Who needs policies when you have big wet tears? (Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
I can count on one hand the number of times since childhood that I’ve wept at a stranger to get my own way. The guiltiest one, though, took place at a small Guatemalan border post, while I was backpacking with two male friends. I forget the exact problem, but it was resolved with remarkable speed as soon as I turned on the waterworks.
I was genuinely exhausted after a long day, but remember feeling slightly ashamed at the possibility that I’d weaponised the guards’ machismo in the interests of my own convenience. I suppose, though, that it was a textbook example of the now oft-condemned “white women’s tears”.
This supposedly potent weapon is, we’re told, usually directed at less privileged classes of women, typically to avoid being “called out” for some moral infraction or other. This debate-ending power to weep on demand is supposedly predicated on the special, celestial status of white middle-class women as fragile entities whose emotional well-being must not be disturbed — even if that means warping all of politics and culture to accommodate their emotional comfort.
“Our sanctioned victim status shields privileged white women from accountability in interpersonal interactions and in the political sphere”, argues feminist Alison Phipps. But is it really just white women, like my younger self on the Guatemalan border, who get listened to when we weep? The debate reignited yesterday, after Keir Starmer’s tearful appearance on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories on Tuesday evening.
The Labour leader recounted a number of painful personal events, including the loss of his mother, the devastating effect this had on his father and a house fire that killed the family dog. Morgan is the master of extracting a visceral confession, and it was affecting to see the usually very controlled Starmer in the grip of deep emotion.
Morgan described the interview as “searingly honest and intensely emotional”; it was an exchange that “shows the real him”. From this perspective, there’s something more real about tears than self-restraint: a stripping-away of artifice to reveal the person that’s really inside.
Britain, long notorious for emotional restraint, started to embrace this emotional openness more than two decades ago with the 1997 death of Princess Diana. Crowds piled bouquets in front of the Palace; people who’d never met Diana wept openly. The Royal Family initially remained in Scotland, only returning to London after public outrage at their reticence. Almost overnight, it didn’t just become acceptable to emote in public; failing to do so demonstrated crippling emotional inadequacy.
Tony Blair, a natural for the emerging aesthetic of public emotional display, declared that Diana had been the “People’s Princess”. She had been, as she hoped (and in a phrase reportedly borrowed from a novel by her step-grandmother, the romance writer Barbara Cartland) a “queen of people’s hearts”.
How times change. Diana was pursued by humans with cameras; but today the intrusive reach of the cameras is something we do to ourselves, via social media. As in the age of Diana, intense emotion remains a currency: weeping selfies garner a powerful reaction. But with so much more coin in circulation, the market is growing jaded.
The generation that came of age when Diana was still alive may treat tears as an “authentic” manifestation of the “real you”. But now we are all encouraged to be both a tearful Instagram Diana and also the paparazzi swarm. And the question of whose tears garner sympathy, and whose trigger cynicism, is itself becoming a battleground.
One individual regularly lionised as authentic for her weeping (despite being a white woman) is New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Widely celebrated for her emotionally engaged political style and willingness to talk about wellness, compassion and empathy, Ardern herself argues: “you can be strong, and you can be kind”.
Perhaps that’s why Ardern regularly weeps in public: in 2017, for example, she wept while apologising to the family of murdered backpacker Grace Millane; she did the same two years later while commemorating the Christchurch mosque massacre. Again, last year, she openly cried at a service remembering the White Island volcano eruption. Crucially, her tears invariably make the headlines: evidence of her compassion and authenticity.
Elsewhere, the press luxuriates in stories about whether Kate Middleton made Meghan Markle cry before the royal wedding, or of Markle weeping into her pillow the night before the couple’s notorious Oprah interview. But even our royal emoter-in-chief, Prince Harry, has spoken of how surreal it was to follow his mother’s coffin as thousands who’d never met her lined the streets, sobbing.
Harry may be keen to make a career rejecting his repressed upbringing in favour of emotional authenticity as a route to mental health. But even he has, it seems, some concerns about that era-defining moment of emotion. No surprise, then, to find that our culture more generally is by no means unambiguously in favour of tears.
If the tears are low-status and male, for example, you can buy a t-shirt that celebrates bathing in them, as modelled by feminist Jessica Valenti. Even those tears emitted by Britain’s (male) Secretary of State for Health, on hearing of the first Covid jabs, were mocked as “pretending to cry”.
