Outstanding essay as always. The paradox of the Liberal seems to account for the strange sort of "racism" inherent in much of the West (I can certainly speak about the American Left.). There is almost idolatry at the altar of symbolic multiculturalism, but with all cultures reduced to cutesy, shallow, and meaningless theme park versions. Genuine "cultural" groupings, those that actually command genuine loyalty and allegiance from their members are usually either callously manipulated or villified, the latter, in particular taking rather bluntly crass form. Both, ironically, seem necessary because acultural and atomistic Liberalism cannot offer an alternative to tribal loyalty and tribal hatred, so rather extreme forms of both emerge in a society where Liberalism is officially being enforced (intentional word choice).
The USA explicitly reserves the right to coup, invade, bomb, and kill by the hundred thousand if it feels that your country isn't sufficiently democratic or its society is organized incorrectly, say along cast, ethnic, or gender lines, and so forth. It's duty to spread freedom, democracy and human right demands the killing and destruction. The insanity of this is plain as day for everyone to see.
So I think people *believe* this stuff like they believe in god, and heaven and hell, i.e. not really when you think about it carefully but it's good enough for an argument and good enough to draw a line under some choice, e.g. supporting or resisting some policy, and good enough to stop an argument or line of thought from revealing the (im)morality of believing or saying something.
This is why I see liberalism as a theology. Like any theology, it has a body of confusing theorizing around the great cosmic and existential questions that somehow gives its priests the authority to tell us how to live our lives, i.e. how we should deal with the choices we face. Personally, I tend to believe there is no and can be no coherent philosophy that accomplishes that. This isn't particularly an attack on liberalism (many of the values of which I am attracted to) since the same goes for conservatism, Marxism, Buddhism...
As usual, a useful and thought provoking article, in the usual very measured tone. Thanks for all the work that went into it.
Some points that occur to me:
1) Liberal ‘theory’ and propagandising could be explained through a Marxist style class analysis. I.E. Most or all of Liberal philosophy can be described as a tool to obfuscate and hide the exercise of power by a ruling class.
2) Greeks of the classical age would not recognise any existing state as being a ‘democracy’. The word has been recruited into being a fig-leaf for what they classified as oligarchy - the practice of using delegates chosen from a ‘qualified’ class, to express the ‘will of the people’.
Democracy was expressed in Classical Athens by the use of sortition - committees chosen by random lot from the free male population regardless of wealth or position. (Of course, we would not now describe this as true democracy either, as women, foreigners, slaves etc. were disenfranchised).
3) On the subject of why such class divisions appear sociological analysis seems to reign supreme, but I think it would be useful to add a psychological anaysis too. Most of the sociologists I have talked to (a pretty small sampling, I admit) pooh-pooh this idea.
I'm not sure I agree that liberalism isn't solid enough to get people to fight and die for it. I've lived in the USA since 1995 and witnessed the transformations after 9/11 2001. The bloodthirsty national superiority was built up by rhetoric that heavily used Americans' patriotic free-democratic sense of self, i.e. the liberalism shared by its political foes. What that showed is that liberalism can function like a theology uniting Americans across the spectrum in regime change fervor.
Whether or not this can continue to work as material conditions decline is a good question but I'm not sure that the incoherence of any theology is reason to believe that it wont work politically or that the excesses of Radical Social Liberalism will cause people to turn against their national myths.
I don't think that was necessarily capitalized L Liberalism. I'd wager that what you saw was good old fashioned American tribalism--we are notoriously tribal people, which some foreigners find surprising.
Yes, that's right. But, once the causus beli fell apart, the rhetoric was basically that Sadam's regime isn't liberal enough and we are therefore morally justified to fight it.
Much, if not most, of the public didn't buy into it. The biggest selling points were that they aren't like us and, perhaps more importantly, the insinuation that they were behind that they were behind 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, I believe.
I don't see the recent aggressive activism-oriented takeover of institutions (Successor Ideology) as very liberal. It's just creation and creative use of policy to punish enemies and get ahead. Are these presented here as examples of liberalism? If so they aren't very good ones. A lot of people including myself find the Good-Old-Fashioned liberalism, for example as in the Bill Of Rights, appealing, at least as a kind of aspirational statement of values. At the same time I am offended by the excesses of the spread and takeover of the DEI industry and its associated opportunists. The the article's mixing together of a critique of GOF liberalism with a critique of this new perverted activism is confusing and a bit of a turn off. The article seems to attack values I like with examples of behavior I repudiate.
That wasn't the intention. I did say somewhere that I thought liberals were turning into authoritarians, which is (I would argue) an inherent possibility if your greatest concern is to protect your freedoms. As you define that freedom more and more widely, you go skidding past JS Mill and inevitably start taking freedoms away from others. What I am arguing is that, in the absence of any competing ideology, Liberalism is likely, whatever its noble origins, to turn into an authoritarian movement in practice. But of course my larger point was not to attack Liberalism, but rather to suggest that it has inbuilt limitations as a motivating ideology against other countries or ideologies. And the problem with Bills of Rights, for example, is that they generally have a self-destruct clause in them which enables them to be suspended when the powerful wish it.
I've read a number of your articles, for which I thank you, and continue to read because I find them interesting and informative. In two or three of them, including this one, you have brief references to the current weirdness that I think you called Radical Social Liberalism. I have found them a bit jarring. The main text is about big topics of history, politics, war, philosophy and then there's what seems a bitter, sometimes sarcastic comment about RSL. I'm not here to defend RSL, far from it. My problem is understanding how to relate these remarks to the rest of your narrative. I stop and ask myself: why is this here? My comment that you replied to came from one of these moments.
You can have a dictatorship, run by a dictator, that doesn't listen to the ordinary people or experts...(authority in the authoritarian sense, but not in the "authority" sense)
You can have a populist regime, where experienced people are ignored. (Neither kind of authority)
And you can have a regime that has know-how and experience, and isnt run by a single dictatorial figure, and listens to the people. (Authority in the good sense, but not the bad one).
