I consider myself to be a Classic Liberal… a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.
There has been no political party to entirely support such policies for perhaps 100 years, maybe because it promotes limited government and reduces access to the political gravy train.
Just so. And the author’s insistence that individualism leads to authoritarianism is no more substantial or worthwhile than saying that the tide’s going out will lead to the tide’s coming in. What he forgets – conveniently for his “argument” – is that Liberalism is above all a question of balance: do as you please, speak as you find but not if it actually hinders me from doing the same – resulting in the “harm” principle. And on that solid fulcrum the balance of true Liberalism functions. It was when the Marxists currently masquerading as “liberals” (small-l, American) substituted “offense” for “harm” that things began to collapse and mouths were sewn up.
Correct. And the assumption that a liberal democratic order was in place before on eve of 2020 is totally wrong. At the behest of the EU, Blair from 97 effected a revolution in our governance designed to disable national parliamemtary power by layering a vast unelected techocracy ABOVE both Parliament and the Executive. The NHS, Bank of England, Supreme Court with its power grab (the clue is in the title) and the Army of Regulators all became our new governers. Remember the cry; we are pulling all the levers but nothing is happening?? Covid just gave the NMIs the total freedom to savour and explore their unlimited power – without any oversight (thanks human rights) – as the impotent Executive cacked their pants and decided instead to look popular like War Leaders and pluck the magic money tree. The actions of our largely leftist Blob rulers were illberal because they are illberal, all bowing to deranged groupthink on covid identity, climate and energy and more. This is the reality of British politics 97- present day.
Correct. And the assumption that a liberal democratic order was in place before on eve of 2020 is totally wrong. At the behest of the EU, Blair from 97 effected a revolution in our governance designed to disable national parliamemtary power by layering a vast unelected techocracy ABOVE both Parliament and the Executive. The NHS, Bank of England, Supreme Court with its power grab (the clue is in the title) and the Army of Regulators all became our new governers. Remember the cry; we are pulling all the levers but nothing is happening?? Covid just gave the NMIs the total freedom to savour and explore their unlimited power – without any oversight (thanks human rights) – as the impotent Executive cacked their pants and decided instead to look popular like War Leaders and pluck the magic money tree. The actions of our largely leftist Blob rulers were illberal because they are illberal, all bowing to deranged groupthink on covid identity, climate and energy and more. This is the reality of British politics 97- present day.
I think the obvious limitation to your views is that it pertains to small business and small communities, but it is entirely inappropriate for natural monopolies, the superprofit-driven cartels and the notion that human beings are all honorable people.
The free market only works if consumers can withdraw from the market without penalty. There are certain markets you just can’t withdraw from. You can’t withdraw from the water market, the energy markets, and if you want to go live in a tent to withdraw from the housing market, be my guest.
Adam Smith’s economics only works in highly diluted market places, where no supplier has excessive power and customers are free to buy or not buy without significant hardship.
The real world is much, much more complicated than that. Talk to me about Microsoft, Google and the like and tell me if they operate in ‘diluted markets’.
I think you also need to educate yourself about the reality of modern stock markets and how ‘company valuations’ in no way reflect earnings potential. If you seriously think that stock markets are value-adding to Western society, you may be in need of some significant self-reflection.
Ask yourself about interminable ‘marketing abuse’ with dozens of unwanted emails every day. Buying one product doesn’t mean you want to buy any more, does it? So why do you have to have 100 emails a year from every damn company you ever bought a product from. I’m all for regulating spam emails…..so that I CAN enjoy freedom from private-sector over-reach.
I guess I don’t understand how a government monopoly over critical goods like energy or water is preferable to a private market, but it seems that is what you’re arguing for.
I guess I don’t understand how a government monopoly over critical goods like energy or water is preferable to a private market, but it seems that is what you’re arguing for.
Just so. And the author’s insistence that individualism leads to authoritarianism is no more substantial or worthwhile than saying that the tide’s going out will lead to the tide’s coming in. What he forgets – conveniently for his “argument” – is that Liberalism is above all a question of balance: do as you please, speak as you find but not if it actually hinders me from doing the same – resulting in the “harm” principle. And on that solid fulcrum the balance of true Liberalism functions. It was when the Marxists currently masquerading as “liberals” (small-l, American) substituted “offense” for “harm” that things began to collapse and mouths were sewn up.
I think the obvious limitation to your views is that it pertains to small business and small communities, but it is entirely inappropriate for natural monopolies, the superprofit-driven cartels and the notion that human beings are all honorable people.
The free market only works if consumers can withdraw from the market without penalty. There are certain markets you just can’t withdraw from. You can’t withdraw from the water market, the energy markets, and if you want to go live in a tent to withdraw from the housing market, be my guest.
Adam Smith’s economics only works in highly diluted market places, where no supplier has excessive power and customers are free to buy or not buy without significant hardship.
The real world is much, much more complicated than that. Talk to me about Microsoft, Google and the like and tell me if they operate in ‘diluted markets’.