And despite what Phipps asserts, being a white woman is no guarantee that your tears will reach a sympathetic audience. Theresa May, long panned as the “Maybot” for her lack of warmth, was panned for breaking with her usual buttoned-up form as she announced her resignation. And when the classicist Mary Beard was rounded on for defending the sexually predatory behaviour of Oxfam workers in Haiti, the weeping face she posted in response triggered not sympathy but further condemnation.
It’s sometimes claimed that greater political participation by women will result in moral improvements to politics in general, thanks to women’s superior capacity for empathy and aversion to conflict. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that as more women have entered public life — Parliament is now 35% female, an all-time high — so too our embrace of emotional display in public life has grown alongside it. But while it’s true that women are statistically less violent than men, it’s less certain that this means we’re nicer human beings.
When I was at school in the Nineties, I often watched the Popular Girls amuse themselves by baiting less popular classmates with carefully calibrated and plausibly deniable barbs. When the victim retaliated, usually with less subtlety, the Popular Girl would respond by ostentatiously crying — a move that usually resulted in an outpouring of sympathy for the girl who had in fact been the aggressor.
Since then, along with the rest of social life, much of our political discourse has transferred to social media. And here, actual violence is off the table — it’s all words on a screen — but verbal cruelty and social ostracism are easy to mobilise if you’re popular. It’s the perfect hunting ground, in other words, for Popular Girl-style covert aggression.
I was reminded of this recently by one of the most noted weepers in American public life: the politician Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. After the Capitol riots, Ocasio-Cortez was mocked by conservatives for over-dramatising her own experience, after convincing herself that an officer who’d come to find and protect her was actually about to kill her. In response to her critics, she grew tearful and talked about being a sexual assault survivor.
The Hispanic Ocasio-Cortez, at least, challenges the idea that it’s the tears only of white women that reign supreme — at least contrasted with Mary Beard and Theresa May. The politics of the breaking voice and artfully dabbed eye are indisputably more female than male; its power-users are always women. But these examples suggest the effectiveness of this method is less about race, than something more like Popular Girls schoolyard ranking.
If you’re ugly, old or badly-dressed, don’t expect crying to work; if you’re male, it’s a gamble; and if you’re not in the in-group, you can forget it. But if your face fits (and you don’t ugly-cry) then you can do what you like. And as long as you sob in public now and then, you’ll be considered a paragon of compassion.
The policies Jacinda Ardern actually implements are, after all, often considerably less cuddly than her sometimes-weepy public persona. She may shed a tear to mark a terrorist attack or natural disaster, but she also intervened to water down public condemnation of the use of enslaved or forcibly sterilised workers in China’s Xinjiang region. Evidently, New Zealand’s compassionate Prime Minister prefers the pragmatic realpolitik of balancing export priorities to compassion for the plight of China’s Muslim minorities.
Yet watching Sir Keir, I had no sense that he was playing a game of tactical tears. A politician who came of age before the sobbing selfie, his emotion — rarely seen in political life — seemed unforced. But I also wondered how much longer we’ll see that kind of authenticity, as pre-internet politicians grow fewer, replaced by millennials steeped in the Mean Girls politics of social media.
There’s much to be said for a more emotionally open, less aggressive and more empathic style of politics — more feminine, in a word. But we should be under no illusions: embracing this will also bring a rise in the public use of emotion, Popular Girl style, as a weapon. And that, in turn, will breed cynicism — even of those tears, like Keir’s, that seem to come from the heart.
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SubscribeOh wow, this was monumental in several ways. Firstly, it is great to hear from the proverbial horse’s mouth what this publication is about. I’d long suspected Unherd was set up to stand up for Liberalism as it has been understood historically. With this, it’s great to see someone calling for the separation of Progressivism from Liberalism to identify correctly those two, so we can reason on them correctly if nothing else.
Secondly, there’s great history and insight here. The delineation of British and French schools of Enlightenment is important. I love the various references and the observations relating things to today.
Finally, this feels to me like it is the first time someone came out forcefully in support of the English Protestant Christian tradition in a long time. I can imagine some people calling for this on these pages will be happy about that. It has a feeling of watching history unfold as a new chapter is being turned.
