Is liberalism doomed?

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BjornP
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by BjornP » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:24 pm

Speaker to Animals wrote:
DrYouth wrote:
BjornP wrote: You are part of Western civilization as a tick on a dog, so like Muslims who want a caliphate in Western societies, you should be free to speak , but never free to gain political power.
:shock:

I have to say that was an effective strike...

Gladiator down.

Hold...

Let's see if he can rally.

He types that and you don't tone police him about "fruitful debate"?

LOL

I think we see two liberals playing the concerned "independent" again..
It's also very common for Islamists to portray themselves as victims of the liberal, degenerate West. See, you're just becoming more and more alike! ;)
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.

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DrYouth
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by DrYouth » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:27 pm

Speaker to Animals wrote: He types that and you don't tone police him about "fruitful debate"?

LOL

I think we see two liberals playing the concerned "independent" again..
Good counterstrike...

He's up and holding ground.
Deep down tho, I still thirst to kill you and eat you. Ultra Chimp can't help it.. - Smitty

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DrYouth
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by DrYouth » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:33 pm

So let's return to the debate...

It's hard not to get distracted by weaponized talking points....

Bjorn and STA both see liberalism as it is currently practiced in Europe and the US as problematic.

But Bjorn sees liberalism as having been a net positive in bringing western culture to a certain point.

I would say STA would roll the clock back a lot further than Bjorn would... maybe to pre-protestant revolution for example...

So there is perhaps that's where the debate should focus.

If we could roll back western liberalism... where to.... and what would be the cost/benefit trade off.
Deep down tho, I still thirst to kill you and eat you. Ultra Chimp can't help it.. - Smitty

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Speaker to Animals
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by Speaker to Animals » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:35 pm

"maybe" :whistle:

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DrYouth
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by DrYouth » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:36 pm

Speaker to Animals wrote:"maybe" :whistle:
Maybe pre-protestant revolution?
Deep down tho, I still thirst to kill you and eat you. Ultra Chimp can't help it.. - Smitty

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Speaker to Animals
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by Speaker to Animals » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:38 pm

It depends upon where you identify the big mistake.

You two want to somehow save liberalism from some error that was injected into the otherwise faultless system. I don't particularly see anything that is happening as inconsistent with liberalism. Liberalism is the problem.

I question the very premise that the so-called Enlightenment was anything but a reversal from the apex of the western civilization in the Rennaisance.

Reformation is part of it, but the roots go deeper. You have to recognize what liberalism actually is to see it.

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DrYouth
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by DrYouth » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:57 pm

Speaker to Animals wrote:It depends upon where you identify the big mistake.

You two want to somehow save liberalism from some error that was injected into the otherwise faultless system. I don't particularly see anything that is happening as inconsistent with liberalism. Liberalism is the problem.

I question the very premise that the so-called Enlightenment was anything but a reversal from the apex of the western civilization in the Rennaisance.

Reformation is part of it, but the roots go deeper. You have to recognize what liberalism actually is to see it.
So the Renaissance then?

Western Civ was at it's apex pre Enlightenment?

I mean that would be an argument that all of liberalism was misguided.

No Adam Smith, No Glorious Revolution, No Bill of Rights... No concern about a baby in that bathwater worth salvaging?

It's an extreme position... no surprise really.
Deep down tho, I still thirst to kill you and eat you. Ultra Chimp can't help it.. - Smitty

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BjornP
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by BjornP » Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:26 pm

DrYouth wrote:
If we could roll back western liberalism... where to.... and what would be the cost/benefit trade off.
I wouldn't so much "roll back" Western liberalism, or time, to a specific historical point, but there is a point in time I think present day liberalism should learn more from.

When the original liberal thinkers, both the English and French philosophers as well as the eventual framers of the US constitution created and developed their ideas, they did so based on a high degree of personal education and informed basis. A degree of personal education and information that was exceptional and a (genuine and in the proper sense of the word) privilege only reserved for the few. In a free society, where government is governed by, and by the will of the citizens of the state, the people are only free for so long as the government convinces them to hand back their freedoms by persuading them of foreign and domestic threats, or by putting hard to understand papers to sign in front of them, with the fine print saying they know are subjects - and no longer citizens. Or in other words:
Thomas Jefferson wrote:"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Wether through private or public education, teaching children to be critical of authority and information, to teach them how to verify a story's authenticity, source criticism, iow how to avoid fake news and how to detect and look past possible biases in news that's not fake, but still guilty of deception by omission. If your country sends your sons, husbands, fathers to war... but you never heard about the place they're going, are you able to determine if they should be in that country? Should people take you seriously, if you don't even know that? That's the sort of thing education should be able to prevent, by building up knowledge of one's own country, and a basic knowledge of foreign countries. But simply knowing how your country works, how do you as a citizen fit into the State, what powers do you have, how do you use them, what are your obligations, what does your taxes go to, etc.

But also, staying informed about current events and what politics affects you is important, and I'm leaning towards that not becoming easier today. But as maligned as the internet is these days, I think it has sharpened people's critical skills through sheer volume. Everyone knows by now that there's alot of BS out there. Here you get school classes teaching critical source method, learning how to better searches. Newspapers prior to that, had for some years had headlines about students handing in copy-paste Wikipedia pages, or kids quoting websites that they had no idea were satire sites, conspiracy websites or pseudoscience sites. A well-informed citizenry is a citizenry well-armed against tyrannical seductions.
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DrYouth
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by DrYouth » Thu Apr 19, 2018 2:11 pm

I don't see how education solves the problem of social connection though...

Reassuring the populace that their communities will be sufficiently protected from intrusion and disruption while preserving individual liberties all in the face of economic volatility, technological change and "creative destruction" is not a task that can be achieved by education alone no matter how good that education is... and it's hard to argue that it has been anything but propaganda and weaksauce in most parts.
Deep down tho, I still thirst to kill you and eat you. Ultra Chimp can't help it.. - Smitty

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Speaker to Animals
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Re: Is liberalism doomed?

Post by Speaker to Animals » Thu Apr 19, 2018 2:15 pm

DrYouth wrote:
Speaker to Animals wrote:It depends upon where you identify the big mistake.

You two want to somehow save liberalism from some error that was injected into the otherwise faultless system. I don't particularly see anything that is happening as inconsistent with liberalism. Liberalism is the problem.

I question the very premise that the so-called Enlightenment was anything but a reversal from the apex of the western civilization in the Rennaisance.

Reformation is part of it, but the roots go deeper. You have to recognize what liberalism actually is to see it.
So the Renaissance then?

Western Civ was at it's apex pre Enlightenment?

I mean that would be an argument that all of liberalism was misguided.

No Adam Smith, No Glorious Revolution, No Bill of Rights... No concern about a baby in that bathwater worth salvaging?

It's an extreme position... no surprise really.

I don't want to just roll back the clock. We'd still just end up in the same place. I want to undo the damage and forge a new path.