I wonder if the postliberal critique of liberalism could be partially, even substantially, explained by psychological projection.
Ideologues and extremists seem to view rest of the world as having opinions as strong as their own. Deneen and Vermeule are either being deliberately deceptive, lying about the extent and form of negative motivation on the part of those of us who believe in liberalism, or they are grossly mistaken. I can’t say whether they deliberately lying, but if they are not, then what could explain their hostile and negative beliefs about the moral character and motivations of people who believe in liberalism? Projection would explain it. We have to consider that these people are projecting their own judgmental disdain on to the rest of us.
And speaking of assertions without evidence, there is a glaring hole in the postliberal assertion that liberalism is inherently flawed, and will always trend towards coercion and repression. This belief could be correct, but what system are they offering as an alternative that hasn’t already demonstrated itself as being worse? One of the primary motivations for liberalism is a desire to avoid the coercion and conflict that emerged virtually every time that a state was governed in the name of a traditional religion.
The attack on Liberal Democracy provides a lot of information about the mental frame of the attackers. Ultimately, their message is the same as that of all demagogues, populists, political extremists, and cult leaders: trust us. Just let us impose our system on you, and it will be better for you in ways that you are not capable of understanding, and not qualified to criticize.
Their argument that liberalism is a tyranny and a threat to religious liberty is pure gaslighting. And of course, they want religious liberty for their religion only. Where on this planet would they get more freedom, tax free and with automatic access to the political leadership, than here? Hungary? Russia? The government here coddles churches.
It is not gaslighting; there has been a huge abridgement of religious liberty in our liberal society. Here are two examples:
1) say I wanted to have some religious community, so I decide to rent out the other half of my duplex to a family from my church, synagogue, or mosque. I can't, this is illegal!
2) say I wanted to start a business, but I want to work in a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish environment, so I start a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish software company. Again, I can't, this is illegal.
Two examples of the very basic freedom to associate freely, and they are illegal in our liberal society.
On one hand, you can say that this abridgement of the freedom to form associations is an example of illiberalism, and you would be correct. However, it is also true that this illiberal tendency arises due to Liberalism's desire to maximize its liberality, which means people cannot be allowed to self-sort themselves in an illiberal way. Thus, Liberalism has a (paradoxical) tendency to be illiberal and abridge the freedom of association. America has to be put on the blender.
A great article asking all the right questions about the reactionary psychology of the proponents of post liberalism.
Today I watched a play on "The National Theatre at Home" streaming service. It was called "The Father and the Assassin" and it is about the man who assassinated Gandhi. It is about how a devoted follower of one of the gods of liberalism and democracy could in a few years become a radicalized Hindu Nationalist capable of killing. The play echoes not only some of what is happening in India today but throughout the world. It shows us what a postliberal order actually means. What people like Stephen Miller mean.
They know that Orwell was right when he wrote: “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.
But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.
Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
Since the boot stomping is inevitable--- they just want to make sure THEY are the ones wearing the boots and not the people they fear and hate.
Thanks for writing this. I read Deneen's liberalism book a few years ago and had the same reaction about how liberalism leads to all the bogymen. Seems like an underpants gnomes theory.
I added the podcast episode to my “to listen” list but I’m not sure I can bear to listen to it. It’s hard for me to fathom any future in which we voluntarily give up pluralism and liberalism, because post liberalism inevitably favors one group and becomes coercive. The idea that having to share society with groups that think or act differently from one another somehow infringes on the rights of a subgroup makes no sense to me. Like, if you don’t agree with Drag Brunch don’t go to Drag Brunch. No one is making you. I’m convinced that many who promote a post liberal order actually have very little contact with other groups. Once you have contact with groups unlike your own it becomes pretty clear that those groups aren’t nearly as scary as one might imagine. It’s easier to fear a boogeyman when the lights are off. But I guess that’s the point: keep the lights off, keep the child petrified in their bed, and sell whatever solution benefits you (whether that’s state sponsored religion, a strongman leader, etc). Now we have entire media echo chambers selling that fear to the masses.
