#Liberal democracy

[mapsontheweb]

The global state of liberal democracy in 2022 where each country's size is distorted relative to its value of liberal democracy.

by researchremora

[stillnaomi]

The bourgeoisie does its job splendidly; it makes all sorts of promises, but in effect pursues only its class policy.

Lenin, 1917

[tomorrowusa]

« All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of an autocratic state. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the army and the police. The army and the police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the twenty-first century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality.

Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services— military, paramilitary, police—and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation. The members of these networks are connected not only to one another within a given autocracy but also to networks in other autocratic countries, and sometimes in democracies too. Corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country may arm, equip, and train the police in many others. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms and media networks that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote another’s—as well as themes: the degeneracy of democracy, the stability of autocracy, the evil of America. »

– Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum at Substack quoting from her soon to be released book Autocracy, Inc..

You can read several more paragraphs from Autocracy, Inc. at the Substack link above. Her book will be published on the 23rd; if you're within distance of Washington, DC she will be doing a free book reading and Q&A on Friday July 26th at Politics and Prose. She's a good writer and speaker. I've read two of her previous books and can vouch for their quality.

The war in Ukraine is not some remote conflict that idiots like J.D. Vance or Neville Chamberlain might dismiss out of stupidity. Ukraine is just one arena in a worldwide clash between liberal democracy and kleptocratic tyranny.

[usauthoritarianism]

Not a popular sentiment here, but uh. Yeah. I got my passport last year. I suggest you do the same.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

We should be honest. Liberal democracy is an experiment. And a very recent one, and a very recent one.

So, like all new ideas, it can go off the rails very easily, if the core of what made it what it is is not maintained. And I think the reason that many of us have been speaking up about this for some time now, and the reason I wrote my book, and many other people have been talking about this, is I think we are abandoning the things that made us who we are, and we're abandoning some of the things which we ultimately, after centuries of struggle and bloodshed and violence and disagreement, we actually were starting to reach a place where we were identifying some of the memes, as you like to call them, that work in the type of society that we want to create.

The idea that people should be treated on the content of their character was a meme that was developed through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of violence and a lot of discrimination and a lot of awful treatment of, in that particular case black people, but if you go to other parts of the West, there would have been other ways of conceptualizing that that still exist, right, and we eventually came to the idea that actually, that ancient thing that is so hard-wired into us - the tribalism, the, you know, call it racism, call it xenophobia, whatever it's, just ingroup-outgroup, right - that thing that is hardwired into us, we have an intellectual idea that can sit on top of that, that can mitigate a lot of that.

That's incredible. It's an incredible-- I mean, this idea doesn't exist in China. The idea that all ethnic groups are to be treated equally does not exist in Russia. Not even remotely. Russia is, to a large extent, a multi-ethnic country. It has large Muslim populations, it has large ethnic minority populations. The idea that they are the same as everybody else would seem absurd to anybody. Most parts of the world, the idea that gay people should be treated the same as straight people? You would be laughed out of the room. People don't like hearing this in the west because they can't process that reality.

But it's like, you know, this endlessly joked about "Queers for Palestine" thing. They will throw you off a fucking roof. That's what they're going to do to you, right. And from that extreme, you can work your way down. Most of the rest of the world, they're not going to throw you off a roof, but you're not going to be treated equally.

So, we struggled, and we fall, and we went through a lot of horror to get to that place. And the symptom of that unraveling that I'm deeply troubled by, is that we are doing the exact opposite.

DEI is the exact opposite of that idea. And it's embedded in every institution now. The idea that you can pick people, you can say this group is got better outcomes than that group, that means-- and we need to treat these people better than these other people, right. It doesn't matter which way you play that dynamic, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you if you put black people at the top, white people at the bottom, brown people at the top black people-- it doesn't matter how you play that game, it always leads to bad outcomes.

And the reason that anti-Semitism now is becoming much more prominent is it's a natural reflection of that worldview. It's a reflection of the worldview in which successful people are successful by virtue of privilege or corruption or abuse of others. And unsuccessful groups, or groups that don't do as well in certain fields, are there because they have been abused, because they've been taken advantage of.