And here is some direct evidence. When it became clear, that USSR is giving up, survival became less of an uncertainty, so humans (thanks to Darwin's theory) reduced the expenditure of energy on their intelligence.
> One is related to the Liberal fear of the state as an institution, and the belief that states should be as weak as possible, consistent with protecting private property and upholding contract law. Everything else should be left to the private sector.
May be I'm missing something but that sounds more like the point of view of classical Liberals from 100 years or so ago. Don't modern Liberals want the state to control pretty much everything including the pronouns people must use? If you look at Liberal strongholds of Canada, California, NYC, etc., (sorry, I'm not familiar enough with the situation in Europe to provide good examples from there) they all have less economic freedom, less cultural freedom and less diversity of ideas than Iran (well, OK - may be more than Iran but not by much). Generally a great essay though, thanks!
I think it might be worthwhile to think where modern "statist liberal" comes from.
The statist Liberal is not necessarily an automatic supporter of state intervention on all things. Rather, he is an individualist first and the kind of role he seeks for the state is to empower the individual in some fashion. The contrast between the old Liberal and the new is that the former saw the greatest obstacle in the state while the latter sees it in the society and "other people." In this sense, then, there is a peculiar continuity in the evolution of the "Liberal" in the old and new settings.
But this gets at the paradox that Aurelien has been pointing to in several essays: you can't set both pike and minnow free and be individuals at the same time. Heck, you can't even let just pikes be free and individuals at the same time--they'll get in each other's way and impose on "freedom" of others. The historical approach to alleviating this problem, social conventions and norms, standing on the bedrocks of traditions, religion, and such, are rejected by the Liberal as unjustified and archaic restraints on Liberty (cap intentional). So the only recourse is to use the state, with the feverishly believed fiction that the state, when used by Liberals, does not impose on Liberty (much), often coupled with equally feverishly believed fiction that the kind of liberty that their opponents seek is no liberty at all.
I'll go on a limb and bring up the inherent "Liberalism" of slavery. While obviously illiberal from the perspective of slaves, the idea that people could do whatever they want with their property without interference from the state or social "traditions" is a distictly "Liberal" idea, from both economic and social dimensions. For this reason, I've always thought the slavery in US was different from traditional, historical slavery. While a bit quixotic, admittedly, I think American racism (specifically of Black-White variety which has always been a little different from others) is specifically of this paradox: the slave-owning Liberal had to justify the paradox by insisting that his slaves were somehow inherently undeserving of the Liberty thus there's no paradox st all. Perhaps a too much of an extrapolation, but I keep seeing variations of this in the defense of illiberalism by modern day Liberals.
Very good article, that touches on quite a lot of good points, albeit insists more on some than the others.
There is a certain pathology in Liberalism, and we have a name for that, and it is called Sociopathy, and individuals suffering from it we call Sociopaths.
While Aurelien is in my mind focusing too much on ideology, ultimately, ideology is just a tool for achieving some real, material objectives. And here we must go back to good old Aristotle and his description of types of polities: democracies, tyrannies, and oligarchies, with oligarchies tending to be the most stable ones. And then you have the combinations, alliances: tyrannies & demos and tyrannies & oligarchies. Our present configuration in the west is oligarchies masquerading as democracies, with a figurehead (president or monarch) as ... figurehead. The executive power is usually the "CEO" of the network of oligarchs.
All they want, the oligarchs, is to own everything, be above the law (or the law to be what they say it to be), and control everything, and if possible, become immortals. Tyrants and the demos are, in fact, less sociopathic, but because the template of success being established, the pathology is being slowly spreading. So the present ideology and the mental acrobatics being performed has this as objective: the furtherance of Western and ultimately American plutocracy as the ruling network of the world. If they could own entire planets with people (like in Jupiter Ascending movie), and extract their immortality from it, they would. It is not that complicated.
Magna Carta created freedom for aristocrats from the "tyranny" of the King. Those nobles were the first "liberals". That kind of oligarchy reached its peak in the Polish Seim in the 1600 and 1700s. It ended up, of course, being a failure, because ultimately there was no actual Pole willing to defend the rights of a sociopathic aristocracy, corrupt to the marrow. And now that type of mental mindset has spread (or being pushed) to every individual. The actual resistance is against such mindset, which ultimately covers the "freedoms" of the pike.
But most of us are minnows and I find more suitable, from a political perspective, a system that does not allow anyone any extra power, for extra time, never mind to be transferred down to next generations.
I think the problem is a bit more fundamental: I don't think pure individualistic Liberalism and "democracy" are compatible. In an ideal "Liberal" universe, people know exactly what they want and are able to prioritize them with mathematical precision. Arrow has shown that adding up such preferences does not--cannot--produce consistent, "rational" results proof from procedural manipulation. But "democracy," for good or for ill, never operated in a purely individualistic environment: every stable "democratic" polity operated in a fairly benign tribal environment, where everyone belonged to tribes (sometimes, to several at the same time) that could peacefully coexist next to each other, but responding mostly to tribal cues and norms). So what do you get when you combine nominally democratic procedures while subverting "tribal" culture that amounts to anything? Disaster, even if people are really that "rational," that is they know exactly what thry want and can prioritize precisely, they would still be beset by manipulation and other problems--and very few people, and possibly, nobody is that rational.
The subversion comes from keeping the "demos" uneducated, uninformed (fed with mis-information) and when all emotional levers, especially fearmongering, are being used.
However, random selection of representatives and education of all the population on how actually the polis works, and a tight control and overseeing of executive (whatever form that might take), which has to be transparent and accountable (video and audio recordings at all times), and then some tighter regulation of business and curtailment of finance, which should be relegated to the role that it needs to be, that of a utility. Also, maximum incomes.
I don't know if you mean, by "polls," opinion polls or elections, but after decades of having been involved in practical workings of both, I've come to the view that they are complicated enough that they can't really be understood except with a lot of willingness to accept they are at least 50% bunk because of all sorts of unsolvable practical problems. Education of the population--certainly not "all the population"--of how these "actually work" is impossible because I don't think any large percentage of them will be willing to accept that these are at least 50% bunk or, more likely, willing to trust something that is 50+ % bunk.
