Excellent piece. liberals (I among them) usually talk in terms of rights and freedoms due to the rhetorical utility in our lingua franca, but we often neglect the historical context and social technology aspects of why liberalism has been so valuable to modern civilization.
"Live and let live" was the ultimate truce, genius in its simplicity, to stop the horrendous, insane bloodshed and destruction caused by the assumption that any genuine moral and political system had an obligation to become socially dominant by any means necessary.
The realization that coexistence, begrudging though it may be, was preferable to endless instability and conflict was a paradigm shift that made space for almost everything positive we associate with modern life.
There is much pressure on liberalism to deliver transcendent meaning, which of course it cannot do, because there's an expectation that the prevailing regime, to earn its legitimacy, should be able to meet all the needs of the people, and liberals have been especially bad at defending liberalism for what it is, or pushing back on its critics looking for a scapegoat for their ennui.
The argument that because liberalism doesn't bolster a particular Good beyond it's own functionality as a neutral playing field, it's either dissolving other sources of meaning, or preventing them from flourishing, is a motivated accusation that obnoxiously veils an implication that maybe totalizing, dominionist ideologies were better after all - despite the horror of war and oppression, at least everyone could derive deep meaning from the struggle for power.
That BS, floated by cosseted intellectuals whose own lives, lacking transcendent struggle, leaves them feeling empty and attracted to a romanticized mythic past, should be challenged head on.
Excellent piece. liberals (I among them) usually talk in terms of rights and freedoms due to the rhetorical utility in our lingua franca, but we often neglect the historical context and social technology aspects of why liberalism has been so valuable to modern civilization.
"Live and let live" was the ultimate truce, genius in its simplicity, to stop the horrendous, insane bloodshed and destruction caused by the assumption that any genuine moral and political system had an obligation to become socially dominant by any means necessary.
The realization that coexistence, begrudging though it may be, was preferable to endless instability and conflict was a paradigm shift that made space for almost everything positive we associate with modern life.
There is much pressure on liberalism to deliver transcendent meaning, which of course it cannot do, because there's an expectation that the prevailing regime, to earn its legitimacy, should be able to meet all the needs of the people, and liberals have been especially bad at defending liberalism for what it is, or pushing back on its critics looking for a scapegoat for their ennui.
The argument that because liberalism doesn't bolster a particular Good beyond it's own functionality as a neutral playing field, it's either dissolving other sources of meaning, or preventing them from flourishing, is a motivated accusation that obnoxiously veils an implication that maybe totalizing, dominionist ideologies were better after all - despite the horror of war and oppression, at least everyone could derive deep meaning from the struggle for power.
That BS, floated by cosseted intellectuals whose own lives, lacking transcendent struggle, leaves them feeling empty and attracted to a romanticized mythic past, should be challenged head on.