, etc.—i.e., a shift in freedom from individual autonomy to self-interest and a desire-based individualist and even licentious freedom. In a view of politics as a power game, identity politics devolves into a state of cultural disunity, decline, and eventual demise. This is where we are today. A good example showing this is the L.A. riots, where identity groups of Latinos and their supporters engage in violence as a response to a felt claim of oppression. No evidence given or needed; counterevidence reject a priori. Whether the riots were large or small, real or “astroturf,” the “burn it to the ground” attitudes and actions in the rioting, in the face of the government attempting to find illegal immigrants and immigrant criminals, is concrete nihilism, right before our eyes.

This could be countered and corrected if people understood (i.e., rationally acknowledged) their connections to one another qua human, not qua feeling of victimhood or focus on difference and on one’s self-identity. When people understand that they are connected as humans by “our one common nature” of reasoning autonomy and its consequent ethical principle of respect for co-autonomous beings, then sharp divisions between them are avoidable or at least reduced in the significance such differences are being given today. For one example, we used to be “Americans” no matter what our subjective beliefs or feelings. “Being an American” was a professed adherence to an objective set of values and principles, not just an empirical fact about one’s citizenship. Under the reductionism of identity politics, now our primary identity lies in cultural subgroups, with no overarching and objective connection to anyone else as a “fellow American” or even more, a “co-human” over and above any empirical group identity. But when rational autonomy is the guiding norm, group and self-identity is secondary in importance. This is a primary reason liberals cannot define what a “woman” is today, since any objective, factual viewpoint will be at odds with any given number of various subgroup subjective interests and thus any definition implies an objectivity beyond the group’s focus on subgroup ideology, self-expression, and claimed victimization. 

Solutions proposed for our current cultural demise show the degree to which we have devolved into a nihilistic society. Again, for sake of space, I’ll limit them to the three categories dealt with above.

More neoliberal capitalism. Not a viable solution  for many reasons, but here are four. First, it is too individualistic to save us, based as it is on individuality, competition, and the zero-sum game of “winner take all.” Second, it reduces autonomy to “my property, and what is mine you can’t have (selfishness).” Third, it is morally bankrupt and disruptive of citizen unity, placing citizens in competition and resulting in vast inequalities, economic and social. Finally, it is fascistic, since its natural impulse is to take over governments and every other cultural institution and make them do the bidding of corporate interests—i.e., contribute to their profit, not to be shared with society at large by any means. What must happen for the future is that this form of capitalism must be harnessed and limited by other aspects of autonomy, such as those mentioned above.

Turn to religion. In the last year or so, there has been a noticeable uptick in appeals to religion and particularly to Christian dogmas. This often happens in time of crisis or uncertainty, but ultimately cannot be the foundation of government or of society unless citizens are all converted to being acolytes of Christian dogmas or else forced to give precedence to these dogmas as a foundation for governance. That is not likely to happen. More than that, religion surrenders autonomy to the degree that its dogmas claim to be divinely revealed laws of belief and action as a worldview (this is a common Enlightenment theme; not a rejection of religion, but of religious dogmas). This puts us back to square one and pre-Enlightenment days and pre-modern governments. It reduces to secondary importance the autonomy that comes from the use of reason and is thus insufficient to real human freedom or the well-being of a society that is built on its foundation.

Education/Academia. Education in its traditional form of students learning critical thinking, learning how to sort true from false, fact from fiction, subjective belief from objective reality, and to construct rational conclusions based on evidence, is nearly gone. It has been replaced by indoctrination, particularly into subjective and contingency-based opinion-formation with identity politics and Woke dogmas inculcated upon students, with the consequence of a relativism of values and ethics that frequently maintains that a claim of objective principles are simply means that oppressors—those currently in power—use to victimize others, particularly those of a certain racial heritage. It is important to note that identity politics, Wokeism, and Democratic Party ideology, all tell students what to believe and how to feel a certain way rather than how to think their way clearly to a rational conclusion and belief without the ideological content overriding objective critical thinking. Worse yet, no one is permitted to question these things (or interested in doing so!) without being ostracized or even fired in the cases of the elite colleges in particular: Harvard, Columbia, etc. (see Chris Hedges, “Trump’s Useful Idiots”). The ostracization of dissenters is done not by presenting evidence, using logic, or appealing to ethical principles, but by simply responding to criticisms by using sweeping, undefined, and unargued terms such as “racist,” “oppressive,” “conservative,” or at worst “white male,” as if those blanket and unsubstantiated charges irrevocably refute any dissent. This can be seen quite evidently by the lack of debate the holders of these ideologies countenance. But it is easy to turn the tables on them and show that such radical dogmas are simply the holders’ own ways of using socio-political power to inflict their own limited narrative on everyone else. 

