1. Very briefly, a “liberal” is a person influenced by an Enlightenment-era anthropology predicated on the notion of individual liberty as the foundation of society.

The problem here is with the term “society.” Liberals certainly believe that protecting individual liberty is an important function of the state. But liberalism does not imply that individual liberty is “the foundation of society” – whatever that means. Liberalism is not a theory about society at all, it is a theory about the state. All sorts of “non-liberal” views about social institutions such as the family, the Church, the nation, etc., are compatible with a liberal view of the state.

2. Society is reduced to a mere social contract between individuals and private liberty always supplants the common good.

Liberalism is not about atomizing sociaty. Rather, liberalism is about making social cooperation possible under conditions of religious and moral pluralism. By limiting the function of the state to defining and enforcing fair rules of social cooperation liberalism makes possible social cooperation amongst people with different ideas about religion and morality. Furthermore, the institutions that make for peaceful social cooperation under conditions of religious and moral pluralism are themselves social goods, and creating and sustaining those institutions will frequently require placing the “common good” ahead of private interests.

3. Instead of being based on God’s will, morality is now based on self-interest.

Liberalism is a political theory, and it entails no particular theory about moral obligation generally. For example, the philosopher John Rawls always made it clear that just because he espoused a social contract theory of political obligation that did not mean that he suported a social contract theory of moral obligation generally.

4. As someone once said, a person’s rights ended only where another person’s nose began! Thus “free” market exchange is virtuous, without regard for any resulting injustice or inequality.

This is at best a fair desciption of only one type of liberalism – libertarianism. Libertarianism is not a particularly persuasive version of liberalism, nor is it widely supported by liberals. The vast majority of liberals support regulating the market, redustribution of income and wealth, and the social provision of certain goods. Even so-called classical liberals generally support the establishment of some sort of social minimum which it is the government’s obligation to guarantee to all citizens.

Liberalism and market economics don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. There is such a thing as a liberal socialist, and there are plenty of non-liberal arguments in favor of markets.

5. The only form of permissible government becomes “liberal” democracy, as other custom-based systems of governance are not sufficiently underpinned by individual self-determination and do not provide the architecture needed for the necessary social contract.

Are you in favor of one of these “other custom-based systems of government”? It’s a free counrty, so you certainly have the right to advocate for the return to the monarchy or an anarchist revolution or whatever. But if you are going to say that you reject liberal democracy, then I do think that you owe your readers some account of what you would put in its place.

6. A woman has the “right” to do as she wishes with her own body, with no regard for another living person growing inside her, because, after all, in a society based on social contracts, the unborn are not really in a position to negotiate. And marriage becomes about the fulfilment of individual wants and desires, and not about the bearing and rearing of children. What I am trying to do with these examples is obvious.

There is no necessary connection between liberalism and abortion. There are pro-life liberals just as there are pro-abortion liberals. I’ve never heard anyone – liberal or otherwise – say that abortion is just because fetuses can’t negotiate. That’s bizarre.

7. Deep down, there is little difference between the ideology on the right and the left of US politics, as they accept the same philosophical foundation.

I agree with this. Both the right and the left in the U.S. accept liberalism as the framework for thinking about the role of the state. One side focuses more on liberty and opposition to the state, the other more on equality and the need for government intervention to ensure the fair value of liberty. But everyone – whether they call themselves a “liberal” or a “conservative” – accepts liberalism as the basic framework for debate.

Historically the Church viewed liberalism more or less the way you do: as anathema to everything that the Church believes. But in the 20th century a generation of Catholics worked very hard to overcome the Church’s hostility to democracy, human rights, religious freedom, etc. People like John Courtney Murray, Jaques Maritain, Yves Simon, and many others, articulated a specifically Catholic basis for liberal politics. They wanted to show that liberal democracy and the Church were complementary to each other. Church teaching, far from being antithetical to liberal democracy, provided liberal democracy with its surest and best theoretical foundation.

These days a lot of left-leaning Catholics seem to have a different approach. Under the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre or Stanley Hauerwas or whomever, they seem to have retreated back into the older posture of denunciation that characterized the Church’s attitude towards liberal democracy before Vatican II. They lay the blame for such problems as support for abortion as a right, insufficient support for the poor, etc, on liberalism.

For myself, I support liberalism. I don’t think that there is anything particularly liberal about support for abortion rights or indifference to the poor. Indeed, I think that those problems are a betrayal of liberalism.

Two more points. The following two sentences seem to contradict each other since the modern welfare state is very much a project of European Christian Democracy:

“I have much affinity for old-style European Christian Democracy. I have very little respect for the modern nation state, . . . .”

I support Obama too. But the reason that I do is that I think that there are sufficient reasons to do so despite his support for abortion. I’m not sure how the argument you present in this post provides any basis for supporting Obama, however. Assuming everything you say in your post is correct, how does the “liberalism” of the Republicans provide a sufficient reason for voting for Obama? It seems to me that the argument has to deal with the abortion issue more concretely.

1. Don’t you think you are being a bit hard on the nation state? There are certainly diseased forms of nationalism, but there are also diseased forms of tribalism, regionalism, and internationalism. The nation-state, when logically and justly constituted, is the best defense against these other dysfunctional entities.

2. Since (like me) you are an old-style corporatist/Christian Democrat, don’t you think it is time this profile had a more explicit presence in American politics? As you mentioned, the DP and the GOP are ideologically incompatible with a CD outlook. So why remain submerged in the soup of left/right liberalism?

Unless, of course, people get to the point of thinking, “Oh, there’s MM off on his quixotic course again” and just don’t bother commenting at all. I keep promising myself I’ll do this, but the will is weak at times…

Interesting viewpoint though. I’ll take it into consideration when participating in your posts. I know one area we’ll disagree is that the “common good” isn’t always so “common”, or so “good”.

I lean toward personal freedom tightly coupled with personal responsibility. I fail to see where Jesus’ teaching says we need to use the .gov to achieve the “common good” or to reward those who do not wish to better themselves.

I’ll also admit – I use the term liberal in a derogatory manner, typically meaning someone who wishes to use the state, redistribute wealth to those who didn’t earn it, and who want to infringe on rights I believe are God given.

The point is that you have often been very critical of republicans, and point out how they are inconsistently pro-life. I don’t think Alexham is doing anything all that different. It needs to be said that Obama was against the born alive protection act in the Illinois legislature.

Ben: is all nuance lost on you? I did not compare McCain (not Huckabee, by the way) to Honecker as a human being; I merely noted the silliness of the 100 year comment in each case. The deluded granduer that lay behind Honecker’s defense of the wall is echoed in the same deluded grandeur as those who currently defend the occupation of Iraq. That comparison is apt.

Didn’t you compare Mike Huckabee to a totalitarian East German Dictator a while back?

Obama has just been called a pro-abort. He has not been compared to a dictator.