I’ve often made the comment that when you see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders basically saying the same thing on a position, you have to question it. In my case, I’m usually talking about their positions on restricting free trade. You could say that even a stopped clock is right twice per day, so maybe Bernie has a limited point here–at least I suspect that is what Mr. Trump would think. And yet Mr. Sanders is being perfectly consistent with his illiberal world view–the state should have the power to do whatever he and his progressive friends think is morally the right thing to do. What’s interesting is not that Mr. Trump might agree that he should have the power to do what he wants vis-a-vis trade, but that Republican supporters of liberty are getting rarer. Stephanie Slade has an excellent article over at Reason on the convergence between left and right. Read it. Ok, did you read it yet?

I can find a few things to disagree with, e.g., her more or less equivalence between the threat raised by the two extremes*, but I can’t help but feel she’s identified a major source of angst by many who can’t believe what has happened to their country.

This is what feels most broken in our politics. It’s not the ways left and right are further apart than ever; it’s the ways they’re closer together, with powerful elements on each side having jettisoned the longstanding liberal ideal of respecting the rights of even those with whom you strongly disagree. The two camps, of course, have different substantive moral visions for the society they wish to construct. But each views a broad conception of individual liberty as a barrier to achieving that vision.

I continue to believe liberty is a value worth fighting for, even though it is for a freedom to do that which we ought to do. The modern world offers complete freedom only to deny God’s plan for humanity, i.e., his created order and the nature of our identity as image bearers and to replace that with human autonomy, that we should be our own God, and “in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Yet where God gives us freedom, the culture would try to deny us that right, e.g., in what we buy and produce, or in how we educate our children or plan for our retirement. We want liberty, not licentiousness nor legalism.

Did I tell you to read it yet? Love to discuss your thoughts in the comments.

* Consider her need to be balanced in her condemnation between left and right, such as this point on religious liberty.

But at least conservatives are solid on religious liberty, right? Alas, a new intolerance toward nonbelievers (or wrong believers) has crept in on the right, with a cohort of “post-liberal” intellectuals trying to build a case for less separation between church and state.

The most radical fringe within this group—people like the Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule and the Cistercian monk Fr. Edmund Waldstein—are the so-called integralists, whose “political Catholicism” calls for a civil government that is subordinate to the Catholic Church and actively privileges the true faith (and its adherents) through the law. A robust understanding of religious liberty that ensures equal rights even for dissenters is a hindrance to the integralist project.

It’s absolutely true that the right has illiberal voices that are increasing in number, but they are clearly still very far on the fringe. The progressive illiberals, however, are making policy and laws now. Who has ever even heard of Vermeule and Fr. Edmund Waldstein?