This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 26,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Some strains of the new right, for lack of a better term,

are profoundly illiberal.

They call themselves conservatives while rejecting a broad range of

principles that have made America great. Tolerance, free markets, and notably religious pluralism.

Kevin Valier's new book is All the Kingdoms of the World,

where he critiques Catholic Integralism

and other anti-liberal religious ideas.

We spoke last month.

With some apology to longtime listeners, we're going to be using the word liberal and

liberalism, liberally, throughout this discussion.

So in the Modern American context, we're used to using that word differently than a lot of people do certainly how academics use that word.

So when we say liberalism, what are we talking about?

Well, I think of liberalism is encompassing kind of four political principles, ones that tell us how government should operate or be structured.

The first is the protection of individual and group liberties against interference from government or powerful economic organizations, large corporations.

Equality, basically the idea is whatever rights we have, we have them the same. Some kind of principle of

toleration typically applied at least to religion but also perhaps to secular

doctrines and a kind of principle of mutual advantage. To be a liberal was to look for positive some games or win-wins,

where other ideologies try to divide people up and friend an enemy.

Can we say anything with confidence about religious people and general attitudes toward

liberalism?

...