This closing remark reminds me of one observation. The last time people who were predicting the end of Liberalism were called Fascists. With great irony, today those who do the same prediction are called anti-Fascists.
They might call themselves anti-fascist, but we all know what they really are. If proof were needed, it was deemed easier, by those who wished to do so, spies and their masters, (sorry, that might be racist, I mean runners, bug*er, sorry, that’s probably ableist, and come to think of it homophobic into the bargain………good grief, I give up) to turn a communist into a fascist and a fascist into a communist than to convince those who were simply ambivalent or neutral.
Those who, “might call themselves anti-fascist,” put me in mind of the mob who were against Popery, but did not know whether Popery was a man, or a horse.
Great article and great comment!
I agree. It has put into words what I have been thinking for a long time but did not have the knowledge to express
Yes, the culture wars (and the value foundations of many governments) come down to what the meaning of Liberalism is and how the term has been perverted and highjacked by those who are fundamentally illiberal.
I have long said that politics is a circle with the hard right and the hard left meeting. Nothing has persuaded me to move from this opinion.
I agree with you. Those on the extremes have more in common. We have been calling illiberal progressives liberals which gives the false impression they are in the centre when they are in fact bordering extremism. This loss of the centre where moderates (aka two-sideists) are labelled harmful is dangerous. The stability of the political system is under threat where the two extremes may act in tandem to push it off balance.
Agree. It was said that it was easier to convert a Communist into a Nazi or the opposite than someone who was an individual who believed in liberty.
If we take East Germany there was those who were Communist in the 1920s, Nazis from late 20s to 1945 and then Communists post 1945.
In South America Jesuits became Marxists , hence revolutionary theology. Himmler may have fashioned the SS on The Jesuits.
I suggest Britain has enabled far more people to be individulas than any other nation. Barnes Wallis says the British genius for innovation is due to our individuality.
I suggest that Liberalism is the belief that the individual is more important than the state but requires people to have the the common sense to know when to forego freedom for a certain period in order for the common good. Liberalism requires common sense and self discipline of the body, mind and spirit. Liberalism can only occur where people have the freedom of choice: to be selfish and selfless: to be cowardly or courageous, cruel or compassionate, lazy or industrious, venal or honest and to learn from success and failure. Liberalism can only occur where humans have trained their bodies, mind and spirit to control their base desires. Communism and Nazism offers power to the inadequate. Worship the Party and have the power of life and death over humans and their minds.
The separation of progressivism and liberalism is long overdue. Too many liberal people are still caught up in a progressive group that does not reflect their views on life in the least any longer. However, they are afraid to speak up in fear of weakening their own political wing. This leads to many people taking the modern mad progressive mantle, when in reality, they would be clearly objected to it.
This is monumental in that it does not talk of one, single actual burning issue: talk of the vagueness of the word ‘liberal’ is angels dancing on the head of a pin. It is a way of avoiding identifying and fixing problems we see in the world, number one of which is: what is the Climate doing, and what can we do about it? Number 2 being: how can we best provide a Public Health system that allows people who are able to do what they are able? Does this concern make others label me a ‘progressive’ or a ‘liberal’, so they can safely go on to talk about something else? Who gives a flying fig.
Let’s confront some *real* problems in this world.
With respect, I disagree. It is the application of these two different approaches to ‘real’ problems, that is the nub of the issue.
A ‘classic’ liberal may, or may not, agree with all proscriptions on offer to deal with Climate Change, or Covid 19, or ‘social justice’; he or she, may, but will also recognise, because the classic position is built on debate, compromise and tolerance that: a. even if ‘right’, there is a responsibility to explain and persuade; b. the opposition may be right. Either way, the ‘opposition’ is ‘loyal’ snd just might be right; some humility is therefore called for.
A ‘progressive’ on the other hand does not accept any view except for their’s as correct. The opposition are ‘deplorables’, ‘fascists’, even ‘evil’; it follows therefore that their views not only have no value but, worse, as threatening to social coherence as heresy was to medieval and early modern Christians. It must be cut-out, extirpated; ‘cancelled’ in other words.
The issues you raise are real and ‘wicked’ and some of the solutions may be shared by both ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’, particularly if, like me, you believe in social democracy. But the approaches part company on certainty of solution and how we approach those who oppose us. I’m with both Cromwell, “Think it possible in the bowels of Christ, that you could be wrong?”, and Voltaire, “I loathe your opinions, Sir, but would fight to the death for your right to express it?”