Thanks for this essay. I’m going to try to listen to the podcast.
A good example of mirror imaging: “[E]mbedded in [liberalism's] deepest logic was its potential, and inevitability, of being wielded as an aggressive tool of domination and even tyrannical power.”
Several thoughts from a non-liberal not a postliberal.
There are countless examples to disprove Mr. Koppelman's claims about coercive liberalism being a recent phenomenon. For example, Missouri Executive Order 44 also commonly known as the Mormon Extermination Order/Act (even though it wasn't an act) which was signed after mormon views marriage specially their support of polygamy became a concern to the state. The order was eventually found unconstitutional and rescinded in 1976 but only well after the Mormon's changed their views on marriage. That is too little too late. Liberals already succeeded to using coercion to change people's views. This is now a part of the memory of many Americans.
Liberals like yourself will use otherwise acceptable sounding language to defend coercing people who disagree with you specially Christian conservatives. You will hide behind legitimate explicit purpose to get after your real purpose which you all will usually not state openly. A recent example will be the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. If you look at the data of sex abuse, priests dont abuse at higher rates than their relevant benchmark, which is adult men. The is also no evidence that they are uniquely likely to cover up abuse by moving priests around. This occurs in the public school system and it even has a name passing the trash. It is quite common in foster care systems specially in the nordic countries. If you look at the media or academia, liberals like yourself ignore this and point out the existence of a crisis in the Church and call for a reformation in the Church specifically a change in the views regarding sexuality. You all also use this as an excuse to change laws regarding limits on settlements for private non profit organizations which will allow people to sue the Church into bankruptcy and non existence with the premise for the change in these laws clearly stated in the background change your sexual ethics. The point of rule of law and religious neutrality/liberty is that no religion or organization is subject to extra benefit or scrutiny. This hasn't been the case here. There is a lot of types of coercion of people for their views other than just imprisoning or executing them.
The reason why it is inevitable that liberalism will fall into repression is that the liberal view of pluralism, tolerance, and neutrality are not coherent. Humans often crave coherence in their views specially political views and because of that it will fall into repression. All liberal claims to neutrality cannot be maintained. Neutrality of outcome is not something that can be promised to any group of people. The more common forms of neutrality which liberal advocate are not neutral; neutrality of aim or justification for example both of which depend on the distinction between a political doctrine and a comprehensive doctrine but this distinction cannot be maintained as Raz and many others pointed out. Rawls also clarifies that neutrality of aim is only neutral with respect to comprehensive doctrine INSOFAR AS POSSIBLE, which is completely compatible with no neutrality whatsoever. Lockean notions of tolerance also are not coherent for reasons that Stanley Fish point out. Locke makes repeated claims in the Letter that all claims to religious orthodoxy are true to those religions and false to those outside them. Even further he claims that no one can prove their religious claims to be true and that all appeals to religious truth are cynical rationalizations to oppress others. Well what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If Locke excludes others from making claims to religious truth he cannot either. But then his broader theory of tolerance collapses since it is based on theological justification. He also makes various pragmatic appeals for tolerance but they cannot take precedence over appeals to principles always and everywhere.
Smart and coherent liberals like Koppelman only make pragmatic appeals to tolerance like in the case of gay rights and religious rights but liberal tolerance is clear that it is supposed to be prenormative and principled. So he saves the coherence of a doctrine at the price of denying the doctrine. He and other liberals also repeatedly say that accommodations are ok because you can see in the empirical data that these beliefs are dying and their adherent dying as well. This is in no way shape or form principled but a strategic choice to ensure his values win out and others lose.
Finally Americans views on free speech are not correct. Under American free speech laws the execution ofJulius Streicher would be unjust since he never engaged in direct incitement to imminent lawless action in this case genocide which would mean he didn't engage in illegal speech. His execution was just. Words can and do kill and people who kill with words should be killed as a matter of self defense at a minimum. So the examples they give are correct in indictments of liberalism.
This is a highly emotionally charged issue and I wanted to be forceful yet civil in my critique.