Once you implement that, every successful minority is going to be in the firing line, whether that's Jews, whether that's Asian-Americans, whether that's African-Americans who are first generation from Africa, right - they're incredibly successful in America - you're going to see all these groups being attacked in some way whether that's in words or other ways, because we are breaking the thing that made us who we are.

[ Full episode: https://youtu.be/x4Ha8yeXuU8 ]

[thenewdemocratus]

The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer: 'Jane Fonda Lays Out Reasons She is Campaigning For Joe Biden'

Source:CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer talking to Hollywood Goddess/political activist Jane Fonda. Source:The New Democrat “Actress and activist Jane Fonda talks to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about why she is campaigning for Joe Biden.” From CNN “Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to…

[uboat53]

I had a discussion with a friend of mine in the (US) military recently and it reminded me that most people in the US and, in fact, in the world, are almost entirely unaware that there is a new Cold War taking shape. I think more people should be aware of it, knowledge is power after all, and knowing about something gives you the opportunity to help shape it, particularly if you're a citizen of a country where your voice has an impact in government. I hope this LONG RANT (TM) helps someone better understand.

INTRODUCTION

As I said, there's a new Cold War beginning, and, like the previous Cold War, there's a strong component of ideology to it. Specifically, the world is beginning to fracture between liberal democracy and autocracy.

What makes this conflict particularly complex is that we're at the early stages. When thinking about the Cold War, capitalism vs communism, it wasn't until the 1950s, 1960s, or even the 1970s in some cases that it was really clear which side most consequential nations would end up on. It was pretty obvious that the Soviet Union and the United States would be the major communist and capitalist powers, respectively, but the status of many other nations didn't become clear until long internal political debates and outside interventions had a chance to play out.

So, without further ado, let's get into it.

WHY IS THERE A CONFLICT AT ALL?

This is one of the key questions and, honestly, it all comes down to the interconnectedness of the modern world. You see, modern autocracies that don't rely on the divine right of kings to justify their rule generally justify it by results. In order to make sure the results come out correctly, they control the information available to their people to ensure that their people are told that the autocratic rulers are giving them the best results, whether that's in terms of economics, culture, religion, or whatever else they want to focus on.

As my old boss used to tell me a decade and a half ago, "North Korea can't afford to allow YouTube to get to the average person even if the average person just watches stupid videos because it's going to become really obvious that, yes, this person is an idiot, but that idiot has a fridge, a TV, a car, and has obviously never missed a meal in their life; they can't possibly be poorer than us."

In the olden days that would be fairly easy. Radio signals only travel so far, so as long as you control the TV and radio stations and limit the ability of printed media to spread too widely, you could completely control what information your population receives.

Nowadays, however? Well, that's very different. The internet allows people from all over the world to talk to each other in an instant and it can even go a long way to easing language barriers. The advent of satellite internet means that even efforts to control internet traffic such as the so-called "Great Firewall of China" will be increasingly limited in their effectiveness.

Today, in order for an autocracy to control the information their people receive, they not only have to control the information environment in their own country, they have to control the information available in other countries as well. That's the reason you're seeing things like the Saudi Arabia's murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, Russia's poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a Chinese attempt to kidnap dissidents in the US, India's alleged killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and it's attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

All of these were killings or other physical violence that took place in liberal democratic countries (except for Khashoggi who, though American, was lured to the Saudi embassy in Turkey where was killed) where what the individuals were doing was perfectly legal. This is the driver of conflict today, authoritarian nations attempting to maintain their monopoly on the information their citizens receive in a global information environment.

THE EARLY DAYS

We're currently in the early days of this autocracy vs liberal democracy competition and there are numerous nations currently in conflict over which side they're going to be on including, unfortunately, our own. In order to explain that, I need to get a bit technical over the difference between "democracy" and "liberal democracy".