With best wishes
Voltaire didn’t actually say that.
Thanks for the reasoned reply. I would agree if reasoned debate and compromise were the tools we use to arrive at solutions, at the popular level or in Parliament. But popular debate is almost non-existent due to its having to be done through the media, very little of which has ‘fairness’ involved in its axe-grinding; and Parliamentary debate is nullified when a Government ramrods its measures through without permitting proper discussion – witness Ms. Patel’s criminalization of basic freedoms such as the right to Protest.
Protest against vaccinations?
What about demonstrations which cause loss of money for certain people? One cannot sue unions who strike and cause people to lose money.
In 1950s there were peaceful demonstrations against nuclear weapons but this changed in the late 1960s.
If demonstrators took out insurance which one could claim against for all and any loss this would make them more acceptable.
Well put sir
All health is personal. There is no such thing as ‘Public Health’. Most people who make use of the N.H.S. are not actually ill (in the traditional sense).
For instance drug ‘addiction’ is not an illness at all, but a personal choice. It may produce ‘illness’ some way down the line, but the cause is not, and never has been, ‘ill-health’ but mere cupidity and self-indulgence.
I enjoy visiting the memorial to Dr John Snow, of North Street, York, which consists of a water pump with the handle removed. Dr Snow more or less pioneered epidemiology when he traced the source of cholera in London in 1854, by stopping people using the Broad Street pump. His work subsequently led to the provision of clean water supplies all over England, and pretty much eliminating cholera.
*That* is Public Health: community level decisions that improve every individual’s private health. So is vaccination against infectious diseases.
Between 1900 and the introduction of the single measles vaccine in 1968, measles mortality fell by over 99%. For whooping cough, 1957 and 95%. The same applies to all the infectious diseases, and in all cases, the rates were in decline at the point that vaccines were introduced. Public health was the star of the show, vaccines were a side gig.
I agree. For many people, one of the compensations of this period of rising fearfulness and tyranny has been finding common ground with those who, pre-2020, had been our sworn political enemies. It has sorted the classical truth-seeking liberals from the phony self-declared (and self-deluded) progressives and self-interested narcissists on both the left and the right.
I suspect that there are many prominent people who consider themselves to be exponents of progressivism who got into politics for all the right reasons who now feel desperately trapped by their own naivety to, and the top of their shop’s probable complicity in, the great evil that now abounds. Many may be unable to sleep comfortably at night, knowing that if their initial herd instinct to trust “the scientists” was wrong and the sceptics are right it is all going to come crashing down, hard, and directly on their head. And they see all the data, information, and analysis that we all see, and more: because they no doubt see the constituency office postbag full of letters telling of vaccine harms and of discrimination that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. To them, I would say: it’s time now to find the courage to break free, time to do the right thing, time to put a stop to this. All it would take would be a small number, perhaps just one, elected representative of the “progressive” left courageously to speak their truth and regain their integrity for this whole thing to start to turn around. They may even be able to lead their party out of the authoritarian oblivion into which it is headed.
I think ‘naivety ‘ is a key concept to attach to the ‘progressives’ and it is useful to clarify why -eg did their ‘education’ occur pre 2000? 1995 ? ie they had a proscribed vs a true open ended liberal education, and history and anthropology must have been sorely lacking. Their evangelical zeal and that naivety may be caused by a fear and inability to deal with the REAL world ???? etc etc
Yep I agree, and in that sense, who is truly culpable – the educator or the misguided student? Key thing – tempting though it may be – here is not for anyone to throw stones but to patiently build a way for people to start to engage with each other and with the truths they might have engaged with sooner had their educational or other circumstances been different. It may or may not happen, but in any relatively benign scenario we will have some kind of truth and reconciliation commission which will facilitate this.
Yeah but it is that ignorance and arrogance that functions to block those possible conversations – I am not clear if there is the possibility of conversation untill after the ‘Fall” – a bummer for all !