Edit: I encountered Mr. Koppelman's article on unparadoxical liberalism where he has already responds to many of my claims.
The main part of the critique of the liberal neutrality claim is that neutrality and tolerance need to be in some sense unique in liberalism not merely just indexed to the correct values. This is independent of whether complete neutrality is the basis of liberalism as antineutralists or partial neutrality as perfectionists say. But it is completely unclear how this is possible. Prof. Koppelman does remove the uniqueness of tolerance from liberal tolerance by merely indexing it to the correct values, liberal values. One can do this but this is an empty conception of tolerance given the fact that it is the tolerance expressed in every political program in human history even that of ISIS. Tolerance loses its unique rhetorical salience and truth and justice gain salience instead. This isnt how democracies work. The rhetoric of tolerance is common and viewed with extreme importance and having unique specialty.
His distinction between the government explicitly taking position on religious issues and implicitly taking a position on religious issues misses the forest for the trees. People did fight wars over whether their religion is true or not; it didn't matter if people implicitly or explicitly claimed a religion wasn't true. All that matters is the claim a specific religious view is true or false.
The fundamental problem left liberals have in defending liberalism is that they are not actually liberals in the classical sense. They are the intellectual decedents of the New Deal Socialists(*) who skin-suited liberalism while keeping the name.
(*) If you don't like the term Socialist here, I have another more precise one I can replace it with that you'll like even less.
This is false, it’s telling that one of your examples was “COVID deniers” who in retrospect turned out to be pretty much correct, so much so that the rest of society has now pretty much come around to their point of view and now tries to pretend the whole fiasco never happened.
However, more to the point: thanks for coming out as a post-liberal yourself. The conversation would go so much smoother if you openly admitted to being one rather than pretending to be a liberal.
The New Deal introduced price controls, a whole swathe of industry regulation, agricultural production limits and massive wealth redistribution for public works and welfare spending. This is mass-rights violating and a big move towards authoritarianism in the US.
OTOH, liberalism means rights-protecting government (that's what we mean by "small government"), which means a capitalist economic system.
IOW, if whatever political system you're advocating for, doesn't create the conditions for free markets, then you're either advocating authoritarianism, or an unsustainable mixed economy, which will transition to authoritarianism. The latter is what we're going through today in real time.
> As I noted above, the authoritarian left has produced vigorous resistance from the liberal left.
Can you point me towards an example of this "vigorous resistance"?
Over the past decade the authoritarian left has been on full display and the only vigorous resistance has come from various parts of the right. The best I've seen from the liberal left has been apologetic begging for the authoritarians to slightly tone it down.
I did provide some links in these sentences: "The postliberals don’t seem to notice that the authoritarian left has produced a reaction by the liberal left, with new organizations of liberals fighting for free speech. My own work builds on liberal premises to advocate for accommodation of conservatives like them. I’ve been arguing for years that liberalism, properly understood (in both theory and practice), protects religious liberty as one of its core commitments, and calls for prudential accommodation of the gay rights/religious liberty conflict (which is an issue postliberals tend to focus on)."
Ok, your first two links are to FIRE, which was started by the center right, and Heterodox Academy, whose many claim to fame is its willingness to purge any of its own right-leaning members whenever the authoritarian left says “boo”.
Can people become more liberal in their religious beliefs? What would the most liberal religious belief be?
I think a lot of where the disconnect here is that postliberals see liberalism as having a direction, to make society more liberal, even if that means using illiberal means in order to make people think in liberal ways.
Left liberals essentially avow this direction, the more left they are the more unabashedly they do this.
Right liberals see liberalism as having peaked somewhere in the past, between 2010 and 1945, the more right they are the further in the past, when things like free speech were more respected and used more productively.
I would argue that one cannot really have a liberal society as you envision it without shared ethical assumptions. Freedom of religion exists to create peace between sects that share enough ethical assumptions to make a sovereign political union, but not enough to have the same church.
