Now make the case for people who don't long for aristocracy (much less serfdom) but think that men and women are largely different in ways that a reasonable society would take into account; that families are best "governed" by parents, not government functionaries; that human nature and society resist being "figured out" and we should thus give weight to custom, even when we don't see the sense in it; that those people who *do* respect custom and/or religion should be given maximum leeway to do so, rather than having those government functionaries interfere.
This a great essay and a terrific series. I suspect that most Persuasion readers are already aboard. I know that much of it is contained in the piece, but I would like a working definition of liberal. For me, it is some blend of John Locke and J.S. Mill, among others.
I do not know how much the term « right wing » means anything, although I see the value in « reactionary. » It is reactionaries who go on about snowflakes, but are they criticizing liberals though?
Micro aggressions and trigger warnings are not liberal ideas or liberal values. I suspect that most values that we conceive of as liberal are widely shared by many who we describe as left-of-center and right-of-center. At the same time, hyper-leftists and reactionaries are equally likely to reject liberalism as I understand it. It is Rousseau who wrote that « on le forcera à être libre. » Are not diversity statements in the spirit of Rousseau?
Likewise, I am suspicious of using the term social justice when describing liberalism. Mussolini loved the term and saw his movement as a social justice movement. That doesn’t take away from the utility of the Gini coefficient, but the odor is there. So too the confusion between equity and equality. A pundit in my local paper unknowingly quoted Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program when explaining it.
In short, I see the totalitarian left and the totalitarian right as equal threats to liberalism. We should be careful to define it better. More people might be on board than we realize.
I'm a fan of the idea of this discussion, but not of this particular contribution to it. This definition of liberalism pretends to dispense with the realm of the sacred, but steals from that realm the idea of spiritual equality, and then jams that idea into meatspace, where it never made any sense. People are by no means equal in their gifts at birth, nor in their circumstances at birth, nor in the choices they make, nor in the results they obtain. Among equality's true believers, I've never met one who actually lived as if they believed all their fellows to be their equals. To do so would be inhuman. More broadly, what's missing from the vision is an idea of "the good" with a few more calories. I see words like "dignity," "equality," "ethical," and "just." Not one is defined. Doesn't that.... matter?
I'll just pull up one quote that stood out to me: "By nature, most humans are given to vanity. We are inclined to believe that we and people like us are born to rule and dominate. We tend—often without realizing it —to wish others were more like us, and that we could use the force of government to make it so. Liberalism challenges all of these selfish impulses."
It... challenges them? Really? Because what I get from this article is that liberalism - simply one culture among many on our giant, variegated earth - very much wishes for everyone to be a liberal, and is very willing to take steps in service of that outcome (note: this is NOT a sly reference to the obligatory linking of non-liberals and Nazis, p.5).
Anyway, this is, of course, a giant topic, on which libraries full of books have been written - it isn't going to be resolved or even summarized on Substack.
So liberalism is essentially dignity culture? Fear drives people and populations toward honor culture. In honor culture you turn to the strongest men for protection. Signals of dominance and hierarchical control are used to intimidate the enemy and make the population feel safe. People become more willing to trade freedom for security. The pendulum has been swinging in scary ways toward honor culture for the past decade or so and perhaps we are now starting to surf the backlash?
Liberals have been afraid and so becoming more rigid and combative and adopting the combative tone of authoritarians. Which is, of course, self-defeating. All this makes me think of 2 things:
- We need honor culture perspectives and skills to stay vigilant and protected from external dangers, but with the values of dignity culture embedded that stops assigning humans value based on anything other than their humanity.
- Is it possible that we are experiencing the backlash to fear and control? If so, it is a chance to either dunk on and shame the opposition, or to lay down our arms and wish them well - serving their needs until their fear is reduced. The number one step here would be to stop shaming them.
Given more than a century of being told by the 'best and brightest', e.g., Bertrant Russell, A.J. Ayer, R.M. Hare, Wittgenstein and the Logical Positivists, J.L. Mackie and every psychology, sociology, and anthropology professor, that morality is relative, subject, and mere emotivism, is there any surprise that people have lost faith in the absolutes of liberalism?