Thank you for this article Mr. Marshall. For the last half a decade we have been inundated with media articles and pundits lamenting the decline of “liberalism.” This modern “liberalism” that the politicians and pundits insist is so important, what does it have in common with the Classical Liberalism that has formed the basis of modern Western Civilization? Belief in the rights of citizens? Well… I mean as long as you say, do, and think the way we want you to. Understanding the limits of the expert class? TRUST THE SCIENCE! The recognition of universal human fallibility? Eh, depends on your race and pronouns. Understanding the limits of what government can accomplish? We will try it again but harder this time and throw more money and government force at it. Recognition of the nation state? Citizen of the world, baby! Equality under the law? It’s equity now. Sorry, but I will take Classical Liberalism with its Enlightenment values over Neoliberalism and its Postmodernist “values” any day.
The thing with Christianity being the cultural norm, even if the majority did not actually Believe – the people in power had been raised in it, they took on the morality of it – they would act in the Philosophy of Christianity as it was the culture.
This is why the Left have always been Militant Atheists. To make being a Christian seen as being backwards and prudish and superstitious, to make all the horrors of the past the fault of Religion, and so to end true Liberalism – As Liberalism required acting as if there was an ultimate, a structured good and evil, and so morality was always a force in everything. By reducing religion they got rid of good and evil, making it ‘correct and incorrect’, and that is absolutely a fluid concept. A society cannot function on ‘Correct and Incorrect, it can be led into evil without even knowing.
Bravo! To perceive the torture and killing of little Arthur recently, as something improper, incorrect or wrong, simply does not do it justice. Human beings are most certainly capable of wickedness and evil. We forget this at our peril.
I have been reading a lot of the original documents of America’s founding such as the Constitution, Federalist Papers, and the Antifederalist Papers. One of the things that really stands out to me is how they believed individual liberty, limits on government power, and representation of the people went hand in hand with a moral society. Note, they did not believe anyone who was not a good person did not deserve these things (particularly since they never trusted the idea of someone being the arbiter of deserved), but that for a country to get the most out of liberty, a moral citizenry was necessary.
The incredible arrogance of the ‘ death of God’ (ie some creator/higher being/s) is the same dynamic as ‘the Fall’ ie Adam/man knows best. And the classic ‘pride comes before a fall”……..
“I will take Classical Liberalism with it’s Enlightenment values over Neoliberalism and it’s Postmodernist ‘values’ any day”.
Bang on!
Unfortunately most of our politicians and civil servants don’t understand science, statistics and probability etc in any but the most superficial way as most have been educated in humanities. The result is they misunderstand and misuse “expert advice”. The whole revelation that the experts seem to have been asked to model the worst case scenario for covid rather than the ranges together with probabilities and did not seem to have modelled the potential effects of lockdown illustrates why they are simply incompetent to be in charge of scientifically based policy decisions.
Nor, of course, do they seem to have a proper grasp of classic liberalism that should underpin public life.
I don’t mind having an elite in charge provided they are in fact elite thinkers with a proper regard for the interests of the population in general. Clearly we don’t have that.
“The result is they misunderstand and misuse “expert advice”.”
They understood, they understood they needed to STFU and do as told. And so they did. And so the global economy teeters, about to plunge into chaos, and the students and young are messed up as they will pay for it all, and inflation is eating the wealth and savings of the working people as the QE Keeping interest Zero has forced them out on the risk curve of the Equities, or just Cash (Treasuries and Gilts paying about 5 – 7% negative interest with inflation). And when the Equities correct 70% the savings will all be harvested, and everyone impoverished, and thus become wards of the State, and thus client voters, and thus Neo-Feudalism.
This is a plandemic. The people in charge were just doing as told.
Watch this https://rumble.com/vr9t7m-uncensored-rfk-jr.-tells-shocking-truth-about-anthony-fauci.html a long talk by the guy who’s book has exposed Fauci for the monster he is – and the industry, and the government…. it is a very good video indeed…
Exceedingly well said.
Unfortunately most of our climate scientists don’t understand science, statistics and probability etc in any but the most superficial way as most have been educated in ecomarxism.
“One built on the empiricism of Hume and Adam Smith, the other built on the Rationalism of Descartes and Rousseau. The former, with its inherent modesty, is compatible with the Christian understanding of human fallibility, the latter is not.”
Read the Meditations, Marshall. Cartesian epistemology makes explicit appeal to the Ontological Argument. And it’s stretching things to describe Rousseau of all people as a rationalist, although I’m fully in agreement with you about the balefulness of the shadow he casts over Western liberalism.