I think you also need to educate yourself about the reality of modern stock markets and how ‘company valuations’ in no way reflect earnings potential. If you seriously think that stock markets are value-adding to Western society, you may be in need of some significant self-reflection.
Ask yourself about interminable ‘marketing abuse’ with dozens of unwanted emails every day. Buying one product doesn’t mean you want to buy any more, does it? So why do you have to have 100 emails a year from every damn company you ever bought a product from. I’m all for regulating spam emails…..so that I CAN enjoy freedom from private-sector over-reach.
AC Harper
1 year ago
I consider myself to be a Classic Liberal… a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.
There has been no political party to entirely support such policies for perhaps 100 years, maybe because it promotes limited government and reduces access to the political gravy train.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
I am old enough (just) to remember the 1968/9 flu pandemic.
In the UK the death toll was a similar order of magnitude to Covid.
I don’t recall it ever being the lead item on the news.
That says all you need to know about us and our state
I seem to recall we called it (correctly) Hong Kong Flu at the time. However it only killed about 80K which is quite a bit lower than C-19 or so it is claimed.
Quite a bit lower you say but I did check before posting the comment.
At the last count we had 177K deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but 28 day of a positive Covid test is by no means conclusive that the deaths were Covid related. Also we are a far more aged population than we were in 1968 and as you day the population of the country then was only 55 million; hence similar order of magnitude
Quite a bit lower you say but I did check before posting the comment.
At the last count we had 177K deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but 28 day of a positive Covid test is by no means conclusive that the deaths were Covid related. Also we are a far more aged population than we were in 1968 and as you day the population of the country then was only 55 million; hence similar order of magnitude
I seem to recall we called it (correctly) Hong Kong Flu at the time. However it only killed about 80K which is quite a bit lower than C-19 or so it is claimed.
ps: off course we were ONLY 55 million in 1968.
Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
I am old enough (just) to remember the 1968/9 flu pandemic.
In the UK the death toll was a similar order of magnitude to Covid.
I don’t recall it ever being the lead item on the news.
That says all you need to know about us and our state
Jonas Moze
1 year ago
”The million-dollar question is this: would it be possible to reclaim the blessings of Lockean, political liberalism and back off from the aggressive metaphysical debunking of Hobbesian, anthropological liberalism? Or is it a package deal?’‘
It is a question which is meaningless. Lock’s Utilitarianism has always been the foundation of fas*ism and the equivalent in Communism. It is ‘ends justifying means’. It is not Classic Liberalism, it is the opposite.
Anyway – fun to read, this endless string of fun philosophical paradoxes to show how fas*ism has won over and captured Classic Liberalism by using the ersatz liberalism of postmodernism to ultimately end up with this sick modern intersectionality identity politic critical theory.
But it could be said so much easier – no need for Hobbs and Locke, it is the atheism. It is the lack of belief in the ultimate. Only a belief in some ultimate provides for good and evil, for right and wrong. Take Theos out and all which is left is nilos.
I like this definition of Religion – of all the ones I have ever heard:
‘That which is of Ultimate Importance.’
Because once you have an ultimate, something above all else, above life and death, (and remember Absalom’s ontological argument is based on this) then there is that which is above mundane – the flaw with Atheism is noting is above mundane, and so there is no ultimate and good and evil, there is no source for good and evil to be discovered, judged, or understood – so it does not exist, all is merely reduced to correct and incorrect and self and nothing.
If there is no societal belief in an ultimate there is no good and evil – society will devour its self after devouring all the defenseless. I kind of like Mattias Desmet’s ‘Mass Formation’ (psychosis) (Psychology of Totalitarianism) to show how the covid thing worked.
This sickness all began in Wiemar Germany in the 1920s at the Goethe Institute, called ‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil, it is C.S.Lewis’s Screwtape taking the soul out of man. It is the modern ‘ersatz-Liberalism’ which is really just to destroy the soul and leave a husk by teaching there is no ultimate, so all reality is merely one’s self as one experiences, then nothing. It is very dark, and it has captured the education, entertainment, and media – and thus political. It is amoral.
Sorry Jonas, but i think you’re unwittingly projecting your own spiritual crisis into the debate. Your conflation of atheism with evil is nonsense – a fundamental misunderstanding. I haven’t the time to expand on that specific point, though i could.
There’s some useful analysis in this essay, which i missed first time round. It almost feels slightly aged now, as if it were a corrective to the experience of Covid from which we’ve emerged, perhaps with the help of such analyses.
Given our experience of this period in the West and its effect of helping us focus on Western malaise, it’ll be interesting as time goes on to see how the experiences of countries such as China develops, with their different philosophies and systems of discourse in the public realm. The release, as it were, of Chinese citizens to travel whilst their country remains in the grip of a Covid wave is a further addition to its unfolding with decisions to be made around testing of those seeking to enter countries in a post-Covid stage.
It seems to me that our consciousness has been raised of the interconnectedness of the global community. How this plays out through the clash of ideas will be fascinating. I just feel we might do well in the West to desist from too much navel-gazing. We’re all spiritual creatures, regardless of belief in a specific divinity, or none, and we need to move on from the angst which envelops those still hankering for old ‘certainties’.
“‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil …”
I agree: Postmodernism is a destructive, nihilistic, coercive philosophy – deconstructive with no constructive alternatives built into its worldview, other than the overthrow of the established order and its replacement by tyranny.
The scary thing is that it has been visibly and substantially successful in the past five years since it exploded into every corner of western democratic life, though it has been marching steadily through the institutions since its original synthesis by the Frankfurt School in the 1920s.
Many of its leading proponents fled Germany following the rise of the N***s in the 1930s and found asylum in universities in the UK and USA and elsewhere in the West. Here they refined and spread their creed, especially from the 1960s, capturing young students who were susceptible to the seductive ideas and inclined to rebellion without deep thought. Each successive generation of undergraduates absorbed and purified this philosophy then passed on the stronger ‘distillate’ to the next.
Today’s Woking Class leaders in every sector, now ruthlessly imposing their Postmodernist worldview on us all, were infused with a strong brew of this nihilistic creed; the latest generation to be targeted and ‘converted’ (brainwashed) by a Western, overwhelmingly Left academy bent on ‘changing’ our world according to their belief system, and pumping out converts to deliver the results far beyond the walls of their ivory towers. Truth and objectivity have been replaced by cynicism and the destruction of individual, social and political freedom in the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. DIE!
God help us when the next generation takes over!
Sorry Jonas, but i think you’re unwittingly projecting your own spiritual crisis into the debate. Your conflation of atheism with evil is nonsense – a fundamental misunderstanding. I haven’t the time to expand on that specific point, though i could.
There’s some useful analysis in this essay, which i missed first time round. It almost feels slightly aged now, as if it were a corrective to the experience of Covid from which we’ve emerged, perhaps with the help of such analyses.
Given our experience of this period in the West and its effect of helping us focus on Western malaise, it’ll be interesting as time goes on to see how the experiences of countries such as China develops, with their different philosophies and systems of discourse in the public realm. The release, as it were, of Chinese citizens to travel whilst their country remains in the grip of a Covid wave is a further addition to its unfolding with decisions to be made around testing of those seeking to enter countries in a post-Covid stage.
It seems to me that our consciousness has been raised of the interconnectedness of the global community. How this plays out through the clash of ideas will be fascinating. I just feel we might do well in the West to desist from too much navel-gazing. We’re all spiritual creatures, regardless of belief in a specific divinity, or none, and we need to move on from the angst which envelops those still hankering for old ‘certainties’.
“‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil …”
I agree: Postmodernism is a destructive, nihilistic, coercive philosophy – deconstructive with no constructive alternatives built into its worldview, other than the overthrow of the established order and its replacement by tyranny.
The scary thing is that it has been visibly and substantially successful in the past five years since it exploded into every corner of western democratic life, though it has been marching steadily through the institutions since its original synthesis by the Frankfurt School in the 1920s.
Many of its leading proponents fled Germany following the rise of the N***s in the 1930s and found asylum in universities in the UK and USA and elsewhere in the West. Here they refined and spread their creed, especially from the 1960s, capturing young students who were susceptible to the seductive ideas and inclined to rebellion without deep thought. Each successive generation of undergraduates absorbed and purified this philosophy then passed on the stronger ‘distillate’ to the next.
Today’s Woking Class leaders in every sector, now ruthlessly imposing their Postmodernist worldview on us all, were infused with a strong brew of this nihilistic creed; the latest generation to be targeted and ‘converted’ (brainwashed) by a Western, overwhelmingly Left academy bent on ‘changing’ our world according to their belief system, and pumping out converts to deliver the results far beyond the walls of their ivory towers. Truth and objectivity have been replaced by cynicism and the destruction of individual, social and political freedom in the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. DIE!
God help us when the next generation takes over!
Last edited 1 year ago by Julian Pellatt
Jonas Moze
1 year ago
”The million-dollar question is this: would it be possible to reclaim the blessings of Lockean, political liberalism and back off from the aggressive metaphysical debunking of Hobbesian, anthropological liberalism? Or is it a package deal?’‘
It is a question which is meaningless. Lock’s Utilitarianism has always been the foundation of fas*ism and the equivalent in Communism. It is ‘ends justifying means’. It is not Classic Liberalism, it is the opposite.
Anyway – fun to read, this endless string of fun philosophical paradoxes to show how fas*ism has won over and captured Classic Liberalism by using the ersatz liberalism of postmodernism to ultimately end up with this sick modern intersectionality identity politic critical theory.
But it could be said so much easier – no need for Hobbs and Locke, it is the atheism. It is the lack of belief in the ultimate. Only a belief in some ultimate provides for good and evil, for right and wrong. Take Theos out and all which is left is nilos.
I like this definition of Religion – of all the ones I have ever heard:
‘That which is of Ultimate Importance.’
Because once you have an ultimate, something above all else, above life and death, (and remember Absalom’s ontological argument is based on this) then there is that which is above mundane – the flaw with Atheism is noting is above mundane, and so there is no ultimate and good and evil, there is no source for good and evil to be discovered, judged, or understood – so it does not exist, all is merely reduced to correct and incorrect and self and nothing.
