"In the contemporary imagination, liberalism means different things to different people." -- I totally agree. That's why I created a definition that I hope we can all agree on. Please let me know your comments!
This is a great reminder of the radical roots of liberalism and its successes in transforming society. But if we want to win more people back to liberalism, I'm afraid that such reminders are not going to help that much.
Outside of our intellectual-discourse bubble, there is a strong, widespread yearning for change. Many of the institutions that have been successful in curbing authoritarian rule and ensuring prosperity in the past have run their course.
I'm thinking of the very weak or completely lacking citizen participation in decision-making on actual policy that comes with representative democracy in most jurisdictions, the binary (yes/no) plebiscites that lead to disastrous outcomes such as Brexit, the concentration of power at the nation-state level, the increasingly corrupt political system despite long-standing checks and balances, etc.
Liberalism is not the cause of the social ills plaguing society today, but finding convincing solutions to these problems requires something more than maintaining and refining current institutions. As liberals, we need to rediscover our appetite for radical changes that are aligned with our core beliefs, or risk being swept aside by authoritarian radical movements, such as MAGA, neo-Marxist antiglobalists, or who knows what else might come next.
Also, we need to find a way to communicate our values and ideas to a wider public. We need to speak more simply and directly. To illustrate our ideas in new, creative ways.
I have a specific, not particularly successful, example in mind, presenting radical liberal ideas in the form of a "text-game", but I'm not going to post a link to it here, to avoid violating the UnPopulist rule of no promotion in the comments.
The case of liberalism vs feudalism, nobility, empires, privileges, etc, started among other things with the American and French revolutions. The question is who the privileged are today and what institutions and groups are in favor of keeping certain privileges in order to preserve a more authoritarian and collectivist social order. Because it is not only about Trump and right-wing populists.
Even certain older liberal institutions are having paradoxical problems. For example, when it comes to citizenship, liberal values and institutions create equality, democracy, and freedom within nations, while such processes and values are in general not generally exist above the nations.
One of the results is that liberal values are (mis)used to, for example, justify migration for richer persons who can buy passports, citizenships, and golden visas, while poor and economically deprived persons are being "othered" and prevented from migrating through arbitrary and discriminatory policies and borders.
Fascinating how the term liberal developed into different meanings in Europe and America when compared in general. One of the reasons is how the political party system is developed. But even in Europe, in terms of ideas and politics, some official liberals would be more suitable for the Democrats and some would be more suitable for the Republicans or even Independents
Unfortunately, as Liberalism morphed into progressivism, economic liberalism was cast aside. Yet, it is the cornerstone upon which the other types depend.
"In the contemporary imagination, liberalism means different things to different people."
Which is a show stopping problem for a political movement. I think liberalism *actually* means support for rights-protecting government in politics, which means support for capitalism in economics. I think sadly this excludes most who call themselves "liberals" today.
"What liberalism isn’t, for the most part, is appealing...not threatened by philosophical defects..."
I don't think that's correct either. Politics is the application of ethics to a social context. Today the dominant ethics is altruism. This means that moral is to sacrifice the individual for a greater good. On such an ethical system, it makes no sense to support individual rights, rights-protecting government, and capitalism. These are immoral, even if they may be practical.
For liberalism to become "appealing" it's the ethical philosophical battle that needs to be won. Only by mainstreaming the ethics of egoism, rational self-interest, can support for rights and capitalism finally make sense.
In fact, I think before you can even understand politics, you need to understand ethics. But before you can do that, you also need to understand metaphysics and epistemology. Politics is not some random floating abstraction; it's the end of a long line of reasoning that has taken centuries for actual philosophical experts to figure out.
I don't think merely talking about being "bold" and "ending oppression" with everything meaning different things to different people, is really going to achieve anything. Worse still, I think it may even be setting us back. Taking the conversation even further away from liberalism through confusion.
IOW, liberalism is in peril because of a lack of understanding of the philosophical ideas involved by those trying to advocate liberalism in the mainstream.
I think until this changes, authoritarianism is going to keep winning and it's basically unopposed in the mainstream. We're also, kind of running out of time...
Not just Rand. It's the thinking based on the work of experts in this subject, such as the Enlightenment philosophers, from John Locke to the American Founders. These thinkers, in turn, drew inspiration from the ideas of ancient Greece.
These people approach the subject of politics professionally and with methodology, just like professionals in any other field. They weren't just expressing their arbitrary opinions like the experts we have today. No other field operates this way.
I think you are confusing progressivism with liberalism. Words in change in meaning over time. This article desires to wrap a huge galaxy of different ideals, goals, and thoughts into an easily identified constellation that we can bring down to Earth.
In practice you're demanding people who never looked up squint and derive cosmic meaning from something that feels a billion miles away.