“What we are seeing today being enacted in the name of liberalism is not liberal at all. Instead, let’s call it by the name which its proponents are prepared to use — progressivism. This is the creed which unites Tony Blair, Nick Clegg, most of the US Democratic Party, most of the British Labour Party and the New York Times. These are not traditional Liberals in any understanding of the term. They are Progressives.”
I agree. This is why I define wokeness as “the authoritarian pseudo-progressive usurpation of liberalism”.
Wow, Mr Marshall, best article in Unherd to date, well done, and sums up a great deal which I believe, although we diverge a bit after Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, which I find one of the most pernicious philosophies, and with nihilism, existentialism, Marxism, Freudian Humanism, hardliner Atheism gave us, in Wiemar Germany, the Frankfurt School, who are the ‘Post’ school of thought, giving us all the horrors we see today. Post-modernist, Post-Liberal, Post-Structuralism, and the complete reversing of morality by this pernicious group working behind the doors through ‘Entryism’ to capture all the Universities, MSM, Tech/Social Media, and Government of all but the Right, and even they are being altered.
I always naturally lumped the Banksters in with the Industrialists, and the deeper Cabal of the Devos, WEF, IMF, Donor Class… and so on, with the ones above being the useful Idiots. Moving like CS Lewis’s fantastic Science Fiction book ‘That Hideous Strength’ to lock the world in a living, totalitarian, hell. I enjoyed your article so much more as you are one of that class – but wrote as you did.
I think this an excellent rational appraisal of liberalism. The reason these conclusions are disputed is the prevalence of “political atheism” by which I mean adopting a viewpoint to be accepted by the social influencers – bien pensant types I suppose. Genuine atheists who have reached that view via considered opinions would agree with the analysis of this article eg David Starkey (High Church atheist), Douglas Murray (Christian atheist) [self-descriptors].
I think people are afraid that if they accept these foundations of liberal society then they might have to give ground to traditional Christian moral principles too: faithful monogamous family life, sanctity of life, responsibilities to society before personal rights. I can’t see people being willing to give up their “freedoms” to live under these traditional constraints despite their proven benefits to society and children especially.
Progressivism has died. The new left is best described as fascist.
This is a brilliantly elucidated piece which I will recommend to my family and friends, encapsulating so well as it does where some (but not all) of us have gone wrong. Thank you for this piece and UnHerd which has been a brilliant light since its inception and a publication I am very happy to subscribe to.
Great article, thank you. To recapture the true meaning of “liberal” as a succesful social and political construct means doing what Mrs T and Keith Joseph (and others) did in the 1970’s, to promote and fight and win the intellectual debate, to give liberalism a proper academic, intellectual, and poltical grounding. It was that coherence, confidence, and the explanation of why a liberal society benefits all who live in it, that led to the Conservative successes of the 1980’s.
Those arguments need making again, and applying to our times, and fighting vigorously for. But who will lead the debate this time?
Many true liberals passively support the mad progressive agenda, simply because they are afraid of weakening their own political wing by speaking up against it. This leads to the impression that there is a vast majority that is convinced of whatever it is that left extremists are plotting on any given day. In reality, the majority of progressives may still be liberals who may actually be against the agenda that is perpetrated by their political wing. As it has been said before, the loud minority controls what happens, because it meets the unending tolerance of a public that is debilitated by affluence and materialistic distractions.
Good point – who do the sensible moderate Demos have to vote for ??
An important part of present-day Progressivism is Trans ideology which constantly spouts the absurd nonsense that “trans women are women”. This is reminiscent of “Four legs good, two legs bad” in Animal Farm, and we could laugh at it if it wasn’t for the extreme intolerance and fanaticism constantly displayed by its followers. Anyone who disagrees publicly can expect a torrent of vitriol and the risk of being hounded from their job. It’s an example of how free speech is under constant attack from so-called Progressives. There is nothing liberal about Progressivism.
One of two very informative articles today (the other being on Northern Ireland politics). If you haven’t come across it may I suggest that you try John Gray’s book The Two Faces of Liberalism which complements Paul Marshall’s analysis. Not an easy read as it is laid out in philosophical textbook fashion. However some years ago I came across it and it opened my eyes to why I, as a self identifying liberal, was feeling so uncomfortable with our so-called liberal culture. It’s quite short but is a penetrating historical philosophical study.