If there is no societal belief in an ultimate there is no good and evil – society will devour its self after devouring all the defenseless. I kind of like Mattias Desmet’s ‘Mass Formation’ (psychosis) (Psychology of Totalitarianism) to show how the covid thing worked.
This sickness all began in Wiemar Germany in the 1920s at the Goethe Institute, called ‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil, it is C.S.Lewis’s Screwtape taking the soul out of man. It is the modern ‘ersatz-Liberalism’ which is really just to destroy the soul and leave a husk by teaching there is no ultimate, so all reality is merely one’s self as one experiences, then nothing. It is very dark, and it has captured the education, entertainment, and media – and thus political. It is amoral.
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
The problem with this analysis is that it presumes we all share this tendency toward believing the Hobbesian view of ourselves as in need of supervision and management by an elite. The truth is, only the elite have this view of us (along with their usual cadres of useful idiots) and have had to institute stealthy government by “nudge” because the rest of us still stubbornly refuse to accept their self-anointed role as rulers of us all for our own good.
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
The problem with this analysis is that it presumes we all share this tendency toward believing the Hobbesian view of ourselves as in need of supervision and management by an elite. The truth is, only the elite have this view of us (along with their usual cadres of useful idiots) and have had to institute stealthy government by “nudge” because the rest of us still stubbornly refuse to accept their self-anointed role as rulers of us all for our own good.
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Well, I would say that top-down rule by the educated class has wilted all the “little platoons” in which “individuals” get together and work together as social animals.
So, of course, after the rulers have destroyed the voluntary communities the only thing to do in an emergency is for everyone to mass together in an army under the beneficent Oz.
Unfortunately, the Man Behind the Curtain is an idiot.
Maybe the solution to all our problems is to water and grow all the voluntary associations– in which individuals belong and matter — and starve the compulsory agencies of government.
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Well, I would say that top-down rule by the educated class has wilted all the “little platoons” in which “individuals” get together and work together as social animals.
So, of course, after the rulers have destroyed the voluntary communities the only thing to do in an emergency is for everyone to mass together in an army under the beneficent Oz.
Unfortunately, the Man Behind the Curtain is an idiot.
Maybe the solution to all our problems is to water and grow all the voluntary associations– in which individuals belong and matter — and starve the compulsory agencies of government.
Ray Andrews
1 year ago
There is a false dichotomy here. Shall we be True Liberals with the freedom to believe what we want? Or shall we be Hob-nobbers living under the control of some kind of monarch? The Third Way — which we enjoyed at least in part up to the 50s — understood that a united society will be both free and ‘ordered’ at the same time organically. When the West was white, Christian and … Western … the centripetal forces on society were at a minimum and thus authoritarian impulses had nothing to feed them. Only when society fragments does the dichotomy arise.
Ray Andrews
1 year ago
There is a false dichotomy here. Shall we be True Liberals with the freedom to believe what we want? Or shall we be Hob-nobbers living under the control of some kind of monarch? The Third Way — which we enjoyed at least in part up to the 50s — understood that a united society will be both free and ‘ordered’ at the same time organically. When the West was white, Christian and … Western … the centripetal forces on society were at a minimum and thus authoritarian impulses had nothing to feed them. Only when society fragments does the dichotomy arise.
Robin Lumley-Savile
1 year ago
Impressively big words!
Robin Lumley-Savile
1 year ago
Impressively big words!
Paul MacDonnell
1 year ago
This is a very good article. I’m somewhat puzzled by the author’s use of the term ‘anthropological’ in this context.
There’s so much to unpack from this great piece. Regarding the “right now, in the spring of 2022, I would estimate that a quarter of people walking around Berkeley are masked outdoors“, I wonder what their motives are. Are they afraid of even one more person catching COVID and dying? By that standard, let’s continue masking by all means. In reality, there ought to be a mix of compassion with hard truth–even (especially) when that truth isn’t politically correct. With social issues, liberals need to be much more willing to piss one another off and dish out hard truths. I think I saw some of this inherently prideful reputation management (not wanting to be seen associated with “problematic” ideas) back in high school in my (mostly Caucasian) liberal college town: the “cool kids” were deathly silent when my Middle Eastern Studies class was asked to give examples of positive and negative stereotypes about ethnic groups. They simply wouldn’t answer. This was pre-Trump mind you.
I consider myself to be a Classic Liberal… a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.
There has been no political party to entirely support such policies for perhaps 100 years, maybe because it promotes limited government and reduces access to the political gravy train.
Just so. And the author’s insistence that individualism leads to authoritarianism is no more substantial or worthwhile than saying that the tide’s going out will lead to the tide’s coming in. What he forgets – conveniently for his “argument” – is that Liberalism is above all a question of balance: do as you please, speak as you find but not if it actually hinders me from doing the same – resulting in the “harm” principle. And on that solid fulcrum the balance of true Liberalism functions. It was when the Marxists currently masquerading as “liberals” (small-l, American) substituted “offense” for “harm” that things began to collapse and mouths were sewn up.