In sum, every major institution and every postmodern embrace of the absurdist ideas imaginable (e.g., that there are 31 genders, which many of my own students have expressed to me in class) has failed and is resulting in an obvious collapse of at least American culture and society, if not Western culture in general. We need to reject such irrational and divisive worldviews and adopt a new philosophy, a new worldview, and infuse our culture and institutions with it if we are to survive. Trumpian authoritarianism is not it, any more than Democratic authoritarianism has shown itself to be (e.g., President Biden and the Democratic Party’s censorship of Covid information and “cancelling” opposition views online; Wokeism; its intolerance of dissent within its ranks, etc.). I suggest that such a new worldview use what was a necessary condition for Western democracies, past and present. This is a view which directly implies that common acknowledgement of reliance on reason, facts and evidence, and thus objectivity, principles, and critical thinking, are far more conducive to human self-actualization and to dialogue, and thus to a true democracy than are radical subjectivism, emotivism, asserted personal identity, and the primacy of identity subgroups. The latter four are not conducive to citizen unity under a principle that unites us rather than divides us into small groups. 

The principle I have in mind here is something like combining rational autonomy with Kant’s “commonwealth of ends,” a view that humans can think rationally and independently, but are nonetheless unified in holding the proper ground rules of thinking, to open and rational dialogue, to seeking the truth, and to treating each other with mutual respect. This is decidedly not inherently racist or exclusionary, nor oppressive, as postmodernists have charged. It is only “oppressive” if you feel that you aren’t up to the tasks these norms call for, since then the only option for getting around their demands is to charge them with being racist, exclusionary, or just power-plays. On the contrary, the idea of a “commonwealth of ends,” of autonomous human beings respecting the dignity of one another as autonomous humans, qua humans, in dialogue with others toward a common good (not subgroup interests) demonstrates that the feminist and postmodern criticisms of Enlightenment rationality as being too atomistic and competitive are wrong. From Rousseau’s “general will” to Locke’s “free and equal” persons, to Kant’s commonwealth, to the U.S. Founders, nearly all Enlightenment thinkers were concerned with preserving our connections to one another while simultaneously embracing our own autonomy while respecting that of others. Being autonomous and being connected with others are not contraries. 

Short of returning to these givens of rational human cognition and self-actualization, Americans and anyone else under neoliberal capitalism, religion, or the current ideology-indoctrination disguised as “education” will never be able to get out from under the crushing weight of these forces that are taking the culture and its institutions down with it.

Right now, oddly enough, liberals, who have traditionally defended the norms I am defending here, are no longer interested in doing so. Conservatives are claiming to have picked up the mantel that liberals have dropped (although conservatives largely still reject placing limits on capitalism and dogmatic religion that would prevent the fascism we see in our U.S. government today). While the Democrats are now spending $20 million to study the male use of linguistic syntax so as to hone their message to them (another fallacy of current liberal thought, that language is all that matters! Not values, not truth, but how it is “packaged” linguistically), conservatives have opted for defending the democratic values of autonomy and human rights, however much they might fail at it. It’s the rational thinking and objective values that attract males, not being Woke and not speaking “the correct vocabulary” with “the correct pronouns” that current nihilistic Democrats want to police.

Democrats cannot figure out why they lost to Trump, but if they look at the Enlightenment values they jettisoned in favor of their postmodern anti-rational nihilism and their DEI-based choice of a presidential candidate in the last election, they would find their answer. However, this answer will require a major overhaul of how their party now does politics, which is unlikely. But they will a priori reject any conclusion the doesn’t meet the predetermined conclusion they want to hear regarding the “right language” to be used and inculcated on others. This will take them further down the rabbit hole that is making their party disappear as a serious contender for political rule. Only when these ideas die do we have a chance to restore democracy under principles of autonomy, justice, and universal human rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Dr. Robert P. Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is the author of five books, including A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act (2005); The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (2009); and The Self-Conscious, Thinking Subject (2022). He wrote eight articles on political theory in the Encyclopedia of Global Justice, by Springer Press (2012), as well as many other articles, which can be read at www.spotlightonfreedom.com. Dr. Abele is professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, located in the San Francisco Bay area.

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