Great article!
Only thing I disagree with is that one can’t dismiss “progress” entirely. We no longer sell people as slaves, bate bears or publicly execute thieves in front of cheering crowds – surely this is Progress of sorts?
The error of the progressives is when they try to apply the scientific method to change human behaviour itself. Whether in Economics or Epidemiology, this does not have a good track record. See the failure of “Scientific Socialism” in the 20th century, and most likely the Covid-security state today.
the progressives biggest error is that they are ARROGANT – which will always lead to a fall because the arrogant wont/cant LISTEN and therefore are doomed to miss the truth. Problem is we let them take power a la Germany in the 30’s (an OTT analogy sorry but similarities).
Endorse every word of this.
A wonderful piece, superbly articulated.
Thankyou.
Excellent, thought- provoking stuff. The cult of individualism, an outgrowth of liberalism, has led to identity politics and the appurtenant race for victimhood status, because of the veneration offered to it by socialism. As the author points out, it demands “rights” without the concomitant obligations of community,.and almost inevitably leads to societal deconstruction.
,
They believe in the rule of experts and in the authority of “the science”.
IMO, they have an exaggerated belief in science based on a facile understanding of the nature of science.
As far as I can see modern progressivism is closer to religious fanaticism than actual enlightenment liberalism which seeks to debate, reason and explore different ideas without fear. The Enlightenment was a rejection of religious dogma and it is to that concept we should return, *not* to the excesses of Christianity that it rejected. I don’t dispute our Christian heritage but that Christian heritage brought about the enlightenment in ways the writer does NOT acknowledge – through its brutality, authoritarianism and zealotry – all justified as the ‘will of God’.
This was a hugely encouraging article in reminding us that liberalism emerged from the matrix of reformation Christianity – although there were medieval legal antecedents. Patrick Deneen, the political philosopher from Notre Dame makes a similar point in his book, The Failure of Liberalism when he argues that Locke and Hobbes the fathers of modern liberalism were in effect assuming Christian and Classical notions of virtue when they in fact made the self interests of the individual the heart of the liberal message, whose weakness is now being exposed in the light of the mocking of virtue of any kind other than a purely politicised sort – the progressive problem. Self interest simply isn’t a sufficient basis for classical liberalism. We need a larger and deeper vision of the good.
A big bonus of Marshall’s article was the reminder of the Christian notion of the Fall – the imperfection of us. I think the Reformation got this a bit more – total depravity – than Catholicism and thus the separation of powers, free speech-thank you John Milton – etc. Voltaire in his Letters from England reported approvingly on all this.
I agree with Cheryl Jones that the Puritan and other zealotry needed Enlightenment taming but I don’t think reason is enough. The Enlightenment understands the good sometimes better than the religious but then has no basis for the good other than wishful thinking.
Excellent article.
The fascists of the future will call themselves the “anti-fascists”. Winston Churchill
Excellent clarifying essay thanks Paul- I am a classic Liberal with some conservative interests…
There is a special problem unique to political expertise. That is that the people most involved are also those least competent, because they are the most closed-mindedly opinionated and attitude-driven.
As as result even the language is hopelessly incompetent. Such words as right, left, liberal, democratic, no longer have any useful meaning, and yet people continue to use them as if they did.
A very good article, certainly from the UnHerd point of view. Like all articles it is doomed to making a simple statement from a complicated background.
I am an atheist; my parents were atheists and I think their parents were too. They, like me, believe that religions are phoney, merely a mechanism used by the UnHerd to control the Herd.
In our complex world today, religions probably cost more money and violence and sickness than Covid ever will and this is certainly true of the past. In India today Hindus fight Muslims – in fact, everybody fights Muslims. This, of course, is not because the Herd are nasty people, it is because the UnHerd are using the religions for their own political ends.
In the world today, religion has gone backwards. Muslim leaders still fight to control the minds of their flocks. Western leaders have to resort to other means – Scientism, Covidism, Environmentalism, etc. Unfortunately these things backfire and you get the birth of things like people painting themselves green – a reaction to the political lies.
Of course, it is easy to blame politicians. What else can you blame? But if UnHerders were to take over, what would they do to control the Herd? Stop lies? Preach religion from Downing Street? Say “God Bless The UK” after every soundbite?
