Enlightenment Liberalism and the Middle Class

Charles K. Rowley: In 1993, in his book, Post-Liberalism, [John] Gray poked around among the rubble of classical liberal philosophy to determine what, if anything was left. He concluded that none of the four constitutive elements of doctrinal liberalism — universalism, individualism, egalitarianism and meliorism (or human flourishing) — could survive the ordeal by value pluralism and that liberalism, as a political philosophy, therefore was dead. www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_01_1_rowley.pdf

Last Friday James Fallows asked what the idea of middle-classness has meant to America:

In periods when U.S. society has not been more open, mobile, and equal than others in the world, many Americans have still acted as if there are benefits to believing, or pretending, the contrary. Through ups and downs, we have preferred to believe that the standard middle-class social contract is intact, and that those who follow the rules -- study, marriage, work, discipline -- can expect a reasonable middle-class outcome.

Last year Fallows quoted Clinton's speech to the Democratic Presidential Convention:

We Democrats, we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor folks to work their way into it, with a relentless focus on the future, with business and government actually working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. You see, we believe that "We're all in this together" is a far better philosophy than "You're on your own." ...
Now, there's -- there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth.
When you stifle human potential, when you don't invest in new ideas, it doesn't just cut off the people who are affected. It hurts us all.
We know that investments in education and infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all the rest of us.

These imply altruism, an orientation suggested at least as far back of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (who cited the Israelites' "love thy neighbor as thyself"), but not described as such until the nineteenth century.

In Homegrown Democrat, Garrison Keillor emphasizes the altruism of the social compact:

Don't take all the cookies, even though nobody is looking. Think about the others. Do unto them as you would have them do unto you, which is the basis of the simple social compact by which we live. And also You are not so different from other people so don't give yourself airs--God isn't going to make an exception in your case so don't ask.

Liberalism, Keillor adds, is "the politics of kindness." Social Security, Medicare, and most recently, an Affordable Care Act to prevent the citizens of a prosperous nation from needlessly dying because they can't afford what it costs to treat curable illness.
 
So: liberal virtues set beside middle class values. In addition to "universalism, individualism, egalitarianism and meliorism"--and altruism--we have, in the words of one of the Founders, the deep cognitive emphasis of liberalism:

The Eighteenth Century, notwithstanding all its errors and vices, has been, of all that are past, the most honorable to human nature. Knowledge and virtues were increased and diffused, arts, sciences useful to men, ameliorating their condition, were improved, more than in any former equal period. - John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1815

"Study, ... work, discipline": improve yourself is a constant theme of middle class people. Get an education, develop a skill, become knowledgeable and capable. People come from all over the world to study in the universities of the middle class nation Adams and his colleagues founded.

In last Friday's article, Fallows continued:

We're now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work. Compared with most European countries, our economy is more polarized and unequal. ... It has become hard to imagine new waves of opportunity and mobility comparable to those created by the 19th-century settlement of the West, the GI Bill, or the post-World War II migration to the Sun Belt.
In these circumstances, does it make sense for America to maintain the ideal, or myth, that we are a middle-class society? I believe it does, ... It remains worthwhile, because most of the elements of middle-class identity encourage traits America needs.
One of those elements is: Because I'm middle class, I have something in common with my neighbors and fellow citizens. The United States has been at its best politically and economically when we have viewed other members of society as "us" rather than "them." ...
Finally, to be middle class is to believe that any goal should be within reach. Success takes effort, and it depends on luck. But a long string of ascents from middle-class-or-below origins, from the Wright brothers and Henry Ford a century ago to Steve Jobs and Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor in our day, suggests a possibility rare in other societies. We are better off believing that this is still the American way. 

In The Liberal Founding this blog cited Historian Fritz Stern and C. Vann Woodward:

In the past and at its best, liberalism has sought the institutional defense of decency. Everywhere it has fought for the freedom of individuals to attain their fullest development.

This is the theme former President Clinton repeated:

We believe that "We're all in this together" is a far better philosophy than "You're on your own." ... It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth. When you stifle human potential, when you don't invest in new ideas, it doesn't just cut off the people who are affected. It hurts us all. We know that investments in education and infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all the rest of us.

"Most of the elements of middle-class identity encourage traits America needs."