The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 133
Classical Liberalism is in trouble. We can all see that. With it, the nations that have incorporated it as their operating model are also in trouble. We can all see that too. Today, post-liberal movements on both the Left and the putative Right see these problems and are calling for Classical Liberalism’s demise. But do they see the problems we face clearly and accurately? James Lindsay, host of the New Discourses Podcast, thinks they do not, and in this episode, he breaks down what they’re missing and the major problems Classical Liberalism faces as we make our way deeper into the twenty-first century. First, it’s under deliberate attack from an attempted global Communist Revolution. Second, we can’t defend it because we aren’t even clear about what it is. Third, three deep and important philosophical questions demand answering in order to carry the philosophy of Individual Rights and Liberty into our increasingly technological and digital age. Join him to break through the conceptual fog and to start facing the real problems threatening us and to turn away from fighting shadows.
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11 comments
Stephen Hicks seems to have overlooked the work of Hubbard.
This work contains the most workable and updated model for the “individual” that exists on Earth today. This can be extended back into the teachings from the Vedas, and the Buddha, but expand on those to give us more workable constructs.
I don’t consider Liberalism that much different from other -isms.
The reasons any -ism fails (in my opinion) are because 1) they are based on assumptions that aren’t true or workable; 2) they don’t take the inevitable threat of psychopathy into account; 3) they are too ignorant of the actual human condition.
“Classical liberalism” has been somewhat corrupted from its 1700s form, which was more Christian-oriented I believe. There may have also been a class aspect of it back then that has been diluted. This has to do with who would be qualified to be a voter. But its basic weaknesses seem to me to include:
1) The assumption that everyone has basically good intentions, and is reasonably smart and rational. This is not the true condition of Mankind today and never has been. On a filtered class basis, one can hope that a certain portion of humanity fits these qualities. But they don’t, either, according to vast experience.
2) They think criminals do what they do for explainable reasons, and can possibly be rehabilitated by eliminating those reasons. This is grossly not true of the psychopath or his henchmen.
3) They tend to believe the findings of “modern” science. Science currently has no workable concept of Soul or Spirit. Soul or Spirit is a basic component of the actual human condition; it cannot be successfully ignored.
Beyond this, the tolerance and intellectual flexibility of the liberal is useful and more sustainable than the slightly more petrified outlook of most conservatives. A liberal, in theory, is more willing to learn, and that is what is needed the most right now.
“Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. As it becomes fully itself, it generates endemic pathologies more rapidly and pervasively than it is able to produce Band-Aids and veils to cover them… what we face today is not a set of discrete problems solvable by liberal tools but a systemic challenge arising from a pervasive invisible ideology. The problem is not just in one program or application but in the operating system itself. It is almost impossible for us to conceive that we are in the midst of a legitimation crisis in which our deepest systemic assumptions are subject to dissolution.
“Taken to its logical conclusion, liberalism’s end game is unsustainable in every respect: it cannot perpetually enforce order upon a collection of autonomous individuals increasingly shorn of constitutive social norms, nor can it provide endless material growth in a world of limits…. If… the liberal project is ultimately self-contradictory and that it culminates in the twin depletions of moral and material reservoirs upon which it has relied, then we face a choice… We can either elect a future of self-limitation born of the practice and experience of self-governance in local communities, or we can back inexorably into a future in which extreme license coexists with extreme oppression.”
Patrick Deneen “Why Liberalism Failed” 2018
“Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence [because] the defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1978 ‘A World Split Apart’
In terms of defence of individual liberty and property rights, it’s hard to argue, if one wished to, with JL’s discussion (though I wish he would temper his language). Much of James’ work is so commendable; fancy wading through all the horrid material he looks at! no thanks! And so articulately stated. When it comes to discussion of ‘Classical Liberalism,’ however, I think he falls short.
The big problem to me is that there is an implicit background to enlightenment values and the classical liberalism mentioned here that is not recognised. Here is James elsewhere defining CL:
“We are not God. We cannot become God, make God, or speak with the authority of God. This is axiomatic and the beginning of wisdom and prosperity.
“Because we are not God, we cannot know the full nature of God, or even for certainty whether God exists at all. As a result, we cannot know any purpose, including ultimate purpose, each of our lives may have. Because we cannot know the full nature of God, should He exist, nor any purpose our lives may have in His sight, we lack the authority to compel the beliefs of others, lest we lead them into ultimate error. In particular, we therefore lack the authority to alienate anyone, self or other, from the possibility of fulfilling that purpose. In short, lacking the authority of God, we lack justification for the compulsion of our fellow man.