Am I correct in thinking that what postliberals (the ‘woke right’?) object to and wrongly accuse rationalist liberals of being blind to is the undeniable illiberal authoritarian tendency of those Critical Social Justice Warriors on the ‘woke left’ who are referred to, most aptly, as ‘The New Puritans’ by Andrew Doyle? As Doyle argues in his book of the same name, most people can see that the so-called ‘progressive’ project of the ‘woke left’ is actually extremely authoritarian and regressive in nature, but are baffled because it describes itself in liberal and progressive terms.’ Such ‘bafflement’, resulting from the cynical linguistic engineering of those on the ‘woke left’, seems to at least partly explain why postliberal arguments against liberalism - which ‘woke right’ postliberals do not seem to properly understand - are so, as Helen Pluckrose puts it, “incoherent, contradictory and ultimately ‘vibes’-based.”
I think that article has the key to why post-liberals perceive liberalism as a threat to liberty.
Your argument that "The law should be deliberately deployed to “reconstruct social reality to eliminate or marginalize the shared meanings, practices, and institutions" [of religious or regional minorities]" is very much what has happened. It's fairly easy to see why those minority groups would see that as a threat to their liberty.
I find the post liberal analysis to be totally BS. The actual examples of regimes devolving into authoritarianism and removing the freedom of religion are *other religions regimes*, from Saudi Arabia, to the Talibans.
“An all-time high, 58%, of voters say the Dem Party is too liberal,” he wrote in the post.
“Back in 1999, 26 percent of Democrats self-identified as conservative. Just five percent said that they were very liberal. It was a smidgen,” he added.
I wonder if the postliberal critique of liberalism could be partially, even substantially, explained by psychological projection.
Ideologues and extremists seem to view rest of the world as having opinions as strong as their own. Deneen and Vermeule are either being deliberately deceptive, lying about the extent and form of negative motivation on the part of those of us who believe in liberalism, or they are grossly mistaken. I can’t say whether they deliberately lying, but if they are not, then what could explain their hostile and negative beliefs about the moral character and motivations of people who believe in liberalism? Projection would explain it. We have to consider that these people are projecting their own judgmental disdain on to the rest of us.
And speaking of assertions without evidence, there is a glaring hole in the postliberal assertion that liberalism is inherently flawed, and will always trend towards coercion and repression. This belief could be correct, but what system are they offering as an alternative that hasn’t already demonstrated itself as being worse? One of the primary motivations for liberalism is a desire to avoid the coercion and conflict that emerged virtually every time that a state was governed in the name of a traditional religion.
The attack on Liberal Democracy provides a lot of information about the mental frame of the attackers. Ultimately, their message is the same as that of all demagogues, populists, political extremists, and cult leaders: trust us. Just let us impose our system on you, and it will be better for you in ways that you are not capable of understanding, and not qualified to criticize.
Their argument that liberalism is a tyranny and a threat to religious liberty is pure gaslighting. And of course, they want religious liberty for their religion only. Where on this planet would they get more freedom, tax free and with automatic access to the political leadership, than here? Hungary? Russia? The government here coddles churches.
It is not gaslighting; there has been a huge abridgement of religious liberty in our liberal society. Here are two examples:
1) say I wanted to have some religious community, so I decide to rent out the other half of my duplex to a family from my church, synagogue, or mosque. I can't, this is illegal!
2) say I wanted to start a business, but I want to work in a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish environment, so I start a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish software company. Again, I can't, this is illegal.
Two examples of the very basic freedom to associate freely, and they are illegal in our liberal society.
On one hand, you can say that this abridgement of the freedom to form associations is an example of illiberalism, and you would be correct. However, it is also true that this illiberal tendency arises due to Liberalism's desire to maximize its liberality, which means people cannot be allowed to self-sort themselves in an illiberal way. Thus, Liberalism has a (paradoxical) tendency to be illiberal and abridge the freedom of association. America has to be put on the blender.
A great article asking all the right questions about the reactionary psychology of the proponents of post liberalism.
Today I watched a play on "The National Theatre at Home" streaming service. It was called "The Father and the Assassin" and it is about the man who assassinated Gandhi. It is about how a devoted follower of one of the gods of liberalism and democracy could in a few years become a radicalized Hindu Nationalist capable of killing. The play echoes not only some of what is happening in India today but throughout the world. It shows us what a postliberal order actually means. What people like Stephen Miller mean.
