Is liberalism doomed?

[DrYouth]

CBC ideas podcast

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/is-libera ... -1.4612812


There is a short segment in this podcast by Rowenna Davis, a journalist and MP, that I think is bang on.

It's a critique of liberalism that I believe really nails the problem.

Listen to it... it's only a few minutes and starts at 20:19...

I'll try to paraphrase it here briefly.

She states that liberalism works beautifully to provide space, freedom and rights to develop our individual selves free of coercion...

But it lacks the cohesion to pull us together and value community, responsibility and loyalty... it lacks the forces that pull us together.

Liberals are all too ready to treat communities as shops that they feel should be open to all, even those that owe it no loyalty, and see communities as dispensable and interchangeable.

Liberalism on it's own pulls us apart... it is being challenged because it holds no glue to keep us together.

[C-Mag]

I don't know about Cannuckistan, but in the good ole U S of A , States Rights have to be re-established in a big way.

provide space, freedom and rights to develop our individual selves free of coercion

[Speaker to Animals]

I'll listen to it in a bit when I go to bed. It's sort of what I have been saying for a while. Liberalism is a political manifestation counter-civilizational tendencies. You describe her as talking about it in terms of cohesion and pulling people apart, but all that is just euphemism for anti-civilization.

[Speaker to Animals]

I don't know about Cannuckistan, but in the good ole U S of A , States Rights have to be re-established in a big way.

provide space, freedom and rights to develop our individual selves free of coercion

I think the community needs to be re-established right away. America was founded upon civic responsibilities. You had a responsibility to your community, to your neighbor, your family, state, and country. All of us would be serving in the militia (except the females).

Liberalism is the triumph of the individual. It's what Kenneth Clark called "heroic materialism", and as he so prophetically warned all those years ago: it's not enough.

[C-Mag]

I don't know about Cannuckistan, but in the good ole U S of A , States Rights have to be re-established in a big way.

provide space, freedom and rights to develop our individual selves free of coercion

I think the community needs to be re-established right away. America was founded upon civic responsibilities. You had a responsibility to your community, to your neighbor, your family, state, and country. All of us would be serving in the militia (except the females).

Liberalism is the triumph of the individual. It's what Kenneth Clark called "heroic materialism", and as he so prophetically warned all those years ago: it's not enough.

I've been ODing on Brion McCanahan all day since it was recommended here. I listened to his 2016 Election Primer, his big message is you have to shape things locally first. I think that's spot on.

When you get things shaped locally you are hardening yourself against the Swamp creep out of Washington, then maybe you can get good Congressional folks elected locally that can do something.

[BjornP]

Starting to listen now, but I'll comment my own perspective on the threat to the (classically) liberal values that have defined Western civilization to a greater and greater extent for several centuries now.

The threat to liberalism (and when I say liberalism, I will consistently refer to classical liberal values) comes from the tendency of a "globalized" progressive Western elite to ignore "small" consequences of the free movement of people across borders as it pertains to wages for the lower classes. Instead they even mock those who cannot compete with the low wage demands of foreign workers, foreign workers who don't need as much money as they do because of lower living standards in their native countries. When native workers voice their disagreement with wage dumping, they get called backwards, progress-hating, racists and xenophobes by an elite that professes to love liberalism and call for a liberal world order. Through guilt by association, liberalism turns from being a beacon of liberty to a small elite trying to ruin you.

The result: Working class, lower class people turn to populist, nationalist, and similar il-liberal politicians in droves. To look for someone, who even pretends to care about and protect their economic interests, their way of life.

I would love for the whole world to chose to be liberal. I know they won't, of course, but liberty for the whole world? Hoo-rah to that, but as it is now, that project of world liberalism has become a project owned by an elite class of people, who are demeaning, or indifferent to the problems associated with the multi-culturalism that - illogically became a "liberal" project. You can after all, promote liberalism in the world, without having to import everyone from everywhere into your liberal country. The comfortable elite doesn't see, don't have to worry about that a European refugee crisis puts so much pressure on European welfare that the country's own poor and sick will have to suffer more down the line. They don't use the welfare services, and have private insurance. They don't have worry about wage dumping by Romanian or Polish workers (in Europe) or Mexican workers (in the US), because they're not working class... so it's a complete non-problem for them, and when the working class people complain? They're just racist, and probably vote conservative.