There have been many pivot points kneading the vertebrae of Liberalism. While the Democratic Party still postures itself (loosely, goosely) as the bastion of Liberalism, actions within the party pan out otherwise. Take Bill the bedder Clinton, who from the top of his party's ladder, announced with pompous, grinning pride the sell-out of all sell-outs, NAFTA, turning America into a rust bucket with the stroke of his pen, ending the career opportunities of millions upon millions of honest hard-working Americans. Take cold Hillary who, while millions found trying to tie ends together to minimably survive after NAFTA's relentless social cancer a chaos of struggle, getting progressively worse, she was over there on Wall Street earning millions by addressing Wall Street greeders, a strange fit for her pretended association to the political party representing liberalism. Within today's entrenched Democratic Party, wherein a scant few are not millionaires, it seems that their only organized energy is making sure the real liberals in the party remain trivialized.
Until the MAGA takeover Republicans were the party of true economic liberals. As such they were wedded to trickle down economics and free trade agreements like NAFTA. It took a lot of bipartisan sweat to get NAFTA ratified and signed.
Actually the rust bucket was caused by shifts in manufacturing from the US to China, India and Southeast Asia. Mexico did benefit from new automobile factories but the American automobile industry was dying until Japan, Korea and German carmakers opened plants away from the unionized rust belt to the "right to work for less" Republican South started carving out "incentives" to build in their states.
NAFTA was actually beneficial to American consumers and, above all else, American investors who laid out the capital for the growth in Mexico. Those who had shares in the American companies that moved to Mexico made big dividends at the expense of American workers.
NAFTA is largely meaningless since Trump destroyed it in 2018 and since his current tariff and protectionist obsession which might have been relevant in 1982 but is clearly out of touch with 21st century global economics.
Illiberalism should be analyzed and dealt with on both ends of the traditional political spectrum. Once socialism on the left becomes a more public discussion, it will be possible for 67% of Americans to confidently reach consensus on their angles on liberalism. Until then, MAGA pounces on anyone to their left as radical, socialist libtards.
And nuanced discussions about the difference between socialism and democratic socialism (like the Sandernistas do) is not going to be a winning strategy.
I completely agree. Nuance never convinced the average American to ignore the S word. The Democratic party needs to have an adult sit-down with DSA and invite many of their members to be fully in the fold as Social Democrats or Progressives.
"In the contemporary imagination, liberalism means different things to different people." -- I totally agree. That's why I created a definition that I hope we can all agree on. Please let me know your comments!
https://jonathanblake.substack.com/p/the-liberal-manifesto
This is a great reminder of the radical roots of liberalism and its successes in transforming society. But if we want to win more people back to liberalism, I'm afraid that such reminders are not going to help that much.
Outside of our intellectual-discourse bubble, there is a strong, widespread yearning for change. Many of the institutions that have been successful in curbing authoritarian rule and ensuring prosperity in the past have run their course.
I'm thinking of the very weak or completely lacking citizen participation in decision-making on actual policy that comes with representative democracy in most jurisdictions, the binary (yes/no) plebiscites that lead to disastrous outcomes such as Brexit, the concentration of power at the nation-state level, the increasingly corrupt political system despite long-standing checks and balances, etc.
Liberalism is not the cause of the social ills plaguing society today, but finding convincing solutions to these problems requires something more than maintaining and refining current institutions. As liberals, we need to rediscover our appetite for radical changes that are aligned with our core beliefs, or risk being swept aside by authoritarian radical movements, such as MAGA, neo-Marxist antiglobalists, or who knows what else might come next.
Also, we need to find a way to communicate our values and ideas to a wider public. We need to speak more simply and directly. To illustrate our ideas in new, creative ways.
I have a specific, not particularly successful, example in mind, presenting radical liberal ideas in the form of a "text-game", but I'm not going to post a link to it here, to avoid violating the UnPopulist rule of no promotion in the comments.
The case of liberalism vs feudalism, nobility, empires, privileges, etc, started among other things with the American and French revolutions. The question is who the privileged are today and what institutions and groups are in favor of keeping certain privileges in order to preserve a more authoritarian and collectivist social order. Because it is not only about Trump and right-wing populists.
Even certain older liberal institutions are having paradoxical problems. For example, when it comes to citizenship, liberal values and institutions create equality, democracy, and freedom within nations, while such processes and values are in general not generally exist above the nations.
One of the results is that liberal values are (mis)used to, for example, justify migration for richer persons who can buy passports, citizenships, and golden visas, while poor and economically deprived persons are being "othered" and prevented from migrating through arbitrary and discriminatory policies and borders.
Fascinating how the term liberal developed into different meanings in Europe and America when compared in general. One of the reasons is how the political party system is developed. But even in Europe, in terms of ideas and politics, some official liberals would be more suitable for the Democrats and some would be more suitable for the Republicans or even Independents
Unfortunately, as Liberalism morphed into progressivism, economic liberalism was cast aside. Yet, it is the cornerstone upon which the other types depend.
