I stake out a contemporary context in which democracy seems to be under attack from the populist right, and neglected by parts of the progressive left caught up with a politics of the personal. In a polarised world, persuading others to change their sense of who they are has become more difficult. I draw on Jonathan Haidt to show how most decisions are made on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Hannah Arendt and Chantal Mouffe argue for the importance of public argument and the theatricality of political life, prioritising social roles over personal authenticity. From a liberal perspective, Judith Shklar speaks to the inevitability of hypocrisy in democratic politics. Matthew Flinders, Alan Finlayson and David Runciman are contemporary theorists who identify the need for political science to take on the problem of rhetoric. From truth and hypocrisy, I turn to the question of representation. A democratic politician represents those who vote for her or him much as an actor in a play represents a character. Theatre offers a lens through which to contemplate problems of selfhood and identity, and the paradox of the sincere liar.

When I was writing The Moral Arc, I found my life-long libertarianism challenged on so many fronts that I began to reconsider my politics and to look for a new label, one that better described what I came to believe was the right balance between Left and Right, between liberalism and conservatism. I believe I may have found it in classical liberalism, a defense of which follows in this essay, originally published in the online magazine Quillette.