They know that Orwell was right when he wrote: “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.
But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.
Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
Since the boot stomping is inevitable--- they just want to make sure THEY are the ones wearing the boots and not the people they fear and hate.
Thanks for writing this. I read Deneen's liberalism book a few years ago and had the same reaction about how liberalism leads to all the bogymen. Seems like an underpants gnomes theory.
I added the podcast episode to my “to listen” list but I’m not sure I can bear to listen to it. It’s hard for me to fathom any future in which we voluntarily give up pluralism and liberalism, because post liberalism inevitably favors one group and becomes coercive. The idea that having to share society with groups that think or act differently from one another somehow infringes on the rights of a subgroup makes no sense to me. Like, if you don’t agree with Drag Brunch don’t go to Drag Brunch. No one is making you. I’m convinced that many who promote a post liberal order actually have very little contact with other groups. Once you have contact with groups unlike your own it becomes pretty clear that those groups aren’t nearly as scary as one might imagine. It’s easier to fear a boogeyman when the lights are off. But I guess that’s the point: keep the lights off, keep the child petrified in their bed, and sell whatever solution benefits you (whether that’s state sponsored religion, a strongman leader, etc). Now we have entire media echo chambers selling that fear to the masses.
Thanks for this essay. I’m going to try to listen to the podcast.
Fantastic essay. Mid read I was beginning to think “yes but they have a point…sorta” but you reeled. me back in! Kudos
A good example of mirror imaging: “[E]mbedded in [liberalism's] deepest logic was its potential, and inevitability, of being wielded as an aggressive tool of domination and even tyrannical power.”
Every slope is slippery if you’re sufficiently motivated.
Several thoughts from a non-liberal not a postliberal.
There are countless examples to disprove Mr. Koppelman's claims about coercive liberalism being a recent phenomenon. For example, Missouri Executive Order 44 also commonly known as the Mormon Extermination Order/Act (even though it wasn't an act) which was signed after mormon views marriage specially their support of polygamy became a concern to the state. The order was eventually found unconstitutional and rescinded in 1976 but only well after the Mormon's changed their views on marriage. That is too little too late. Liberals already succeeded to using coercion to change people's views. This is now a part of the memory of many Americans.
Liberals like yourself will use otherwise acceptable sounding language to defend coercing people who disagree with you specially Christian conservatives. You will hide behind legitimate explicit purpose to get after your real purpose which you all will usually not state openly. A recent example will be the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. If you look at the data of sex abuse, priests dont abuse at higher rates than their relevant benchmark, which is adult men. The is also no evidence that they are uniquely likely to cover up abuse by moving priests around. This occurs in the public school system and it even has a name passing the trash. It is quite common in foster care systems specially in the nordic countries. If you look at the media or academia, liberals like yourself ignore this and point out the existence of a crisis in the Church and call for a reformation in the Church specifically a change in the views regarding sexuality. You all also use this as an excuse to change laws regarding limits on settlements for private non profit organizations which will allow people to sue the Church into bankruptcy and non existence with the premise for the change in these laws clearly stated in the background change your sexual ethics. The point of rule of law and religious neutrality/liberty is that no religion or organization is subject to extra benefit or scrutiny. This hasn't been the case here. There is a lot of types of coercion of people for their views other than just imprisoning or executing them.