No.
"In the contemporary imagination, liberalism means different things to different people."
Which is a show stopping problem for a political movement. I think liberalism *actually* means support for rights-protecting government in politics, which means support for capitalism in economics. I think sadly this excludes most who call themselves "liberals" today.
"What liberalism isn’t, for the most part, is appealing...not threatened by philosophical defects..."
I don't think that's correct either. Politics is the application of ethics to a social context. Today the dominant ethics is altruism. This means that moral is to sacrifice the individual for a greater good. On such an ethical system, it makes no sense to support individual rights, rights-protecting government, and capitalism. These are immoral, even if they may be practical.
For liberalism to become "appealing" it's the ethical philosophical battle that needs to be won. Only by mainstreaming the ethics of egoism, rational self-interest, can support for rights and capitalism finally make sense.
In fact, I think before you can even understand politics, you need to understand ethics. But before you can do that, you also need to understand metaphysics and epistemology. Politics is not some random floating abstraction; it's the end of a long line of reasoning that has taken centuries for actual philosophical experts to figure out.
I don't think merely talking about being "bold" and "ending oppression" with everything meaning different things to different people, is really going to achieve anything. Worse still, I think it may even be setting us back. Taking the conversation even further away from liberalism through confusion.
IOW, liberalism is in peril because of a lack of understanding of the philosophical ideas involved by those trying to advocate liberalism in the mainstream.
I think until this changes, authoritarianism is going to keep winning and it's basically unopposed in the mainstream. We're also, kind of running out of time...
That would be Ayn Rand's "Objectivist" understanding.
Not just Rand. It's the thinking based on the work of experts in this subject, such as the Enlightenment philosophers, from John Locke to the American Founders. These thinkers, in turn, drew inspiration from the ideas of ancient Greece.
These people approach the subject of politics professionally and with methodology, just like professionals in any other field. They weren't just expressing their arbitrary opinions like the experts we have today. No other field operates this way.
I think you are confusing progressivism with liberalism. Words in change in meaning over time. This article desires to wrap a huge galaxy of different ideals, goals, and thoughts into an easily identified constellation that we can bring down to Earth.
In practice you're demanding people who never looked up squint and derive cosmic meaning from something that feels a billion miles away.
There have been many pivot points kneading the vertebrae of Liberalism. While the Democratic Party still postures itself (loosely, goosely) as the bastion of Liberalism, actions within the party pan out otherwise. Take Bill the bedder Clinton, who from the top of his party's ladder, announced with pompous, grinning pride the sell-out of all sell-outs, NAFTA, turning America into a rust bucket with the stroke of his pen, ending the career opportunities of millions upon millions of honest hard-working Americans. Take cold Hillary who, while millions found trying to tie ends together to minimably survive after NAFTA's relentless social cancer a chaos of struggle, getting progressively worse, she was over there on Wall Street earning millions by addressing Wall Street greeders, a strange fit for her pretended association to the political party representing liberalism. Within today's entrenched Democratic Party, wherein a scant few are not millionaires, it seems that their only organized energy is making sure the real liberals in the party remain trivialized.
Until the MAGA takeover Republicans were the party of true economic liberals. As such they were wedded to trickle down economics and free trade agreements like NAFTA. It took a lot of bipartisan sweat to get NAFTA ratified and signed.
Actually the rust bucket was caused by shifts in manufacturing from the US to China, India and Southeast Asia. Mexico did benefit from new automobile factories but the American automobile industry was dying until Japan, Korea and German carmakers opened plants away from the unionized rust belt to the "right to work for less" Republican South started carving out "incentives" to build in their states.
NAFTA was actually beneficial to American consumers and, above all else, American investors who laid out the capital for the growth in Mexico. Those who had shares in the American companies that moved to Mexico made big dividends at the expense of American workers.
NAFTA is largely meaningless since Trump destroyed it in 2018 and since his current tariff and protectionist obsession which might have been relevant in 1982 but is clearly out of touch with 21st century global economics.
I’m not sure I understand how NAFTA isn’t a liberal project
Illiberalism should be analyzed and dealt with on both ends of the traditional political spectrum. Once socialism on the left becomes a more public discussion, it will be possible for 67% of Americans to confidently reach consensus on their angles on liberalism. Until then, MAGA pounces on anyone to their left as radical, socialist libtards.
And nuanced discussions about the difference between socialism and democratic socialism (like the Sandernistas do) is not going to be a winning strategy.
I completely agree. Nuance never convinced the average American to ignore the S word. The Democratic party needs to have an adult sit-down with DSA and invite many of their members to be fully in the fold as Social Democrats or Progressives.