dogged adherence to the Enlightenment is illiberal

It's fair to say that I'm not a fan of the term "classical liberal." This is a term of self-aggrandizement adopted by people who claim to be the real inheritors of Enlightenment values and the tradition of Smith, Locke, and Jefferson. Calling yourself a classical liberal tends to beg the question; the legacy of that era is contested, with leftists like me insisting that the egalitarianism espoused by those thinkers necessarily includes reasonable equity in fact and not just in theory. Even the legacy of specific thinkers, like Adam Smith, are contested. He's generally taken as the patron saint of laissez faire capitalism, but he endorsed progressive taxation, and some read his work as an endorsement of markets specifically because he believed they would deliver egalitarian outcomes.

But even this discussion strikes me as being somewhat besides the point. One of the most obvious elements of the Enlightenment was the rejection of tradition, and particularly the idea that tradition should preserved simply because it is tradition. Embracing reason means embracing change, as what is dictated by reason will shape and be shaped by a changing world. I take the best of liberalism to be its refusal to declare an end to any inquiry. Like the scientific method, liberalism is not a list of truth statements about the world but a way of knowing. It is a process through which useful knowledge can be developed, but the self-critique within it suggests that this knowledge can never be considered the final word.

For this reason, I find constant reference to the ideals of the Enlightenment, like constant invocation of the framers of the Constitution, to be uniquely self-denying. To treat the words of the Enlightenment thinkers as inflexible authority is to reject those thinkers in the most real and distorting way. The world has changed and liberalism must change with it or be discarded.

(Incidentally, I am trying to write shorter posts, as I have been teased about it. I am apparently not entirely incorrigible, my showy assertions of independence notwithstanding.)