Balkinization  

Friday, April 10, 2026

Is Liberalism Inherently Authoritarian?

Andrew Koppelman

The Danube Institute in Budapest has just published an exchange between me and two of its resident scholars, Jacob Williams and Philip Pilkington, on the question, "Is Liberalism Inherently Authoritarian?" It builds on a piece of mine that appeared last month in The Unpopulist.  The core critical claim of postliberalism is that liberalism inevitably turns into its opposite; that what begins as an ideology of tolerance and free speech ends in repression.  I attacked that claim for its vagueness about just how liberalism purportedly leads to that baleful result.  Williams and Pilkington respond, and I wrote a surrebuttal.  I remain unpersuaded, but the conversation was a fascinating window into the postliberal mind.




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