We are all liberals now

Sunstein’s true adversaries—those scorning democracy, pluralism, or law—better describe revolutionary Marxists or identity-driven leftists who desire to curb free speech, topple monuments, and impose ideological litmus tests. Where society has failed is in believing diversity, equity, and inclusion dogmas would eventually yield to Mill’s marketplace of ideas. Instead of taming progressive ideas, we watched as universities and other major institutions bypassed qualified applicants to advance political agendas. If liberals and conservatives are not divided by their attitude to basic rights, where does the real difference lie? Partly in their view of time. Tempermentally, liberals are drawn to faith in new public policy ideas, new regulations, nudges, and incentives to make us more rational, productive, and compassionate. They tend to believe human nature is improvable, that better policy can coax better behaviour, and that the future can be engineered. Conservatives, by contrast, are students of unintended consequences and the constant nature of human behaviour. They see whatever progress we enjoy as the slow pace of trial and error. They are wary of trading known institutions for speculative gains. William F. Buckley’s famous vow to “stand athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop!’” captured not simple obstructionism but a belief that some inherited practices embody wisdom we do not fully understand. That’s why conservatism is so hard to define; it is centred on place and tradition, not on universal ideals that apply everywhere. Conservatives extend obligation across generations—to ancestors, descendants, and the community. Poilievre receives the most enthusiasm among conservatives when he defends family, faith, and community. Here, he’s conservative to the core. On matters of religion and family, liberals are more tolerant of what defines a family and an individual’s conception of faith. On economics and public administration, however, Poilievre fits comfortably inside Sunstein’s liberal big tent. He wants more housing and faster permitting, supports free trade and deregulation, and speaks the language of markets rather than that of nationalizations or five-year plans. In a country accustomed to a thick welfare state, his talk of smaller government sounds almost quaint; neither business nor voters are clamouring for a wholesale withdrawal of the state from health care, education, or income support. It is difficult to picture a Poilievre government scrapping Trudeau’s modest dental program, let alone dismantling the child-care system or abandoning federal support for struggling households. On the big files—housing, infrastructure, defence, industrial policy—Carney and Poilievre will reach for the same toolkit: tax credits, subsidies, regulatory tweaks, and the mobilization of public balance sheets to prod the private sector. They will differ at the margins on speed, rhetoric, and targets, but not on the basic assumption that Ottawa must act and spend to “get big things done.” There’s a reason three members of the Conservative Party found it easy to cross the floor to join the Liberals: the divides between Carney and Poilievre are tonal, not tectonic. That first principle, for both parties, is liberalism. Not the crusading liberalism of 1960s social democracy, nor the austere market liberalism of the 1980s, but a broad, managerial creed that takes constitutional democracy and a mixed economy for granted and quarrels over adjustments at the margins. We are all liberals now; the question is whether anyone still remembers what that used to mean.