Somewhat the same problem with "random" selection of representatives. "Random" is a tricky business: we might speak as if "random" is actually possible in practice, but the actual randomization is hard enough just as a technical problem and doing anything with much credibility with real "randomness," I don't think, is possible. If A happens and that has serious consequences, you will never convince too many people that that happened just "randomly." No one will be willing to pay a real cost for something that is just random--especially if that "random" event is (sort of) the consequence of human actions. You have to create a credible set of trappings that whatever that "random" event was, it was, quite literally, the will of God(s), a return to the divination with entrails and such. Exactly the opposite of what "Liberalism" has been trying to achieve at least since the days of Humanism (a few centuries before even the Enlightenment). And then there's the problem of how these randomly chosen "representatives" are supposed to behave once they are in office: without knowing how to cut deals, without any incentive to build credibility vis-a-vis anyone, and full of random ideas of what is right and they are supposed to do. This will be a mess. This will be sustainable only if they are stripped of almost all actual political power--and we are back to the idea of "Enlightened" experts ruling over everyone...or an anarchic environment where there is no government worth mentioning.
I don't particularly care what the end policy result is. But I'm afraid that you have just furthered my conviction that combining an effective and responsive government (beyond some point) is a logical impossibility.
Well, what would be the actual difference between 'real' randomness and 'true' randomness, in the practice of an attempt at true democracy? Would it be so significant as to nullify the whole process? I doubt it, as long as any inherent non-randomness could not be 'weaponised' to ensure a particular result.
Plus, if you look up 'sortition' in Wikipedia (yes, I know, but . . .) there are examples provided which show that sortition can and has been, successfully applied in 'real world' situations. I suspect that you need to open your mind a little to the possibilities . . .
Drawing lots seems practicable as means of governance only under a limited set of circumstances. Either choices are limited or the power to be delegated is limited, or some combination thereof. It does not strike me as something one can do to run the entirety of a modern government, unless it is massively cut down, which brings us to my earlier point.
People often see designs in all manner of things: the idea that X happened to them simply because of good or bad luck, say, is a hard sell. Even if someone controversial were chosen into a position of power purely by chance, would his or her enemies willing to accept it as legitimate? Say, if Donald Trump owed his election to an supposed random choice, would Hillarycrats not have alleged Russian hackers messing with the "random" process? Heck, compared to an actual election, in which such alleged checking is not really possible for practical reasons, an alleged random process would seem much more suspicious. Certainly, it would be difficult to make such a "random" process meaningfully transparent. This would completely destroy any credibility in the process, IMHO.
PS. Credibility is, I think the single most important quality that "democracy" confers that other systems do not. Powers supposedly granted by mystical mysteries (say, the supposedly divine ordination of kings). Reducing the conferral of power to an essentially mechanical and quasi-mathematical process that one can see through in fair amount of detail was a great achievement by the Liberals--but at the cost of making it unsustainable in the long run. Basically, all elections are flawed in some form, for both mathematical (per Arrow and many studies of various electoral systems) or practical reasons (hundreds of thousands of generally untrained people involved in administering elections invariably lead to a lot of problems, even without any ill intention, and making things more complicated--the typical American habit--compounds the problem). Introducing a mystical "random" choice devoid of any meaning (and potentially open to manipulation that you would not be able to prove in the negative--except for the faith in the process itself--a bit too religious a flavor) seems a surefire way to destroy the credibility, unless the power allocated is so trivial and/or limited that it is largely inconsequential in a big picture sense.
To maintain credibility, the process of choosing the political leaders has to be "auditable" in some fashion--at least in theory. I don't think you can just tell people to trust the process--unless you have some socio-cultural underpinnings that would justify the trust. And if the process is a literal random number generator whose inner workings are unknown and unknowable by definition, very few people would trust it at all, especially post facto.
sexuality is one of the major "inventions" of life (see Life Ascending book). And the sexual reproduction is based on the the production of male/female gamets where the "dance of chromosomes" and subsequent recombination is as random as possible. because in an unpredictable and very dynamic universe, you have to hedge your bets for the next generation. I do give credence to the wisdom of evolution, which is going quite successfully for 3 billion years.
As such, my bet is that a selection of representatives via sortition (random selection, with maybe basic vetting, for cognitive abilities) on long run, would produce much better societies.
I am surprised that an interview with Emmanuel Todd keeps hanging at top of the first page of Le Figaro website for days... Have you read it? It is curious.
I tend to agree with much of what you have just expressed about Liberalism but would also like to present to you a brief case (leaving out of this argument for now what Hobbes was up to) for what you correctly characterize as the emptiness of liberalism. This presentation is based on the philosophical writings of Aryeh Botwinick, a former Professor of Political Science at Temple.
Botwinick would argue that this very emptiness has historically been a key source of strength for liberalism in the U.S.
The U.S. constitution, primarily constructed by James Madison, appears based on an unrelenting type of formal minimalism or emptiness. It is indeed true that this constitution is replete with various vacuous tautologies (like the "general welfare" clause, the "necessary and proper" clause, and the "legislative," "executive" and "judicial" power clauses which nowhere spell out the full extent of the content or the boundaries of these different forms of power.
In addition the doctrines that are the hallmark of the U.S. constitutions--the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism are nowhere stated or spelled out in this document. This perhaps purposeful ambiguity seems to allow for a continual redrawing of the boundaries between these modes for exercising power in the light of evolving historical circumstances and immediate events. Madison seems to have opted for a constitution of absence and emptiness rather than one filled with specifically directed and fully elaborated content.
I consequently think it can be argued that such minimalism or emptiness has been a source of endurance of the U.S. constitution. The very fact that the state continues to make and remake itself as it goes along without a firmly preset agenda of what economic, political or social goals it needs to accomplish enable it to negotiate transitions across political time and from generation to generation.
I see what you mean, and in fact I'm rather in favour of loose and vague concepts and texts *provided* everyone is working in the same direction and is ready to make things work. My concern is that what works to stabilise internally won't necessarily work as a mobilising tool against external challenges.