Correct. And the assumption that a liberal democratic order was in place before on eve of 2020 is totally wrong. At the behest of the EU, Blair from 97 effected a revolution in our governance designed to disable national parliamemtary power by layering a vast unelected techocracy ABOVE both Parliament and the Executive. The NHS, Bank of England, Supreme Court with its power grab (the clue is in the title) and the Army of Regulators all became our new governers. Remember the cry; we are pulling all the levers but nothing is happening?? Covid just gave the NMIs the total freedom to savour and explore their unlimited power – without any oversight (thanks human rights) – as the impotent Executive cacked their pants and decided instead to look popular like War Leaders and pluck the magic money tree. The actions of our largely leftist Blob rulers were illberal because they are illberal, all bowing to deranged groupthink on covid identity, climate and energy and more. This is the reality of British politics 97- present day.
I am surprised UnHerd hasn’t censored your excellent polemic.
Perhaps it will do so shortly?
I am surprised UnHerd hasn’t censored your excellent polemic.
Perhaps it will do so shortly?
Correct. And the assumption that a liberal democratic order was in place before on eve of 2020 is totally wrong. At the behest of the EU, Blair from 97 effected a revolution in our governance designed to disable national parliamemtary power by layering a vast unelected techocracy ABOVE both Parliament and the Executive. The NHS, Bank of England, Supreme Court with its power grab (the clue is in the title) and the Army of Regulators all became our new governers. Remember the cry; we are pulling all the levers but nothing is happening?? Covid just gave the NMIs the total freedom to savour and explore their unlimited power – without any oversight (thanks human rights) – as the impotent Executive cacked their pants and decided instead to look popular like War Leaders and pluck the magic money tree. The actions of our largely leftist Blob rulers were illberal because they are illberal, all bowing to deranged groupthink on covid identity, climate and energy and more. This is the reality of British politics 97- present day.
I think the obvious limitation to your views is that it pertains to small business and small communities, but it is entirely inappropriate for natural monopolies, the superprofit-driven cartels and the notion that human beings are all honorable people.
The free market only works if consumers can withdraw from the market without penalty. There are certain markets you just can’t withdraw from. You can’t withdraw from the water market, the energy markets, and if you want to go live in a tent to withdraw from the housing market, be my guest.
Adam Smith’s economics only works in highly diluted market places, where no supplier has excessive power and customers are free to buy or not buy without significant hardship.
The real world is much, much more complicated than that. Talk to me about Microsoft, Google and the like and tell me if they operate in ‘diluted markets’.
I think you also need to educate yourself about the reality of modern stock markets and how ‘company valuations’ in no way reflect earnings potential. If you seriously think that stock markets are value-adding to Western society, you may be in need of some significant self-reflection.
Ask yourself about interminable ‘marketing abuse’ with dozens of unwanted emails every day. Buying one product doesn’t mean you want to buy any more, does it? So why do you have to have 100 emails a year from every damn company you ever bought a product from. I’m all for regulating spam emails…..so that I CAN enjoy freedom from private-sector over-reach.
You have replied to me but appear to have used my comments merely as a peg to hang your own ideas on.
Strange. He rebuts you does he not? Obviously your comments must be the ‘peg’ on which the rebuttal hangs.
Strange. He rebuts you does he not? Obviously your comments must be the ‘peg’ on which the rebuttal hangs.
I guess I don’t understand how a government monopoly over critical goods like energy or water is preferable to a private market, but it seems that is what you’re arguing for.
You have replied to me but appear to have used my comments merely as a peg to hang your own ideas on.
I guess I don’t understand how a government monopoly over critical goods like energy or water is preferable to a private market, but it seems that is what you’re arguing for.
Just so. And the author’s insistence that individualism leads to authoritarianism is no more substantial or worthwhile than saying that the tide’s going out will lead to the tide’s coming in. What he forgets – conveniently for his “argument” – is that Liberalism is above all a question of balance: do as you please, speak as you find but not if it actually hinders me from doing the same – resulting in the “harm” principle. And on that solid fulcrum the balance of true Liberalism functions. It was when the Marxists currently masquerading as “liberals” (small-l, American) substituted “offense” for “harm” that things began to collapse and mouths were sewn up.
I think the obvious limitation to your views is that it pertains to small business and small communities, but it is entirely inappropriate for natural monopolies, the superprofit-driven cartels and the notion that human beings are all honorable people.
The free market only works if consumers can withdraw from the market without penalty. There are certain markets you just can’t withdraw from. You can’t withdraw from the water market, the energy markets, and if you want to go live in a tent to withdraw from the housing market, be my guest.
Adam Smith’s economics only works in highly diluted market places, where no supplier has excessive power and customers are free to buy or not buy without significant hardship.
The real world is much, much more complicated than that. Talk to me about Microsoft, Google and the like and tell me if they operate in ‘diluted markets’.
I think you also need to educate yourself about the reality of modern stock markets and how ‘company valuations’ in no way reflect earnings potential. If you seriously think that stock markets are value-adding to Western society, you may be in need of some significant self-reflection.