And so the working class vote Trump. In my country they vote Danish People's party. Now the second-largest party out of nine parties. Populist, nationalist and anti-liberal parties gain loads of votes. Because who else care about their interests? Who even pretends?

So they vote Trump, and Trump wins and they finally rejoice and laugh and post videos about "liberal tears". But nothing's actually changed, because a guy like Trump - of course - isn't keeping any of his promises and he didn't give a shit about the problems of the poor and working class Americans anymore than Hillary did. And thus, the liberal elite chuckle and get to make fun of them again.

So, the challenge of liberalism is really a challenge of one class of (powerful, well-off and/or influential) people including a certain (large) segment of fellow citizens and voters in their plans for the future. Indifference and exclusion leads to understandable frustration. If someone feels they can't and won't be heard, they lash out. You cannot maintain a respect for liberty, without a respect for equality.

The Russian, and increasingly so Hungarian, ideal of an "il-liberal" democracy - where you can vote for different parties, but only one of them is ultimately allowed to be in power and creates more and more laws to guarentee that - is as Western as Communism and Fascism is Western. Liberal representative democracy is what both the US and majority of Western and Northern European democracies were founded on, and that's therefore the product of Western civilization that should hold the greatest value to all of us. But those liberties shouldn't just be for an elite that doesn't care about anyone but their own classes to interpret. So the fundamental problem of today's liberalism is that it is not more egalitarian. It may pretend to be "diverse", but it's an entirely superficial sort of "diversity", where people are already expected to agree with the progressive liberal viewpoint.

Add cultural differences to that, and the - true - notion that liberalism, the supposed "universal" values of human rights, classical liberal values - are Western/Northern European. And even among these, there are significant cultural differences. Both American and British liberals will hail each other as liberals, despite how restrictive Britain is about freedom of speech. Sweden, too, is promoted as a liberal progressive utopia. Not very free, either. Liberal progressives simply pretend that there are universal "human" values, and that they're the ones who represent it. That insistence that liberalism is, and should be considered, universal, is a big problem in getting for example Eastern European countries to accept Western notions of liberty and democracy. One should simply accept liberalism not as "universal", but as an idea that one can want, and choose to implement. Not as some sort of deterministic, inescapable, higher power of the universe... as dictated by Western public officials. The idea that people genuinely choose freedom, choose liberty, cannot be underestimated.

Now... to actually listen to this podcast to find out where I agree or disagree.

[BjornP]

Listened to the panelists. Mostly agreed with the British woman. Where even the presenter or moderator talked about "patriotism and illiberalism" as if they were the same thing, she argued that sense of community and patriotism gets unfairly demonized by liberals without those same liberals. All in all, she was really the only one who seemed to get why liberalism was under pressure from populism and nationalism (because, you know, she agrees with me ). Liked her image of how some liberal Remain voters and open borders types tended to look at their country as a shop, whereas Brexit voters looked at their country as a home. The American libertarian guy definitely was the shop liberal.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Enjoyed the pod, bruh.

Interesting that, as always, the libertarian/free market representative on the panel resorted to talking about how great smartphones are in his closing remarks.

They sure love them smartphones, I guess.

[DrYouth]

Great post Bjorn...

I felt that Rowenna was the panelist that best captured the current problem... Her use of the term "love" probably didn't help her... but beyond that I felt she hit the nail on the head.

Her statement later that liberals are allergic to faith, family and flag... was also apropos.

I also felt that the libertarian was the most out to lunch on the current challenges to liberalism...

He was all about doubling down on opening up the shop... and the alienation.

[Speaker to Animals]

Libertarians *are* liberals, fam.