The reason why it is inevitable that liberalism will fall into repression is that the liberal view of pluralism, tolerance, and neutrality are not coherent. Humans often crave coherence in their views specially political views and because of that it will fall into repression. All liberal claims to neutrality cannot be maintained. Neutrality of outcome is not something that can be promised to any group of people. The more common forms of neutrality which liberal advocate are not neutral; neutrality of aim or justification for example both of which depend on the distinction between a political doctrine and a comprehensive doctrine but this distinction cannot be maintained as Raz and many others pointed out. Rawls also clarifies that neutrality of aim is only neutral with respect to comprehensive doctrine INSOFAR AS POSSIBLE, which is completely compatible with no neutrality whatsoever. Lockean notions of tolerance also are not coherent for reasons that Stanley Fish point out. Locke makes repeated claims in the Letter that all claims to religious orthodoxy are true to those religions and false to those outside them. Even further he claims that no one can prove their religious claims to be true and that all appeals to religious truth are cynical rationalizations to oppress others. Well what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If Locke excludes others from making claims to religious truth he cannot either. But then his broader theory of tolerance collapses since it is based on theological justification. He also makes various pragmatic appeals for tolerance but they cannot take precedence over appeals to principles always and everywhere.
Smart and coherent liberals like Koppelman only make pragmatic appeals to tolerance like in the case of gay rights and religious rights but liberal tolerance is clear that it is supposed to be prenormative and principled. So he saves the coherence of a doctrine at the price of denying the doctrine. He and other liberals also repeatedly say that accommodations are ok because you can see in the empirical data that these beliefs are dying and their adherent dying as well. This is in no way shape or form principled but a strategic choice to ensure his values win out and others lose.
Finally Americans views on free speech are not correct. Under American free speech laws the execution ofJulius Streicher would be unjust since he never engaged in direct incitement to imminent lawless action in this case genocide which would mean he didn't engage in illegal speech. His execution was just. Words can and do kill and people who kill with words should be killed as a matter of self defense at a minimum. So the examples they give are correct in indictments of liberalism.
This is a highly emotionally charged issue and I wanted to be forceful yet civil in my critique.
Edit: I encountered Mr. Koppelman's article on unparadoxical liberalism where he has already responds to many of my claims.
The main part of the critique of the liberal neutrality claim is that neutrality and tolerance need to be in some sense unique in liberalism not merely just indexed to the correct values. This is independent of whether complete neutrality is the basis of liberalism as antineutralists or partial neutrality as perfectionists say. But it is completely unclear how this is possible. Prof. Koppelman does remove the uniqueness of tolerance from liberal tolerance by merely indexing it to the correct values, liberal values. One can do this but this is an empty conception of tolerance given the fact that it is the tolerance expressed in every political program in human history even that of ISIS. Tolerance loses its unique rhetorical salience and truth and justice gain salience instead. This isnt how democracies work. The rhetoric of tolerance is common and viewed with extreme importance and having unique specialty.
His distinction between the government explicitly taking position on religious issues and implicitly taking a position on religious issues misses the forest for the trees. People did fight wars over whether their religion is true or not; it didn't matter if people implicitly or explicitly claimed a religion wasn't true. All that matters is the claim a specific religious view is true or false.
I don't think Missouri has ever done a liberal thing in its history.
The fundamental problem left liberals have in defending liberalism is that they are not actually liberals in the classical sense. They are the intellectual decedents of the New Deal Socialists(*) who skin-suited liberalism while keeping the name.
(*) If you don't like the term Socialist here, I have another more precise one I can replace it with that you'll like even less.
On the contrary, New Deal liberalism makes us freer than we would be in an unregulated market. See https://andrewkoppelman.com/books/burning-down-the-house/.
This is false, it’s telling that one of your examples was “COVID deniers” who in retrospect turned out to be pretty much correct, so much so that the rest of society has now pretty much come around to their point of view and now tries to pretend the whole fiasco never happened.
However, more to the point: thanks for coming out as a post-liberal yourself. The conversation would go so much smoother if you openly admitted to being one rather than pretending to be a liberal.
The New Deal introduced price controls, a whole swathe of industry regulation, agricultural production limits and massive wealth redistribution for public works and welfare spending. This is mass-rights violating and a big move towards authoritarianism in the US.
OTOH, liberalism means rights-protecting government (that's what we mean by "small government"), which means a capitalist economic system.
IOW, if whatever political system you're advocating for, doesn't create the conditions for free markets, then you're either advocating authoritarianism, or an unsustainable mixed economy, which will transition to authoritarianism. The latter is what we're going through today in real time.