“In that we all lack the authority of God and thus any justification for the compulsion of our fellow man, all men are created politically equal. Nothing in the world, which is also not God, justifies an intrinsically limited human being to hold political or social authority over another without the consent of both parties to that relationship. Any authority we can hold over any other person must therefore be earned, provisional, temporary, and voluntarily given and accepted.”
Thus, lying behind the CL philosophy is the idea of God – who is then denied. In Biblical terms, this is ‘a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.’ This, so far as I know from a pretty unlearned stance, is exactly the position of the enlightenment. James refers to ‘rationalism and skepticism’ as the basis for sound polity – that’s Descartes – rationalism, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes thought he was defending Christian faith, but in fact was undercutting it, appealing to human intellect as our best source. “A form of godliness…” Because this view was at least close to a biblical view apart from its “denying the power,” the two could survive alongside each other, with rationalism, enlightenment values, informing much of the polity. It could do this reasonably successfully just so long as there was a sufficient repository in society of those who do not ‘deny the power’ – that is, as long as there was a sufficiently Christian consensus – that at least is my contention. In the end though, if there is no power to appeal to, human nature will trend downwards into every form of corruption and indecency, and the polity of classical liberalism cannot work. I note that James says that there is no good theory of the individual – well, no, not outside of the Bible, which is very clear. I also note that he appeals to the “sanctity of the conscience”; by what authority? how is it sanctified if there is no working power to sanctify? To me at least, in today’s context, appeal to enlightenment, classical liberal, values just seems rather quaint; it is certainly good to uphold values of liberty, property and privacy, but there has to be some authority to do so.
Finally, since James mentions JS Mill, here is a favourite schoolboy howler: “JS Mill says that the higher pleasures are intellectual, but the lower pleasures are sensational.”
Thank you, James, but please leave out the f word!
“Yes i am a profound dyslexic.”
I worked for years with adults who had serious “learning disabilities” and “autism”-type written communication challenges. Like most of them, you also have intelligent, earnest and insightful things to say but language itself is getting in the way of your saying them.
Non-dyslexics navigate the language forest using learned and mastered grammar and syntax as machetes that clear a path to Meaning. Dyslexics become lost in a language jungle with few tools to help them hack their way to basic Comprehensibility. If you want people to really hear what you are trying to say, you need to find a way to fortify those tools.
Hello Sociologist Cameron! (I wish people would use their real names online so I could tell who they are.)
I am afraid that I miss some of the back and forth that goes on here, as I don’t get notifications when my comments are replied to.
If you are a trained sociologist, you have a lot more theoretical background than I do. I write here from the seat of my pants. But of course I have some level of training and literacy or I couldn’t even understand what others here are writing about (and sometimes I can’t).
My teacher likened all the information in the universe to an ocean. How do you find the few drops in it that are actually important? One must have a good ability to evaluate relative importances. And one must have a solid idea of what sort of information one is looking for; what problem one is trying to solve.
I fill out my name, email and website every time I comment here. But I don’t see that anyone can actually see any of that data. Visit me on lecox.wordpress.com. I also started a Substack (elaurens.substack.com), but have only posted one article.
“Sociologist Cameron Cameronsays:
DECEMBER 29, 2023 AT 6:41 PM
What do you want me to do concerning the limitations in intellect concerning you and your friends ?”
Cameron,
Here are a few things you could do:
(1) Read some of your comments out loud to someone in real life.
(2) Go to a local community college writing tutor.
(3) Read a book on writing e.g. On Writing Well by Zinsser
(4) Watch the Teaching Company course on editing https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/effective-editing-how-to-take-your-writing-to-the-next-level
You are ignoring the reader when you write. You are just writing for yourself.
If you saw someone’s facial reaction when made them read your monstrosities, you would learn better how you come across.
I see, now, that this is not your first post in this style on New Discourses. You really need a new schtick, and I wish you the best in re-inventing yourself.
Bro, you should hire a writing tutor.
You are probably really smart, but no one can understand what you just wrote.
Try asking a friend to read your comment out loud. Ask them if you are writing with clarity.
“Any of the problem philosophical matter is far better off when persons like Lindsay take lines that are differential in the way they focus the field being used in hypothesis thus trying to pinpoint demonstrable reality is meaningless – why ?”
It may be the individual who decides to submit to Islam, but once the individual has made that determination, they lack the right to change their mind, on pain of death in many majority Islam countries. James talks like a person deciding to come to Christ is comparable. It’s not.
It’s not that simple. The Reformation fractured Christendom into over 30,000 protestant sects and individual interpretation of the Bible has created more division not less. The Catholic Church for centuries met heresy after heresy to protect an orthodox and uniform system of belief and relativized Truth. This has led to division in the only bulwark against the evil we are seeing today. Satan must have loved the divorce of 1517.
The rest of the podcast is good but you can make your points without the profanity.