I had been one of the illiberal progressive in the past. I feel the illiberalness comes from a sense of danger. It had felt like the world was turning upside down, and I was morally obligated to fight for happiness and safety. A very Hobbesian "a war of all against all" feeling.
I got out of the hole only when I realized that sustainable happiness can be attained without sacrificing others. It was really a big, life changing recognition.
Yes, but only as a statistical category. Skin color is not causal.
Rich black women are not 3-4 times as likely to die from pregnancy complications nor are they twice as likely to lose an infant to premature death.
Similarly black immigrants have statistically different outcomes from black people who grew up in America on most measures.
It’s not that the problems aren’t real. It’s not that they aren’t a consequence of racism.
It’s that more racism is not a solution.
Correct. It's the demand for special treatment and/or allowance for special behavior not tolerated in/allowed for others (and, conversely, not allowing others to receive the same special treatment) that causes resentment.
"Part of left's problem is it expects/demands blacks/hispanics to vote on ethnic basis but is appalled when whites do" (<https://twitter.com/JYDenham/status/796345533124186113>)
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/npr-trashes-free-speech-a-brie...
Woa, hold horses! "Open markets and limited government"? That's libertarianism not liberalism.
As sooome kind of liberal, I parse "open markets" as "no rights for workers, no-holds-barred environmental destruction by industry"; and whenever I read "limited government" I hear "less power to voters". That is not liberalism.
I don't know what liberalism is, though I know it when I see it, but I'm sure that the highest ideals associated with liberalism should be humanitarian ideals, not economic ideals. Human rights legislation, free education and healthcare, policies driven by quality of life indicators, that sounds like liberalism. Free market economics and industry deregulation? Not so much.
We now know empiricly that this stuff is not true. This pulls out the rug from under so many of Liberalism's precepts, and yet Liberalism hasn't adjusted.
This is vague and untestable. You could literally make this claim against any ideology and we wouldn’t be able to ascertain a truth value.
For the former, we have tons of evidence:
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/12/11/...
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28979/w289...
I recall something also about the persistence of Roman settlement patterns in France vs Britain proving to be a disadvantage in the early modern era when ocean-based commerce became so important.
Whether it's "equal opportunity vs equal outcome", liberalism assumes that the system will converge and the two will be brought into alignment mertiocratically. When there's an emphasis on rules-based systems, it assumes there is some sort of quorum of those playing by the rules and others will have to join the fold. When there's a belief that competition could sustain itself, we're simply requirements the needs of equilibrium theory back into our assumptions.
Rather than being elastic and in balance, the world is much more plastic and constantly rebalancing, with the former masking the latter. There is still much of liberalism to be admired, but it should be saved for the "victory lap". Perhaps liberalism works for worlds that are fixed, it does not work for worlds that need fixing.
Strange. I don't recall them warning about the twisted newspeak of "public/private partnership" or the capitalist capture of government meant by the phrase.