> As I noted above, the authoritarian left has produced vigorous resistance from the liberal left.
Can you point me towards an example of this "vigorous resistance"?
Over the past decade the authoritarian left has been on full display and the only vigorous resistance has come from various parts of the right. The best I've seen from the liberal left has been apologetic begging for the authoritarians to slightly tone it down.
I did provide some links in these sentences: "The postliberals don’t seem to notice that the authoritarian left has produced a reaction by the liberal left, with new organizations of liberals fighting for free speech. My own work builds on liberal premises to advocate for accommodation of conservatives like them. I’ve been arguing for years that liberalism, properly understood (in both theory and practice), protects religious liberty as one of its core commitments, and calls for prudential accommodation of the gay rights/religious liberty conflict (which is an issue postliberals tend to focus on)."
Ok, your first two links are to FIRE, which was started by the center right, and Heterodox Academy, whose many claim to fame is its willingness to purge any of its own right-leaning members whenever the authoritarian left says “boo”.
"Why did coercive liberalism take so long to get there?"
Because it took a long time for classical liberalism to lose it containment field.
Can people become more liberal in their religious beliefs? What would the most liberal religious belief be?
I think a lot of where the disconnect here is that postliberals see liberalism as having a direction, to make society more liberal, even if that means using illiberal means in order to make people think in liberal ways.
Left liberals essentially avow this direction, the more left they are the more unabashedly they do this.
Right liberals see liberalism as having peaked somewhere in the past, between 2010 and 1945, the more right they are the further in the past, when things like free speech were more respected and used more productively.
I would argue that one cannot really have a liberal society as you envision it without shared ethical assumptions. Freedom of religion exists to create peace between sects that share enough ethical assumptions to make a sovereign political union, but not enough to have the same church.
Am I correct in thinking that what postliberals (the ‘woke right’?) object to and wrongly accuse rationalist liberals of being blind to is the undeniable illiberal authoritarian tendency of those Critical Social Justice Warriors on the ‘woke left’ who are referred to, most aptly, as ‘The New Puritans’ by Andrew Doyle? As Doyle argues in his book of the same name, most people can see that the so-called ‘progressive’ project of the ‘woke left’ is actually extremely authoritarian and regressive in nature, but are baffled because it describes itself in liberal and progressive terms.’ Such ‘bafflement’, resulting from the cynical linguistic engineering of those on the ‘woke left’, seems to at least partly explain why postliberal arguments against liberalism - which ‘woke right’ postliberals do not seem to properly understand - are so, as Helen Pluckrose puts it, “incoherent, contradictory and ultimately ‘vibes’-based.”
What you've described isn't liberalism, and some of us have been fighting it for years. See eg https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/12/73109/.
> What you've described isn't liberalism
If by "liberalism" you mean classical liberalism than neither are you.
Otherwise this is No True Scotsman.
I think that article has the key to why post-liberals perceive liberalism as a threat to liberty.
Your argument that "The law should be deliberately deployed to “reconstruct social reality to eliminate or marginalize the shared meanings, practices, and institutions" [of religious or regional minorities]" is very much what has happened. It's fairly easy to see why those minority groups would see that as a threat to their liberty.
Yes, I know that and am very grateful for your efforts. Keep up the good fight!
I will suggest that classical liberalism is a frontal assault on the natural law tradition that informed the American Declaration of Independence. See
https://www.academia.edu/29164747/The_Declaration_of_Independence_without_Locke_A_Rebuttal_of_Michael_Zuckerts_Natural_Rights_Republic_
I find the post liberal analysis to be totally BS. The actual examples of regimes devolving into authoritarianism and removing the freedom of religion are *other religions regimes*, from Saudi Arabia, to the Talibans.
“An all-time high, 58%, of voters say the Dem Party is too liberal,” he wrote in the post.
“Back in 1999, 26 percent of Democrats self-identified as conservative. Just five percent said that they were very liberal. It was a smidgen,” he added.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cnn-analyst-voters-who-view-democrats-as-too-liberal-hits-all-time-high/ar-AA1WiFWQ