Democracy, basically, can describe any situation where leaders are elected by some kind of popular vote. If you look closely at that for a second, you'll realize that it's such a broad category that even the autocratic Soviet Union technically qualified. Obviously, a category broad enough to include actual autocracies isn't really in opposition to them.

Liberal Democracy, on the other hand, is a Democracy, but with a whole bunch of other things as well. In general, a Liberal Democracy will feature multiple distinct candidates and/or parties in their elections, some sort of separation of powers between branches of government, the rule of law (law that applies equally to all), an open society (one in which individuals make choices rather than being controlled by tribes or other type of collectivism), a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all people.

(That definition borrowed almost entirely from the Wikipedia article on Liberal Democracy, check it out if you're interested.)

In other words, Liberal Democracy is more than just "do people vote for leaders?", but encompasses just about everything we'd associate with individual rights and liberties and the structure of institutions to ensure them. People in an Illiberal Democracy may technically vote for their leaders but, without all of these other rights and protections, they can hardly be said to have truly chosen them. And, when you define it clearly, you can see that there's a bit of a disagreement about that in American politics right now.

The Republican Party, and particularly its MAGA wing, is increasingly of the mind that not everyone's vote is legitimate and has been putting in place barriers to voting that disproportionately affect disfavored groups. In addition, they're pushing to end much of the separation of powers, putting more unchecked power in the hands of the president at the expense of checks, balances, and sometimes guarantees of individual liberty. Democracy would continue, but Liberal Democracy would end.

To be clear, this isn't just an American problem, but one that is faced by nearly every Liberal Democracy today. As part of autocrat's efforts to control information outside of their own borders, they've been attempting to influence politics within Liberal Democracies and promote internal autocratic movements; usually right-wing nationalists. From the Republican Party's MAGA wing to France's National Front to Germany's Alternativ Fur Deutschland, just about every Liberal Democracy in the world now has a fundamentally autocratic right-wing party that is doing much better than it did just ten or twenty years ago and, if you scratch the surface, you will find support for them, both financial and otherwise, from autocrats around the world.

Of course, it's not just the far-right either, autocrats have been promoting the far-left in Liberal Democratic countries as well. While the far-right has had much more electoral success and is much more politically organized in the west and, thus, has received more attention, we can't ignore the fact that autocracy is largely neutral on the political scale and operates anywhere that conspiratorial thinking can take hold and distract people from the removal of their freedoms or even convince them that those freedoms hold no value in the first place.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

Well, that's the trillion dollar question, isn't it?

Conflict will likely continue between autocratic and liberal democratic states, but the complexities are growing. Much like communism vs capitalism, autocracy vs liberal democracy is more of a spectrum than a hard binary and many states are actively sloshing around along that spectrum.

There's also the uncertainty of how different countries react to incidents like the ones we're seeing. Technically, killing a person on the soil of another country is an act of war, but not many people in the modern world are willing to go to war for the killing of one person. Most likely what we'll see is a gradual hardening of blocs as liberal democracies react to provocations by slowly pulling back from cooperation and connection with autocratic nations.

We're also likely to see countries switch sides. Unlike the rapid shift in allegiances that we saw during the Cold War, however, these are likely to be more gradual shifts like what we've seen in Hungary and Turkey where individual rights are stripped away gradually and a governing autocrat is slowly ensconced in power rather than a hard and fast coup. We could, of course, see countries go the other way as well, as in the case of Ukraine which has slowly strengthened individual rights and overthrown its autocrats.

All of this, the solidification of blocs and the shifting of countries within this spectrum, is going to create the opening situations for this particular conflict. Whether it becomes a conflict of more rigidly defined blocs or even sparks proxy wars remains to be seen.

CONCLUSION (TL;DR)

The days of a fairly open world, both in physical travel, the movement of goods, and in communication, is starting to come to an end as that openness begins to threaten the hold of autocrats on power. Those autocrats are attempting to keep both the openness and power by working to control the information available in countries that practice Liberal Democracy and generally guarantee individual liberties.