Of course, this is why Communism persists like a bad smell. Communism is a wordy paradise for would-be UnHerders.
Don’t you believe – and have experience – of things that are beyond human knowledge and cannot be explained?
Such belief is not within religious belief systems – which are based on the life being experienced at the time of their formation – but since the beginning of time people have believed that there is something beyond human knowledge which directs their lives – seen from cave paintings to the worship of different Gods
Chris , it is not about religion per se , it is about some kind of higher power that created the conditions of life – and that there may be some dynamics to that which actually make our lives more meaningful etc -forget about organized religion but dont throw the baby out !
Ayn Rand’s books are just weird. How could anyone mistake these for a political philosophy or even representative of one?
They are political musings set in a future fantasy world and intended to provoke consideration. Not a political manifesto!
They are still weird, though
Interesting essay but for religion one really needs to read Christianity. Also, if one is honest one must acknowledge that Christianity is not rooted in liberty but in acts of political dissidence and self sacrifice. From that perspective the foundations of Christianity are a better fit for BLM and Defund than they are for preservation of the economic and political status quo.
Once established, Christianity sought respectability and security by distancing itself from its radical foundations and by converting and
co-opting the established elite.
The Vikings became Christians because Charlemagnes Christian empire provided the stability which enabled prosperity to develop. Christianity encourage learning and honesty which promotes wealth. The Labourer is worth his salt and the Parable of Talents encourage honest hard work. Pay what is God’s and pay what is Caesar’s promotes paying taxes.
I’m glad the author mentioned Rousseau in the list of ways to fail the test of liberalism, because I raised an eyebrow at the mention of Ayn Rand in that context earlier in the article.
Otherwise a very interesting article, one with which I agree.
I think we should be careful as to what we define.
The British Liberalism of the post 1660 is the establishment of freedom under the Law and protected by Parliament. From Anglo Saxon times there was no Divine Right of Kings unlike France inherited from Roman Empire. We had a Parliament which by 1295 AD set taxes and the aristocracy was subject to the Law. As late as 1780s, The French King was absolute, the aristocracy paid hardly any taxes and was free to to do much as it pleased: likewise the Roman Catholic Church.
What is generally called the Enlightenment is the revolt of French intellectuals against the Ancien Regime of France, which never existed in Britain.
Since the 1940s American Liberalsim has meant Socialism.
In the UK, Liberalism and early Socialism was based upon Non – Conformism. The City of London was for Parliament and was heavily supported by Puritans. From the 1700s The Industrial Revolution was largely a product of people educated in the Dissenting Academies. J Bronowski said the Industrial Revolution was Britain’s social revolution.
From the 1660s to the 1850s the British aristocracy supported technical development because it wanted to improve agricultural profits and it owned coal mines. The Duke of Bridgewater financed the first canal built by Brindley. There was no such close collaboration in Europe where the aristocracy kept themselves separate. When a child of the Earl of Russell family married a child of the Director of the East India Company it showed a connectionn between Whig Landowners and Whig City merchants
From 1789, French Liberalism has been anti- Roman Catholic.
Britain has an unusual alliance between Large Whig landowners, The City and Parliament against the Tories comprising small landowners ( squires ), The Court and Church of England. The Roman Catholics Dissenters kept of Politics until the 1830s. From the1860s, The Labour party gained the support of un and semi-skilled Labour.
Basically, England believed in Freedom and a lack of taxes or as Wilkes said ” Beef and Liberty “. The Freedoms Britons enjoyed in the 1780s were unknown in Continental Europe. People could speek and associate with a Freedom unknown elsewhere and if they could not vote, they could hurl abuse, vegetables, fruit and cats at the politicians during the hustings. Just look at 18th century cartoons !
The lack of a Police forces, standing army and an armed populace meant the aristocracy, Church and Monarch could not impose their will on the People, they could only persuade them. During all the wars, soldiers were volunteers. The main power was the RN manned by highly skilled cadres of officers and pettyy officers. This meant there was no fear of arrest for dissent.
Britons had the liberty to stick two fingers up to authority and say ” Foxtrot Oscar ” and then say ” What are going to do about it ?” combined with . the ability to fight to defend such liberties.
Today, Liberalism is the dictatorship of the self hating self righteous shallow effete intellectuals who loathe the liberty of the upstanding outspoken individual who refuse to be cowed and coerced.