Extra: Daniel Hannan on Executive and Legislative Power

Lord Daniel Hannan of Kingsclere serves in the English House of Lords. He is the International Secretary of the Conservative Party, as well as teaching at the University of Buckingham and the University of Francisco Marroquín. He has written nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. He sat as a Conservative MEP for 21 years and was a founder of Vote Leave. He is a regular columnist for, among others, The Sunday Telegraph, The Washington Examiner, and The Daily Mail. He is also the President of the Institute for Free Trade.

To hear Lord Hannan and Juliette Sellgren’s full conversation, click here. 

From the outset of this episode, Lord Hannan makes quite clear the negative effects of reactionary politics, especially in lawmaking. Quoting a friend, he quips that sudden reactionary laws are “using a sledgehammer to miss a nut.” These laws “have all these unintended consequences but fail to have the intended consequence.” 

Lord Hannan sees such reactionism threatening liberal democracy today. Numerous crises are allowing the executive to expand, endangering the ever important separation of powers. The people and politicians alike are hyper-focusing on results and outcomes, ignoring the political procedures established to properly respond to change and encouraging drastic measures. And most dangerous of all, the rising collectivism of identity politics threatens the foundation of classical liberalism – individualism.

According to Lord Hannan, the failure of classical liberalism to educate and habituate individualism and personal responsibility has led to the blame-shifting, deteriorating, anti-liberal democracies that we have today. 

Though the urge to be aggrieved by identity politics is strong, Lord Hannan encourages us to re-ground ourselves as individuals, take responsibility, and govern ourselves. What starts with the individual bleeds into communities, political parties, and finally the national government. We need to return to true self-governance and the tried-and-true political procedures handed down to us from our fathers and their fathers. Then, perhaps we can crack the nut and effect beneficial change. 

1.)   Although speaking from a British background, most (if not all) of Lord Hannan’s critiques of reactionary politics in modern liberal democracies can be applied to America. In what ways have American politics become reactionary? Why have they? What brought America to abandon individualism and personal responsibility?  

2.)   How is individualism different from identity politics? What makes one the foundation of classical liberalism and the other its foe? 

3.)   What role do collectives (families, communities, friends, etc.) play in the individual’s life? How do we balance the collective with the individual in a healthy way that fosters classical liberalism?  

Looking for more? 
The Federalist Papers, the American Founding Fathers’ interpretation and defense of separation of powers
Rob Norton’s “Unintended Consequences”, from EconLib’s Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
The Cousin Wars by Kevin P. Phillips, a recommended read by Lord Hannan
The Limits of Liberty: Buchanan’s Case for Constitutional Rules with Edward Lopez”, a Great Antidote Podcast \
How Identity Politics Disempowers Individuals” by Universiteit Leiden student D. K. Moreira