What you are describing in your last paragraph could also be characterised as the enablement by the constitution to allow the ruling oligarchy in the US to continue to exercise power over the mass of the population, in order to protect its own privileged and wealth. This is after all, the purpose for which it was originally written.
I would suggest that the emptiness of the US institutions provided for a "benignly tribal" environment, which in turn kept US mostly stable and peaceful. The emptiness allowed for no single dominant "religion" (or ideology, or whatever) to forcibly impose itself as "the right answer" most of the time. Freed, within limits, from being obliterated by the dominant tribe, many tribes could coexist commanding allegiance from their members. I think it was this complex mosaic of tribal ties that could more or less peacefully coexist side by side--admittedly, allowed by "Liberal" and empty insitutions--that was the key to American success. The question is whether the same institutions can sustain a population of Liberal individualists instead of many tribes filled with mostly highly tribal peoples.
Have you read Jim Nolan's ' Danger on our Doorstep'? Published in March 2022 I think. It is strangely still quite relevant.... ?
I wrote this last night. What do you think? Keep up the great work, kind regards, Justin
I am struggling with a problem that most of us are facing.. a divided world and a disguised evil that expresses from within people just a lack of basic care and consideration of everyone,; friends,family and strangers...
I have just been reading the vaccinated psychological handbook of how to convince us to take our medicine...because they worry about us.( Psychology Today and their ilk ) Their arguments, especially concerning loved ones, are much the same as ours. My dear friend/ family member is deluded. They need our / my help!
It is interesting watching these articles change over 12 months.( Its also a bit sickening, so I don't recommend it)
'US vs THEM' - WHO's idea was that?.. no, that was The FEW... oops, that's backward. WEF!
They have attempted to convince US with their data. We have attempted to convince us THEM our data.
They have attempted to convince US with appeals to our hearts.We have attempted to convince THEM with appeals to their hearts.
They STOPPED attempting to convince us with their data, because apparently WE are to stupid to understand it.
We have attempted to convince THEM with THEIR data. They actually can't ,OR WONT even look at their own data.
THEY cite Fauci and WHO.
WE cite sacked geniuses and Nobel prize winners. We site freely available government data and great people have legally got government bodies to release purposefully hidden data.
People at the top of their field will continue to dig out the truth.
DO WE NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROOF?
Yes we do. The obvious coercion was proof enough for me- NO SCIENCE REQUIRED!
Repeatedly butting heads will not work. To inform people of their failure requires doing it one by one for most of us. It requires the abilities and competence of professionals including Jordan Peterson and his like to convince many people at once.
Butting heads will not work - BECAUSE THESE POOR SOULS TRUSTED THEIR GOVERNMENT AND POTENTIALLY POISONED THEIR CHILDREN, THEMSELVES AND THEIR PARENTS.
They may or may not know that they made an IRREVERSIBLE decision, but this is why they don't want to know now, or be reminded, ever.
What would they say to their kids?
What would you do?
Not everyone is a Hero like some of the jabbed people of the freedom movement who are dedicating the rest of their lives to stopping this disaster.
Is it time to let go of the insanity of butting heads. The work being done by the medical freedom movement is important, but most of us are not qualified. The gains vs efforts are small if at all, in the long term for ( see and economist/ mathematician for the right terms for this)
I think people ( like myself) are not utilising their intuition and developed skills. Skills that will be required to rebuild this world.
Why waste my e.g. nursing degree reposting articles of corruption to people who already know about it. Hopefully, instead, I can help someone who needs and appreciates my skills.
I seriously need to get off my arse and connect with people and share what I have to give, knowing that their may yet be a future to hope for.
A Question for anyone in the know:
When dissidents lose access to the net, what old technology might be useful for communication if this happens?
It is worth noting, that if you have surrendered your bodily sovereignty to the State, and there is no longer a border between you and the State, what would you ever say no to in the future. If you were not prepared to stand up for your bodily sovereignty, what would you ever stand up for?
They think there is no war.
This is a vital point, and I draw on my time in Iraq to understand it. As a Citizen.( sorry Frank, I added the 'As a citizen bit for context for the reader)
We knew there was a war. We knew who the warring parties were. We knew there was a border being fought over. We knew that our wants and needs needed to recalibrate to the reality of the war we were in. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining about missing out on all of life’s “nice to haves”. Our wants had recalibrated very tightly around our needs, there wasn’t a gap really. If we and our loved ones were fed and safe for the night and we had a job in the morning that allowed us to be fed and safe for the night, then we were generally happy. To survive war, you need to recalibrate psychologically to it. Of all my friends during those years, I don’t remember any of them being depressed. They had psychologically adapted to the reality of war, and to a climate of having and doing less. Within that recalibration, we were content.
"How The Irish Became White" is a good example of how helping the elites crush "others" gets a pass into what once was Whiteness, but now is "Progressive".
Outstanding essay as always. The paradox of the Liberal seems to account for the strange sort of "racism" inherent in much of the West (I can certainly speak about the American Left.). There is almost idolatry at the altar of symbolic multiculturalism, but with all cultures reduced to cutesy, shallow, and meaningless theme park versions. Genuine "cultural" groupings, those that actually command genuine loyalty and allegiance from their members are usually either callously manipulated or villified, the latter, in particular taking rather bluntly crass form. Both, ironically, seem necessary because acultural and atomistic Liberalism cannot offer an alternative to tribal loyalty and tribal hatred, so rather extreme forms of both emerge in a society where Liberalism is officially being enforced (intentional word choice).
The USA explicitly reserves the right to coup, invade, bomb, and kill by the hundred thousand if it feels that your country isn't sufficiently democratic or its society is organized incorrectly, say along cast, ethnic, or gender lines, and so forth. It's duty to spread freedom, democracy and human right demands the killing and destruction. The insanity of this is plain as day for everyone to see.
So I think people *believe* this stuff like they believe in god, and heaven and hell, i.e. not really when you think about it carefully but it's good enough for an argument and good enough to draw a line under some choice, e.g. supporting or resisting some policy, and good enough to stop an argument or line of thought from revealing the (im)morality of believing or saying something.
