The Postliberal Right is Coming for Your Most Fundamental Freedoms
Their culture war priorities trump your freedom to seek health care as you wish
Last time, in replying to a recent article by Christopher Rufo, I pointed out the philosophical differences between classical liberals and the culture warrior right, and why an anti-woke coalition between the two simply won't be happening. However, there are also very practical reasons why we can't side with the postliberal right in good conscience. What I need to stress is that the classical liberal opposition to the postliberal right is not just on theoretical or philosophical grounds.
To put it simply, if allowed anywhere near power, the postliberal right will destroy existing safeguards against state actions that curtail people's fundamental freedoms, and in the process harm people's lives. As classical liberals, we believe in building a good order in society based on freedom, and we will not accept a bad or unjust order that is imposed by authoritarian means. This is why we cannot, in our good conscience, do anything to help the postliberal right gain power. Indeed, I would argue that we must actively act to prevent this from happening.
A Texas judge’s decision to rescind the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill could jeopardize access to the most popular method of terminating a pregnancy.
And many in government and inside the pharmaceutical industry fear that it could also undermine the agency’s broader authority to regulate medicines, opening the door for courts to question approvals of anything from birth control pills to new treatments for debilitating diseases.
This decision shows us what the postliberal right is capable of: overturning well established pillars of the social order to satisfy their culture war goals, and in the process potentially harming many people's lives. This decision would have implications that go well beyond the abortion issue. That the postliberal right would even consider politicizing medicine in this manner is very scary indeed. If there is no freedom for a patient and their doctor to decide on a course of medical treatment without politicized intervention from the state, then we would effectively be living in a Handmaid's Tale style nightmare.
Going back to the 1990s, Gallup polling showed Americans divided roughly evenly between those who called themselves “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Exit polls from the 1990s and 2000s showed voters who said abortion or “moral values” were most important to their vote supported Republican candidates in greater numbers.
But those surveys were conducted when a right to an abortion was law of the land. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year ending that constitutional right has exposed Americans’ broad opposition to the strict abortion bans adopted or proposed in GOP-controlled states. And it’s revealed that public surveys on the matter probably need more nuanced questions now....
But the data is now getting clearer. The Roe v. Wade framework — making abortion mostly legal, but allowing states to impose modest restrictions — is where the majority of American voters are. From the midterms, to Wisconsin, potentially to the 2024 elections, they’re continuing to punish the party that’s straying the furthest from that.
-Abortion was a 50/50 issue. Now, it’s Republican quicksand. by Steven Shepard in Politico
People in the community might have mixed views on abortion that fall on a spectrum, but most actually fear a Handmaid's Tale style society, where even personal medical decisions are subject to intervention from the state, based on religious or culture war objectives. Legislation that effectively bans abortion completely is rightly unpopular because it gives too much power to the state. That this type of legislation has been repeatedly proposed and passed in many places just shows how illiberal the right has gotten in recent times. The people are right to push back.
A particularly harmful aspect of the bill is its targeting of transgender adults by limiting their access to care solely through physicians. Notably, a significant portion of gender-affirming care across the U.S. is provided by nurse practitioners. This model is utilized by many Planned Parenthood clinics and dozens of practices throughout Florida. By confining gender-affirming care to physicians alone, the state is poised to increase costs and create potentially insurmountable barriers for its residents seeking such care, including lengthy waitlists. In light of a recent bill proposing a ban on private insurance coverage for transgender adults, it is increasingly evident that Florida is moving from targeting trans youth to trans adults as well.
-Bill Gives Florida "Emergency Jurisdiction" Over Trans Kids In Custody Disputes, Targets Adult Care
Yet another example of the illiberal right's intrusive approach to adults seeking health care in the way they wish to. What they are doing to make trans health care difficult to obtain is reminiscent of what they did to abortion before Roe v. Wade was overturned, and in practice it meant that abortion was effectively unavailable in many places. It appears that the philosophy of 'if I can't ban it, I will make it impossible for you to obtain' goes well beyond the example of abortion, and has become the standard way for the postliberal right to stop patients and doctors from doing what their religion does not like. The fear is that this model could be used in a widespread manner, effectively bringing about an oppressive theocracy.
“It was like Deutsch assembled a team of Navy SEALs—we were all trained killers in a specialty,” says Elisa Rae Shupe, a retired US Army soldier who became a vocal anti-trans advocate and participated in Deutsch’s working group after detransitioning. Shupe has since retransitioned, disavowed much of her old activism, and shared her copies of the working group’s emails with reporters. Religious-right rhetoric about wanting to help children with gender dysphoria is “just a front for what they do behind the scenes,” she says. “It’s like they want to do as much damage to the trans community as they can.”...
Around the time it became clear that Deutsch’s bill would not pass, the discussions on the email threads shifted from strategy to impassioned proclamations that trans people don’t exist. “The State is forcing people to participate in a lie akin to 2+2=5,” Cretella wrote. “[A] man is NOT a woman! If this is not the definition of insane I don’t know what is!” Some participants in the chains argued over whether it undermined their cause to work with a trans activist who opposed medical transition for children but not adults. “Their endorsements come with a hitch: they expect everyone to play make believe that they really are the opposite sex and have compelled pronouns and all that garbage,” Shupe wrote.
The postliberal right is effectively pushing illiberal and cruel legislation (like what is described above) through by creating culture wars around certain issues, and trans issues are a good example. The important insight here is that they don't really want a good resolution on the issue they are talking about (like advocating for a more cautious approach towards young people with gender dysphoria, which I actually support). What they want is to wage an emotional culture war and create a negative vibe around a group of people they don't like (trans people), so that authoritarian legislation that has nothing to do with the actual issue (like making trans health care difficult to obtain for adults) can be passed later. It seems that theocracy has been getting more cunning, and we on the side of freedom must be able to meet this challenge.
Given that we now know the culture war right does not actually operate in good faith, we might even conclude that their previous invitation for classical liberals to join them in an anti-woke coalition was never made in good faith. They just needed us to make them look stronger and more credible. They were likely to be using us for their own ends. We are better off without them. We are better off arguing against postmodern critical theory ideology from a purely liberal perspective, without the wannabe theocrats contaminating our arguments and undermining our credibility. (I will be doing just that in the next issue of The Liberal View.)
Note: The articles quoted above do not necessarily reflect my views, and I do not endorse their arguments outside of what I have specifically agreed with.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.