Ask yourself about interminable ‘marketing abuse’ with dozens of unwanted emails every day. Buying one product doesn’t mean you want to buy any more, does it? So why do you have to have 100 emails a year from every damn company you ever bought a product from. I’m all for regulating spam emails…..so that I CAN enjoy freedom from private-sector over-reach.
I consider myself to be a Classic Liberal… a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.
There has been no political party to entirely support such policies for perhaps 100 years, maybe because it promotes limited government and reduces access to the political gravy train.
I am old enough (just) to remember the 1968/9 flu pandemic.
In the UK the death toll was a similar order of magnitude to Covid.
I don’t recall it ever being the lead item on the news.
That says all you need to know about us and our state
I seem to recall we called it (correctly) Hong Kong Flu at the time. However it only killed about 80K which is quite a bit lower than C-19 or so it is claimed.
ps: off course we were ONLY 55 million in 1968.
Quite a bit lower you say but I did check before posting the comment.
At the last count we had 177K deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but 28 day of a positive Covid test is by no means conclusive that the deaths were Covid related. Also we are a far more aged population than we were in 1968 and as you day the population of the country then was only 55 million; hence similar order of magnitude
Thank you, as it happens my thoughts precisely.
Thank you, as it happens my thoughts precisely.
Quite a bit lower you say but I did check before posting the comment.
At the last count we had 177K deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but 28 day of a positive Covid test is by no means conclusive that the deaths were Covid related. Also we are a far more aged population than we were in 1968 and as you day the population of the country then was only 55 million; hence similar order of magnitude
I seem to recall we called it (correctly) Hong Kong Flu at the time. However it only killed about 80K which is quite a bit lower than C-19 or so it is claimed.
ps: off course we were ONLY 55 million in 1968.
I am old enough (just) to remember the 1968/9 flu pandemic.
In the UK the death toll was a similar order of magnitude to Covid.
I don’t recall it ever being the lead item on the news.
That says all you need to know about us and our state
”The million-dollar question is this: would it be possible to reclaim the blessings of Lockean, political liberalism and back off from the aggressive metaphysical debunking of Hobbesian, anthropological liberalism? Or is it a package deal?’‘
It is a question which is meaningless. Lock’s Utilitarianism has always been the foundation of fas*ism and the equivalent in Communism. It is ‘ends justifying means’. It is not Classic Liberalism, it is the opposite.
Anyway – fun to read, this endless string of fun philosophical paradoxes to show how fas*ism has won over and captured Classic Liberalism by using the ersatz liberalism of postmodernism to ultimately end up with this sick modern intersectionality identity politic critical theory.
But it could be said so much easier – no need for Hobbs and Locke, it is the atheism. It is the lack of belief in the ultimate. Only a belief in some ultimate provides for good and evil, for right and wrong. Take Theos out and all which is left is nilos.
I like this definition of Religion – of all the ones I have ever heard:
‘That which is of Ultimate Importance.’
Because once you have an ultimate, something above all else, above life and death, (and remember Absalom’s ontological argument is based on this) then there is that which is above mundane – the flaw with Atheism is noting is above mundane, and so there is no ultimate and good and evil, there is no source for good and evil to be discovered, judged, or understood – so it does not exist, all is merely reduced to correct and incorrect and self and nothing.
If there is no societal belief in an ultimate there is no good and evil – society will devour its self after devouring all the defenseless. I kind of like Mattias Desmet’s ‘Mass Formation’ (psychosis) (Psychology of Totalitarianism) to show how the covid thing worked.
This sickness all began in Wiemar Germany in the 1920s at the Goethe Institute, called ‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil, it is C.S.Lewis’s Screwtape taking the soul out of man. It is the modern ‘ersatz-Liberalism’ which is really just to destroy the soul and leave a husk by teaching there is no ultimate, so all reality is merely one’s self as one experiences, then nothing. It is very dark, and it has captured the education, entertainment, and media – and thus political. It is amoral.
Sorry Jonas, but i think you’re unwittingly projecting your own spiritual crisis into the debate. Your conflation of atheism with evil is nonsense – a fundamental misunderstanding. I haven’t the time to expand on that specific point, though i could.
There’s some useful analysis in this essay, which i missed first time round. It almost feels slightly aged now, as if it were a corrective to the experience of Covid from which we’ve emerged, perhaps with the help of such analyses.
Given our experience of this period in the West and its effect of helping us focus on Western malaise, it’ll be interesting as time goes on to see how the experiences of countries such as China develops, with their different philosophies and systems of discourse in the public realm. The release, as it were, of Chinese citizens to travel whilst their country remains in the grip of a Covid wave is a further addition to its unfolding with decisions to be made around testing of those seeking to enter countries in a post-Covid stage.
It seems to me that our consciousness has been raised of the interconnectedness of the global community. How this plays out through the clash of ideas will be fascinating. I just feel we might do well in the West to desist from too much navel-gazing. We’re all spiritual creatures, regardless of belief in a specific divinity, or none, and we need to move on from the angst which envelops those still hankering for old ‘certainties’.
“‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil …”
I agree: Postmodernism is a destructive, nihilistic, coercive philosophy – deconstructive with no constructive alternatives built into its worldview, other than the overthrow of the established order and its replacement by tyranny.
The scary thing is that it has been visibly and substantially successful in the past five years since it exploded into every corner of western democratic life, though it has been marching steadily through the institutions since its original synthesis by the Frankfurt School in the 1920s.
Many of its leading proponents fled Germany following the rise of the N***s in the 1930s and found asylum in universities in the UK and USA and elsewhere in the West. Here they refined and spread their creed, especially from the 1960s, capturing young students who were susceptible to the seductive ideas and inclined to rebellion without deep thought. Each successive generation of undergraduates absorbed and purified this philosophy then passed on the stronger ‘distillate’ to the next.
Today’s Woking Class leaders in every sector, now ruthlessly imposing their Postmodernist worldview on us all, were infused with a strong brew of this nihilistic creed; the latest generation to be targeted and ‘converted’ (brainwashed) by a Western, overwhelmingly Left academy bent on ‘changing’ our world according to their belief system, and pumping out converts to deliver the results far beyond the walls of their ivory towers. Truth and objectivity have been replaced by cynicism and the destruction of individual, social and political freedom in the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. DIE!
God help us when the next generation takes over!
Sorry Jonas, but i think you’re unwittingly projecting your own spiritual crisis into the debate. Your conflation of atheism with evil is nonsense – a fundamental misunderstanding. I haven’t the time to expand on that specific point, though i could.
There’s some useful analysis in this essay, which i missed first time round. It almost feels slightly aged now, as if it were a corrective to the experience of Covid from which we’ve emerged, perhaps with the help of such analyses.
Given our experience of this period in the West and its effect of helping us focus on Western malaise, it’ll be interesting as time goes on to see how the experiences of countries such as China develops, with their different philosophies and systems of discourse in the public realm. The release, as it were, of Chinese citizens to travel whilst their country remains in the grip of a Covid wave is a further addition to its unfolding with decisions to be made around testing of those seeking to enter countries in a post-Covid stage.
It seems to me that our consciousness has been raised of the interconnectedness of the global community. How this plays out through the clash of ideas will be fascinating. I just feel we might do well in the West to desist from too much navel-gazing. We’re all spiritual creatures, regardless of belief in a specific divinity, or none, and we need to move on from the angst which envelops those still hankering for old ‘certainties’.
“‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil …”
I agree: Postmodernism is a destructive, nihilistic, coercive philosophy – deconstructive with no constructive alternatives built into its worldview, other than the overthrow of the established order and its replacement by tyranny.
The scary thing is that it has been visibly and substantially successful in the past five years since it exploded into every corner of western democratic life, though it has been marching steadily through the institutions since its original synthesis by the Frankfurt School in the 1920s.
Many of its leading proponents fled Germany following the rise of the N***s in the 1930s and found asylum in universities in the UK and USA and elsewhere in the West. Here they refined and spread their creed, especially from the 1960s, capturing young students who were susceptible to the seductive ideas and inclined to rebellion without deep thought. Each successive generation of undergraduates absorbed and purified this philosophy then passed on the stronger ‘distillate’ to the next.
Today’s Woking Class leaders in every sector, now ruthlessly imposing their Postmodernist worldview on us all, were infused with a strong brew of this nihilistic creed; the latest generation to be targeted and ‘converted’ (brainwashed) by a Western, overwhelmingly Left academy bent on ‘changing’ our world according to their belief system, and pumping out converts to deliver the results far beyond the walls of their ivory towers. Truth and objectivity have been replaced by cynicism and the destruction of individual, social and political freedom in the name of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. DIE!
God help us when the next generation takes over!
”The million-dollar question is this: would it be possible to reclaim the blessings of Lockean, political liberalism and back off from the aggressive metaphysical debunking of Hobbesian, anthropological liberalism? Or is it a package deal?’‘
It is a question which is meaningless. Lock’s Utilitarianism has always been the foundation of fas*ism and the equivalent in Communism. It is ‘ends justifying means’. It is not Classic Liberalism, it is the opposite.
Anyway – fun to read, this endless string of fun philosophical paradoxes to show how fas*ism has won over and captured Classic Liberalism by using the ersatz liberalism of postmodernism to ultimately end up with this sick modern intersectionality identity politic critical theory.
But it could be said so much easier – no need for Hobbs and Locke, it is the atheism. It is the lack of belief in the ultimate. Only a belief in some ultimate provides for good and evil, for right and wrong. Take Theos out and all which is left is nilos.
I like this definition of Religion – of all the ones I have ever heard:
‘That which is of Ultimate Importance.’
Because once you have an ultimate, something above all else, above life and death, (and remember Absalom’s ontological argument is based on this) then there is that which is above mundane – the flaw with Atheism is noting is above mundane, and so there is no ultimate and good and evil, there is no source for good and evil to be discovered, judged, or understood – so it does not exist, all is merely reduced to correct and incorrect and self and nothing.