This is why I see liberalism as a theology. Like any theology, it has a body of confusing theorizing around the great cosmic and existential questions that somehow gives its priests the authority to tell us how to live our lives, i.e. how we should deal with the choices we face. Personally, I tend to believe there is no and can be no coherent philosophy that accomplishes that. This isn't particularly an attack on liberalism (many of the values of which I am attracted to) since the same goes for conservatism, Marxism, Buddhism...
As usual, a useful and thought provoking article, in the usual very measured tone. Thanks for all the work that went into it.
Some points that occur to me:
1) Liberal ‘theory’ and propagandising could be explained through a Marxist style class analysis. I.E. Most or all of Liberal philosophy can be described as a tool to obfuscate and hide the exercise of power by a ruling class.
2) Greeks of the classical age would not recognise any existing state as being a ‘democracy’. The word has been recruited into being a fig-leaf for what they classified as oligarchy - the practice of using delegates chosen from a ‘qualified’ class, to express the ‘will of the people’.
Democracy was expressed in Classical Athens by the use of sortition - committees chosen by random lot from the free male population regardless of wealth or position. (Of course, we would not now describe this as true democracy either, as women, foreigners, slaves etc. were disenfranchised).
3) On the subject of why such class divisions appear sociological analysis seems to reign supreme, but I think it would be useful to add a psychological anaysis too. Most of the sociologists I have talked to (a pretty small sampling, I admit) pooh-pooh this idea.
Agree with much of that.
I'm not sure I agree that liberalism isn't solid enough to get people to fight and die for it. I've lived in the USA since 1995 and witnessed the transformations after 9/11 2001. The bloodthirsty national superiority was built up by rhetoric that heavily used Americans' patriotic free-democratic sense of self, i.e. the liberalism shared by its political foes. What that showed is that liberalism can function like a theology uniting Americans across the spectrum in regime change fervor.
Whether or not this can continue to work as material conditions decline is a good question but I'm not sure that the incoherence of any theology is reason to believe that it wont work politically or that the excesses of Radical Social Liberalism will cause people to turn against their national myths.
I don't think that was necessarily capitalized L Liberalism. I'd wager that what you saw was good old fashioned American tribalism--we are notoriously tribal people, which some foreigners find surprising.
Yes, that's right. But, once the causus beli fell apart, the rhetoric was basically that Sadam's regime isn't liberal enough and we are therefore morally justified to fight it.
Much, if not most, of the public didn't buy into it. The biggest selling points were that they aren't like us and, perhaps more importantly, the insinuation that they were behind that they were behind 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, I believe.
In what authoritarian country does the leader have the sole power, without consultation, to:
* Hire and fire the country's 5,000 top officials.
* Declare war. Frequently.
* Issue 300,000 national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
* Control information at all times under his National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
* Torture, kidnap and kill anyone, anywhere, at will.
* Secretly ban 50,000 citizens from flying–and refusing to explain why.
* Imprison 2,000,000 citizens without trial.
* Execute 1,000 citizens each year prior to arrest.
* Kill 1,000 foreign civilians every day since 1951
* Massacre its own men, women and children for their beliefs
* Assassinate its own citizens abroad, for their beliefs.
* Repeatedly bomb and kill minority citizens from the air. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/02/duncancampbell) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia).
More info on this in the links at:
https://williamblum.org
I don't see the recent aggressive activism-oriented takeover of institutions (Successor Ideology) as very liberal. It's just creation and creative use of policy to punish enemies and get ahead. Are these presented here as examples of liberalism? If so they aren't very good ones. A lot of people including myself find the Good-Old-Fashioned liberalism, for example as in the Bill Of Rights, appealing, at least as a kind of aspirational statement of values. At the same time I am offended by the excesses of the spread and takeover of the DEI industry and its associated opportunists. The the article's mixing together of a critique of GOF liberalism with a critique of this new perverted activism is confusing and a bit of a turn off. The article seems to attack values I like with examples of behavior I repudiate.
That wasn't the intention. I did say somewhere that I thought liberals were turning into authoritarians, which is (I would argue) an inherent possibility if your greatest concern is to protect your freedoms. As you define that freedom more and more widely, you go skidding past JS Mill and inevitably start taking freedoms away from others. What I am arguing is that, in the absence of any competing ideology, Liberalism is likely, whatever its noble origins, to turn into an authoritarian movement in practice. But of course my larger point was not to attack Liberalism, but rather to suggest that it has inbuilt limitations as a motivating ideology against other countries or ideologies. And the problem with Bills of Rights, for example, is that they generally have a self-destruct clause in them which enables them to be suspended when the powerful wish it.
Yes, this much I agree with.
I've read a number of your articles, for which I thank you, and continue to read because I find them interesting and informative. In two or three of them, including this one, you have brief references to the current weirdness that I think you called Radical Social Liberalism. I have found them a bit jarring. The main text is about big topics of history, politics, war, philosophy and then there's what seems a bitter, sometimes sarcastic comment about RSL. I'm not here to defend RSL, far from it. My problem is understanding how to relate these remarks to the rest of your narrative. I stop and ask myself: why is this here? My comment that you replied to came from one of these moments.
You don't have to think in binaries.
Consider a three-fold scheme:-
You can have a dictatorship, run by a dictator, that doesn't listen to the ordinary people or experts...(authority in the authoritarian sense, but not in the "authority" sense)
You can have a populist regime, where experienced people are ignored. (Neither kind of authority)
And you can have a regime that has know-how and experience, and isnt run by a single dictatorial figure, and listens to the people. (Authority in the good sense, but not the bad one).
I believe, that this 6-minute video does an excellent job of explaining what's going on.
https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc
And here is some direct evidence. When it became clear, that USSR is giving up, survival became less of an uncertainty, so humans (thanks to Darwin's theory) reduced the expenditure of energy on their intelligence.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/idiocracy-is-the-decline-in-human-intelligence-undermining-democracy/
See:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/12/exterminating-angels/
for another essay on 'liberalism'
> One is related to the Liberal fear of the state as an institution, and the belief that states should be as weak as possible, consistent with protecting private property and upholding contract law. Everything else should be left to the private sector.
