Here is a second version of my revised “Ambidextrous Liberal Manifesto” diagram, which I will eventually make into a new presentation to replace the old one posted on Slideshare.

The core ideas:

• The term “liberal” needs to be restored to its original meaning: “favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform.”
• The proper opposite of liberal is “illiberal” not conservative. In the American liberal-democratic tradition, a conservative is necessarily, to some degree, also a liberal, which is why right-liberals are also called “neoliberals” or “classical liberals” or “libertarians”. The tradition conserved in America is liberalism. This is not as true in some European countries where liberalism has emerged from monarchy, aristocracy, or other illiberal orders.
• The habit of conflating left with liberty or right with liberty is counterproductive. Left and right must be considered separately from questions of liberalism.
• Left and right are attitudes toward equality and inequality — NOT liberty or unfreedom. Regulation and deregulation can serve liberal purposes or illiberal ones.
• Left-leaning Democrats (analogous to European Social Democrats) and Right-leaning Republicans are both moderately liberal, sacrificing liberty for other values (equality and just rewards, respectively). Even within the American liberal-democratic tradition this is actually legitimate and deserves respect. Any position falling inside the triad of Liberalism, Social Democracy and Conservative Republicanism should be considered legitimate within the American political order.
• Attributing secret or unconscious motives to our political adversaries is not only inaccurate and unjust — it makes enemies of fellow-citizens. Republicans are not all crypto-plutocrats and Democrats are not all crypto-Marxists, and to make these kinds of accusations is childish and violent.
• Liberal-democracies depend on development of skillfully civilized fighting: what Chantal Mouffe calls “agonism“. Heated disagreements within a civilized range are not only acceptable to liberalism, they are the consequence of pluralism and the very substance of liberalism.
• True liberalism cannot exist in a state of economic anarchy (the “libertarian absurdities”), nor in a state of exact equality (the “left-liberal absurdities”), but only where equal access to opportunity exists, which requires moderate pro-competitive regulation — a balance of equality and inequality. (Even proto-libertarian Friedrich Hayek advocated regulation, provided it was not anti-competitive regulation.)
• Liberalism cannot be taken for granted as a natural state which emerges when illiberal obstructions are removed. It must be created and maintained. To do so, liberals must free themselves from doctrines of left vs right and instead form alliances which treat the policies of the left and right as mere means to the end of liberty, to be used together, ambidextrously, to maximize liberty.