Is it not that liberalism also rode hand in hand with the emergence of science, enlightenment and a broader sense of progress, helping defining a convincing better future, well enough distributed to be appealing to most of us? There has been significant dents in this shared progress in past decades…
Now make the case for people who don't long for aristocracy (much less serfdom) but think that men and women are largely different in ways that a reasonable society would take into account; that families are best "governed" by parents, not government functionaries; that human nature and society resist being "figured out" and we should thus give weight to custom, even when we don't see the sense in it; that those people who *do* respect custom and/or religion should be given maximum leeway to do so, rather than having those government functionaries interfere.
This a great essay and a terrific series. I suspect that most Persuasion readers are already aboard. I know that much of it is contained in the piece, but I would like a working definition of liberal. For me, it is some blend of John Locke and J.S. Mill, among others.
I do not know how much the term « right wing » means anything, although I see the value in « reactionary. » It is reactionaries who go on about snowflakes, but are they criticizing liberals though?
Micro aggressions and trigger warnings are not liberal ideas or liberal values. I suspect that most values that we conceive of as liberal are widely shared by many who we describe as left-of-center and right-of-center. At the same time, hyper-leftists and reactionaries are equally likely to reject liberalism as I understand it. It is Rousseau who wrote that « on le forcera à être libre. » Are not diversity statements in the spirit of Rousseau?
Likewise, I am suspicious of using the term social justice when describing liberalism. Mussolini loved the term and saw his movement as a social justice movement. That doesn’t take away from the utility of the Gini coefficient, but the odor is there. So too the confusion between equity and equality. A pundit in my local paper unknowingly quoted Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program when explaining it.
In short, I see the totalitarian left and the totalitarian right as equal threats to liberalism. We should be careful to define it better. More people might be on board than we realize.
I'm a fan of the idea of this discussion, but not of this particular contribution to it. This definition of liberalism pretends to dispense with the realm of the sacred, but steals from that realm the idea of spiritual equality, and then jams that idea into meatspace, where it never made any sense. People are by no means equal in their gifts at birth, nor in their circumstances at birth, nor in the choices they make, nor in the results they obtain. Among equality's true believers, I've never met one who actually lived as if they believed all their fellows to be their equals. To do so would be inhuman. More broadly, what's missing from the vision is an idea of "the good" with a few more calories. I see words like "dignity," "equality," "ethical," and "just." Not one is defined. Doesn't that.... matter?
I'll just pull up one quote that stood out to me: "By nature, most humans are given to vanity. We are inclined to believe that we and people like us are born to rule and dominate. We tend—often without realizing it —to wish others were more like us, and that we could use the force of government to make it so. Liberalism challenges all of these selfish impulses."
It... challenges them? Really? Because what I get from this article is that liberalism - simply one culture among many on our giant, variegated earth - very much wishes for everyone to be a liberal, and is very willing to take steps in service of that outcome (note: this is NOT a sly reference to the obligatory linking of non-liberals and Nazis, p.5).
Anyway, this is, of course, a giant topic, on which libraries full of books have been written - it isn't going to be resolved or even summarized on Substack.
So liberalism is essentially dignity culture? Fear drives people and populations toward honor culture. In honor culture you turn to the strongest men for protection. Signals of dominance and hierarchical control are used to intimidate the enemy and make the population feel safe. People become more willing to trade freedom for security. The pendulum has been swinging in scary ways toward honor culture for the past decade or so and perhaps we are now starting to surf the backlash?
Liberals have been afraid and so becoming more rigid and combative and adopting the combative tone of authoritarians. Which is, of course, self-defeating. All this makes me think of 2 things:
- We need honor culture perspectives and skills to stay vigilant and protected from external dangers, but with the values of dignity culture embedded that stops assigning humans value based on anything other than their humanity.
- Is it possible that we are experiencing the backlash to fear and control? If so, it is a chance to either dunk on and shame the opposition, or to lay down our arms and wish them well - serving their needs until their fear is reduced. The number one step here would be to stop shaming them.
Given more than a century of being told by the 'best and brightest', e.g., Bertrant Russell, A.J. Ayer, R.M. Hare, Wittgenstein and the Logical Positivists, J.L. Mackie and every psychology, sociology, and anthropology professor, that morality is relative, subject, and mere emotivism, is there any surprise that people have lost faith in the absolutes of liberalism?
Is it not that liberalism also rode hand in hand with the emergence of science, enlightenment and a broader sense of progress, helping defining a convincing better future, well enough distributed to be appealing to most of us? There has been significant dents in this shared progress in past decades…