May be I'm missing something but that sounds more like the point of view of classical Liberals from 100 years or so ago. Don't modern Liberals want the state to control pretty much everything including the pronouns people must use? If you look at Liberal strongholds of Canada, California, NYC, etc., (sorry, I'm not familiar enough with the situation in Europe to provide good examples from there) they all have less economic freedom, less cultural freedom and less diversity of ideas than Iran (well, OK - may be more than Iran but not by much). Generally a great essay though, thanks!
I think it might be worthwhile to think where modern "statist liberal" comes from.
The statist Liberal is not necessarily an automatic supporter of state intervention on all things. Rather, he is an individualist first and the kind of role he seeks for the state is to empower the individual in some fashion. The contrast between the old Liberal and the new is that the former saw the greatest obstacle in the state while the latter sees it in the society and "other people." In this sense, then, there is a peculiar continuity in the evolution of the "Liberal" in the old and new settings.
But this gets at the paradox that Aurelien has been pointing to in several essays: you can't set both pike and minnow free and be individuals at the same time. Heck, you can't even let just pikes be free and individuals at the same time--they'll get in each other's way and impose on "freedom" of others. The historical approach to alleviating this problem, social conventions and norms, standing on the bedrocks of traditions, religion, and such, are rejected by the Liberal as unjustified and archaic restraints on Liberty (cap intentional). So the only recourse is to use the state, with the feverishly believed fiction that the state, when used by Liberals, does not impose on Liberty (much), often coupled with equally feverishly believed fiction that the kind of liberty that their opponents seek is no liberty at all.
I'll go on a limb and bring up the inherent "Liberalism" of slavery. While obviously illiberal from the perspective of slaves, the idea that people could do whatever they want with their property without interference from the state or social "traditions" is a distictly "Liberal" idea, from both economic and social dimensions. For this reason, I've always thought the slavery in US was different from traditional, historical slavery. While a bit quixotic, admittedly, I think American racism (specifically of Black-White variety which has always been a little different from others) is specifically of this paradox: the slave-owning Liberal had to justify the paradox by insisting that his slaves were somehow inherently undeserving of the Liberty thus there's no paradox st all. Perhaps a too much of an extrapolation, but I keep seeing variations of this in the defense of illiberalism by modern day Liberals.
Very good article, that touches on quite a lot of good points, albeit insists more on some than the others.
There is a certain pathology in Liberalism, and we have a name for that, and it is called Sociopathy, and individuals suffering from it we call Sociopaths.
While Aurelien is in my mind focusing too much on ideology, ultimately, ideology is just a tool for achieving some real, material objectives. And here we must go back to good old Aristotle and his description of types of polities: democracies, tyrannies, and oligarchies, with oligarchies tending to be the most stable ones. And then you have the combinations, alliances: tyrannies & demos and tyrannies & oligarchies. Our present configuration in the west is oligarchies masquerading as democracies, with a figurehead (president or monarch) as ... figurehead. The executive power is usually the "CEO" of the network of oligarchs.
All they want, the oligarchs, is to own everything, be above the law (or the law to be what they say it to be), and control everything, and if possible, become immortals. Tyrants and the demos are, in fact, less sociopathic, but because the template of success being established, the pathology is being slowly spreading. So the present ideology and the mental acrobatics being performed has this as objective: the furtherance of Western and ultimately American plutocracy as the ruling network of the world. If they could own entire planets with people (like in Jupiter Ascending movie), and extract their immortality from it, they would. It is not that complicated.
Magna Carta created freedom for aristocrats from the "tyranny" of the King. Those nobles were the first "liberals". That kind of oligarchy reached its peak in the Polish Seim in the 1600 and 1700s. It ended up, of course, being a failure, because ultimately there was no actual Pole willing to defend the rights of a sociopathic aristocracy, corrupt to the marrow. And now that type of mental mindset has spread (or being pushed) to every individual. The actual resistance is against such mindset, which ultimately covers the "freedoms" of the pike.
But most of us are minnows and I find more suitable, from a political perspective, a system that does not allow anyone any extra power, for extra time, never mind to be transferred down to next generations.
I think the problem is a bit more fundamental: I don't think pure individualistic Liberalism and "democracy" are compatible. In an ideal "Liberal" universe, people know exactly what they want and are able to prioritize them with mathematical precision. Arrow has shown that adding up such preferences does not--cannot--produce consistent, "rational" results proof from procedural manipulation. But "democracy," for good or for ill, never operated in a purely individualistic environment: every stable "democratic" polity operated in a fairly benign tribal environment, where everyone belonged to tribes (sometimes, to several at the same time) that could peacefully coexist next to each other, but responding mostly to tribal cues and norms). So what do you get when you combine nominally democratic procedures while subverting "tribal" culture that amounts to anything? Disaster, even if people are really that "rational," that is they know exactly what thry want and can prioritize precisely, they would still be beset by manipulation and other problems--and very few people, and possibly, nobody is that rational.
The subversion comes from keeping the "demos" uneducated, uninformed (fed with mis-information) and when all emotional levers, especially fearmongering, are being used.
However, random selection of representatives and education of all the population on how actually the polis works, and a tight control and overseeing of executive (whatever form that might take), which has to be transparent and accountable (video and audio recordings at all times), and then some tighter regulation of business and curtailment of finance, which should be relegated to the role that it needs to be, that of a utility. Also, maximum incomes.
It isn't that complicated.
It's not that complicated?
I don't know if you mean, by "polls," opinion polls or elections, but after decades of having been involved in practical workings of both, I've come to the view that they are complicated enough that they can't really be understood except with a lot of willingness to accept they are at least 50% bunk because of all sorts of unsolvable practical problems. Education of the population--certainly not "all the population"--of how these "actually work" is impossible because I don't think any large percentage of them will be willing to accept that these are at least 50% bunk or, more likely, willing to trust something that is 50+ % bunk.