If there is no societal belief in an ultimate there is no good and evil – society will devour its self after devouring all the defenseless. I kind of like Mattias Desmet’s ‘Mass Formation’ (psychosis) (Psychology of Totalitarianism) to show how the covid thing worked.
This sickness all began in Wiemar Germany in the 1920s at the Goethe Institute, called ‘The Frankfurt School’. The blending of Atheism, existentialism, Freudian analysis, and Marxism to give the nihilistic ‘Critical Theory’ which Derrida and Foucault refined into Postmodernism. It is anti-human, really it is evil, it is C.S.Lewis’s Screwtape taking the soul out of man. It is the modern ‘ersatz-Liberalism’ which is really just to destroy the soul and leave a husk by teaching there is no ultimate, so all reality is merely one’s self as one experiences, then nothing. It is very dark, and it has captured the education, entertainment, and media – and thus political. It is amoral.
The problem with this analysis is that it presumes we all share this tendency toward believing the Hobbesian view of ourselves as in need of supervision and management by an elite. The truth is, only the elite have this view of us (along with their usual cadres of useful idiots) and have had to institute stealthy government by “nudge” because the rest of us still stubbornly refuse to accept their self-anointed role as rulers of us all for our own good.
The problem with this analysis is that it presumes we all share this tendency toward believing the Hobbesian view of ourselves as in need of supervision and management by an elite. The truth is, only the elite have this view of us (along with their usual cadres of useful idiots) and have had to institute stealthy government by “nudge” because the rest of us still stubbornly refuse to accept their self-anointed role as rulers of us all for our own good.
Well, I would say that top-down rule by the educated class has wilted all the “little platoons” in which “individuals” get together and work together as social animals.
So, of course, after the rulers have destroyed the voluntary communities the only thing to do in an emergency is for everyone to mass together in an army under the beneficent Oz.
Unfortunately, the Man Behind the Curtain is an idiot.
Maybe the solution to all our problems is to water and grow all the voluntary associations– in which individuals belong and matter — and starve the compulsory agencies of government.
Well, I would say that top-down rule by the educated class has wilted all the “little platoons” in which “individuals” get together and work together as social animals.
So, of course, after the rulers have destroyed the voluntary communities the only thing to do in an emergency is for everyone to mass together in an army under the beneficent Oz.
Unfortunately, the Man Behind the Curtain is an idiot.
Maybe the solution to all our problems is to water and grow all the voluntary associations– in which individuals belong and matter — and starve the compulsory agencies of government.
There is a false dichotomy here. Shall we be True Liberals with the freedom to believe what we want? Or shall we be Hob-nobbers living under the control of some kind of monarch? The Third Way — which we enjoyed at least in part up to the 50s — understood that a united society will be both free and ‘ordered’ at the same time organically. When the West was white, Christian and … Western … the centripetal forces on society were at a minimum and thus authoritarian impulses had nothing to feed them. Only when society fragments does the dichotomy arise.
There is a false dichotomy here. Shall we be True Liberals with the freedom to believe what we want? Or shall we be Hob-nobbers living under the control of some kind of monarch? The Third Way — which we enjoyed at least in part up to the 50s — understood that a united society will be both free and ‘ordered’ at the same time organically. When the West was white, Christian and … Western … the centripetal forces on society were at a minimum and thus authoritarian impulses had nothing to feed them. Only when society fragments does the dichotomy arise.
Impressively big words!
Impressively big words!
This is a very good article. I’m somewhat puzzled by the author’s use of the term ‘anthropological’ in this context.
Worth reading these articles to develop not a definitive but help developing balanced, evidence based analyses: ‘Sunak demands negative Covid tests for all travellers from China’ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ad0968f4-881f-11ed-bb21-8f4d97ec7b02?shareToken=f625c735a175f1c9876fbda56714190b
and
‘China Covid: experts estimate 9,000 deaths a day as US says it may sample wastewater from planes. Infectious disease experts believe strategy more effective in slowing virus spread than new travel restrictions, as health data firm says thousands are likely dying daily in China’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/30/china-covid-experts-estimate-9000-deaths-a-day-as-us-says-it-may-sample-wastewater-from-planes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There’s so much to unpack from this great piece. Regarding the “right now, in the spring of 2022, I would estimate that a quarter of people walking around Berkeley are masked outdoors“, I wonder what their motives are. Are they afraid of even one more person catching COVID and dying? By that standard, let’s continue masking by all means. In reality, there ought to be a mix of compassion with hard truth–even (especially) when that truth isn’t politically correct. With social issues, liberals need to be much more willing to piss one another off and dish out hard truths. I think I saw some of this inherently prideful reputation management (not wanting to be seen associated with “problematic” ideas) back in high school in my (mostly Caucasian) liberal college town: the “cool kids” were deathly silent when my Middle Eastern Studies class was asked to give examples of positive and negative stereotypes about ethnic groups. They simply wouldn’t answer. This was pre-Trump mind you.
4/10! Try harder.
4/10! Try harder.