Somewhat the same problem with "random" selection of representatives. "Random" is a tricky business: we might speak as if "random" is actually possible in practice, but the actual randomization is hard enough just as a technical problem and doing anything with much credibility with real "randomness," I don't think, is possible. If A happens and that has serious consequences, you will never convince too many people that that happened just "randomly." No one will be willing to pay a real cost for something that is just random--especially if that "random" event is (sort of) the consequence of human actions. You have to create a credible set of trappings that whatever that "random" event was, it was, quite literally, the will of God(s), a return to the divination with entrails and such. Exactly the opposite of what "Liberalism" has been trying to achieve at least since the days of Humanism (a few centuries before even the Enlightenment). And then there's the problem of how these randomly chosen "representatives" are supposed to behave once they are in office: without knowing how to cut deals, without any incentive to build credibility vis-a-vis anyone, and full of random ideas of what is right and they are supposed to do. This will be a mess. This will be sustainable only if they are stripped of almost all actual political power--and we are back to the idea of "Enlightened" experts ruling over everyone...or an anarchic environment where there is no government worth mentioning.
I don't particularly care what the end policy result is. But I'm afraid that you have just furthered my conviction that combining an effective and responsive government (beyond some point) is a logical impossibility.
Well, what would be the actual difference between 'real' randomness and 'true' randomness, in the practice of an attempt at true democracy? Would it be so significant as to nullify the whole process? I doubt it, as long as any inherent non-randomness could not be 'weaponised' to ensure a particular result.
Plus, if you look up 'sortition' in Wikipedia (yes, I know, but . . .) there are examples provided which show that sortition can and has been, successfully applied in 'real world' situations. I suspect that you need to open your mind a little to the possibilities . . .
Drawing lots seems practicable as means of governance only under a limited set of circumstances. Either choices are limited or the power to be delegated is limited, or some combination thereof. It does not strike me as something one can do to run the entirety of a modern government, unless it is massively cut down, which brings us to my earlier point.
People often see designs in all manner of things: the idea that X happened to them simply because of good or bad luck, say, is a hard sell. Even if someone controversial were chosen into a position of power purely by chance, would his or her enemies willing to accept it as legitimate? Say, if Donald Trump owed his election to an supposed random choice, would Hillarycrats not have alleged Russian hackers messing with the "random" process? Heck, compared to an actual election, in which such alleged checking is not really possible for practical reasons, an alleged random process would seem much more suspicious. Certainly, it would be difficult to make such a "random" process meaningfully transparent. This would completely destroy any credibility in the process, IMHO.
PS. Credibility is, I think the single most important quality that "democracy" confers that other systems do not. Powers supposedly granted by mystical mysteries (say, the supposedly divine ordination of kings). Reducing the conferral of power to an essentially mechanical and quasi-mathematical process that one can see through in fair amount of detail was a great achievement by the Liberals--but at the cost of making it unsustainable in the long run. Basically, all elections are flawed in some form, for both mathematical (per Arrow and many studies of various electoral systems) or practical reasons (hundreds of thousands of generally untrained people involved in administering elections invariably lead to a lot of problems, even without any ill intention, and making things more complicated--the typical American habit--compounds the problem). Introducing a mystical "random" choice devoid of any meaning (and potentially open to manipulation that you would not be able to prove in the negative--except for the faith in the process itself--a bit too religious a flavor) seems a surefire way to destroy the credibility, unless the power allocated is so trivial and/or limited that it is largely inconsequential in a big picture sense.
To maintain credibility, the process of choosing the political leaders has to be "auditable" in some fashion--at least in theory. I don't think you can just tell people to trust the process--unless you have some socio-cultural underpinnings that would justify the trust. And if the process is a literal random number generator whose inner workings are unknown and unknowable by definition, very few people would trust it at all, especially post facto.
polis not polls.
sexuality is one of the major "inventions" of life (see Life Ascending book). And the sexual reproduction is based on the the production of male/female gamets where the "dance of chromosomes" and subsequent recombination is as random as possible. because in an unpredictable and very dynamic universe, you have to hedge your bets for the next generation. I do give credence to the wisdom of evolution, which is going quite successfully for 3 billion years.
As such, my bet is that a selection of representatives via sortition (random selection, with maybe basic vetting, for cognitive abilities) on long run, would produce much better societies.
I am surprised that an interview with Emmanuel Todd keeps hanging at top of the first page of Le Figaro website for days... Have you read it? It is curious.
I read excerpts and other articles commenting it. I wouldn't described it as curious, the article, I mean.
"revelation, which by its very nature cannot be challenged"
Not true. "Revelation" can be challenged by appeal to experience.
If what claims to be revelation does not comport with existential experience, it is fabrication, not revelation.
That noted, authority is indeed the question of the age.
Authority resides in the hearts of believers. There is only one authority. He has countless names and forms.
I tend to agree with much of what you have just expressed about Liberalism but would also like to present to you a brief case (leaving out of this argument for now what Hobbes was up to) for what you correctly characterize as the emptiness of liberalism. This presentation is based on the philosophical writings of Aryeh Botwinick, a former Professor of Political Science at Temple.
Botwinick would argue that this very emptiness has historically been a key source of strength for liberalism in the U.S.
The U.S. constitution, primarily constructed by James Madison, appears based on an unrelenting type of formal minimalism or emptiness. It is indeed true that this constitution is replete with various vacuous tautologies (like the "general welfare" clause, the "necessary and proper" clause, and the "legislative," "executive" and "judicial" power clauses which nowhere spell out the full extent of the content or the boundaries of these different forms of power.
In addition the doctrines that are the hallmark of the U.S. constitutions--the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism are nowhere stated or spelled out in this document. This perhaps purposeful ambiguity seems to allow for a continual redrawing of the boundaries between these modes for exercising power in the light of evolving historical circumstances and immediate events. Madison seems to have opted for a constitution of absence and emptiness rather than one filled with specifically directed and fully elaborated content.
I consequently think it can be argued that such minimalism or emptiness has been a source of endurance of the U.S. constitution. The very fact that the state continues to make and remake itself as it goes along without a firmly preset agenda of what economic, political or social goals it needs to accomplish enable it to negotiate transitions across political time and from generation to generation.
I see what you mean, and in fact I'm rather in favour of loose and vague concepts and texts *provided* everyone is working in the same direction and is ready to make things work. My concern is that what works to stabilise internally won't necessarily work as a mobilising tool against external challenges.
What you are describing in your last paragraph could also be characterised as the enablement by the constitution to allow the ruling oligarchy in the US to continue to exercise power over the mass of the population, in order to protect its own privileged and wealth. This is after all, the purpose for which it was originally written.
I would suggest that the emptiness of the US institutions provided for a "benignly tribal" environment, which in turn kept US mostly stable and peaceful. The emptiness allowed for no single dominant "religion" (or ideology, or whatever) to forcibly impose itself as "the right answer" most of the time. Freed, within limits, from being obliterated by the dominant tribe, many tribes could coexist commanding allegiance from their members. I think it was this complex mosaic of tribal ties that could more or less peacefully coexist side by side--admittedly, allowed by "Liberal" and empty insitutions--that was the key to American success. The question is whether the same institutions can sustain a population of Liberal individualists instead of many tribes filled with mostly highly tribal peoples.
Great article!
Geopolitics is not being discussed enough!
Have you read Jim Nolan's ' Danger on our Doorstep'? Published in March 2022 I think. It is strangely still quite relevant.... ?
I wrote this last night. What do you think? Keep up the great work, kind regards, Justin
I am struggling with a problem that most of us are facing.. a divided world and a disguised evil that expresses from within people just a lack of basic care and consideration of everyone,; friends,family and strangers...
I have just been reading the vaccinated psychological handbook of how to convince us to take our medicine...because they worry about us.( Psychology Today and their ilk ) Their arguments, especially concerning loved ones, are much the same as ours. My dear friend/ family member is deluded. They need our / my help!
It is interesting watching these articles change over 12 months.( Its also a bit sickening, so I don't recommend it)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-resistance-hypothesis/202103/vaccine-hesitancy-is-driven-everyday-ethical-concerns
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/through-the-social-science-lens/202203/what-makes-people-vaccine-hesitant
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/202105/3-ways-change-the-mind-your-vaccine-hesitant-loved-one
'US vs THEM' - WHO's idea was that?.. no, that was The FEW... oops, that's backward. WEF!
They have attempted to convince US with their data. We have attempted to convince us THEM our data.
They have attempted to convince US with appeals to our hearts.We have attempted to convince THEM with appeals to their hearts.
They STOPPED attempting to convince us with their data, because apparently WE are to stupid to understand it.
We have attempted to convince THEM with THEIR data. They actually can't ,OR WONT even look at their own data.
THEY cite Fauci and WHO.
WE cite sacked geniuses and Nobel prize winners. We site freely available government data and great people have legally got government bodies to release purposefully hidden data.
People at the top of their field will continue to dig out the truth.
DO WE NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROOF?
Yes we do. The obvious coercion was proof enough for me- NO SCIENCE REQUIRED!
Repeatedly butting heads will not work. To inform people of their failure requires doing it one by one for most of us. It requires the abilities and competence of professionals including Jordan Peterson and his like to convince many people at once.
Butting heads will not work - BECAUSE THESE POOR SOULS TRUSTED THEIR GOVERNMENT AND POTENTIALLY POISONED THEIR CHILDREN, THEMSELVES AND THEIR PARENTS.
They may or may not know that they made an IRREVERSIBLE decision, but this is why they don't want to know now, or be reminded, ever.
What would they say to their kids?
What would you do?
Not everyone is a Hero like some of the jabbed people of the freedom movement who are dedicating the rest of their lives to stopping this disaster.
Is it time to let go of the insanity of butting heads. The work being done by the medical freedom movement is important, but most of us are not qualified. The gains vs efforts are small if at all, in the long term for ( see and economist/ mathematician for the right terms for this)
I think people ( like myself) are not utilising their intuition and developed skills. Skills that will be required to rebuild this world.
Why waste my e.g. nursing degree reposting articles of corruption to people who already know about it. Hopefully, instead, I can help someone who needs and appreciates my skills.
I seriously need to get off my arse and connect with people and share what I have to give, knowing that their may yet be a future to hope for.
A Question for anyone in the know:
When dissidents lose access to the net, what old technology might be useful for communication if this happens?
Some great articles below-
https://thefreethinker.substack.com/p/how-we-exit-the-cave
How We Exit the Cave (And stay out. Without the other prisoners killing us. We hope.)
I’m going to propose a set of thinking principles, or mindsets, to adopt:
The Principle of Ubiquitous Bullshit
The Principle of the Dark Unseen
The Principle of Light Orientation
The Principle of Interconnected Caves
The Principle of Compassionate Awakening
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/is-this-a-war
(Quoted passages below)
It is worth noting, that if you have surrendered your bodily sovereignty to the State, and there is no longer a border between you and the State, what would you ever say no to in the future. If you were not prepared to stand up for your bodily sovereignty, what would you ever stand up for?
They think there is no war.
This is a vital point, and I draw on my time in Iraq to understand it. As a Citizen.( sorry Frank, I added the 'As a citizen bit for context for the reader)
We knew there was a war. We knew who the warring parties were. We knew there was a border being fought over. We knew that our wants and needs needed to recalibrate to the reality of the war we were in. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining about missing out on all of life’s “nice to haves”. Our wants had recalibrated very tightly around our needs, there wasn’t a gap really. If we and our loved ones were fed and safe for the night and we had a job in the morning that allowed us to be fed and safe for the night, then we were generally happy. To survive war, you need to recalibrate psychologically to it. Of all my friends during those years, I don’t remember any of them being depressed. They had psychologically adapted to the reality of war, and to a climate of having and doing less. Within that recalibration, we were content.
We bunkered down and got through it.
"How The Irish Became White" is a good example of how helping the elites crush "others" gets a pass into what once was Whiteness, but now is "Progressive".