Over the next several decades, it is likely that we will see increasing separation between a bloc of autocratic nations and a bloc of liberal democracies, much as the Cold War saw separation between pro-capitalist and pro-communist countries. Some of that separation will likely not go smoothly and we will likely see at least some military tension and possibly even armed conflict as leaders react to changes or even try to distract from them with military force.

Just as importantly, we are likely to see tension within countries all over the world as autocratic political parties attempt to take control of liberal democracies and pro-democracy movements attempt to overthrow autocrats.

I'll admit this isn't the most hopeful vision of the future that we'd like to see, but I think it's fairly realistic given the current realities we see. I hope that this gives you some insight into what's going on and allows you to plan accordingly.

As always, let me know if you think I missed something or got something wrong, I'm always up for adjusting my thoughts, and I hope you enjoyed the read.

[terraplusultra]

"El Fin de la Historia" de Francis Fukuyama

¿Tú qué opinas? ¿Los conflictos étnicos y económicos son escenciales de las democracias liberales?

Fukuyama sugiere que con el colapso del comunismo y la Guerra Fría, la humanidad habría alcanzado el fin de su evolución ideológica. La democracia liberal representaría el sistema político final y ya no habrían desarrollos significativos más allá de este punto en términos de estructuras políticas. “El Fin de la Historia” de Francis Fukuyama, fue publicado en 1989. Los Argumentos…

[stillnaomi]

EveryDoctor pored through Starmer’s cabinet ministers’ declarations on the ‘Register of Members’ Financial Interests’. It explored this for the period between 2023 and 28 May 2024.

What the group found was a sprawling network of corporate capitalist donations from across private healthcare. Crucially, EveryDoctor uncovered that collectively, cabinet ministers had taken more than £500,000 in donations from firms with links to the sector.

Notably, these didn’t all simply come as direct monetary donations or freebies. Some of Starmer’s new cabinet had seconded free staff direct from lobbying firms or think tanks.

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/05/labour-private-healthcare-donations-nhs/

the public want the NHS brought back into public management but Labour's already announced an intention to bring more private contractors in. this is liberal "democracy", where "your" MPs are bought and paid for

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ I created that during Kamala's acceptance speech.

Republicans want to hold the whip and dictate how Americans should live their lives. Republicans hate freedom and love dictators. Their nominee, Weird Donald, is perfect for creating misery and despair.

ICYMI, here is her Thursday night speech.

In the speech she reminded listeners of the role the Biden-Harris administration played in providing intelligence to Ukraine ahead of Putin's invasion.

Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response – over 50 countries – to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.

That is a contrast to Trump who would wreck NATO and undermine US national security.

Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could – quote – “do whatever the hell they want.”

As the VP mentioned, she met with President Zelenskyy as Russia was preparing to attack. Here's a contemporary news story about that event.

Harris on Ukraine: World at ‘a decisive moment in history’

We have it easier than Ukrainians when it comes to defending freedom. All we need to do is to get out the vote and to vote ourselves.

A HŪGE defeat for Weird Donald and his MAGA accomplices would put an end to this dangerous autocracy-curious phase in US history,

Be a voter | Vote Save America

[usauthoritarianism]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Scott Stantis, Chicago Tribune

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 1, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Although no one has seen the charges, MAGA Republican lawmakers reacted to the decision of a grand jury of ordinary citizens to charge a former president by preemptively accusing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg of abusing the power of the government against MAGA Republicans.

“[C]orrupt Socialist District Attorney Alvin Bragg [and] the radical Far Left” (New York representative Elise Stefanik) “irreparably damaged our country” (House speaker Kevin McCarthy) “for pure political gain” (Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin). It is “a direct assault on the tens of millions of Americans who support [Trump]” (Ohio senator J. D. Vance), and “[the House Republicans] will hold Alvin Bragg accountable” (Stefanik, again).

The lawmakers have reached their position after extensive coordination with Trump, with whom Stefanik, Jordan, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speak regularly to keep him abreast of what they know about investigations and to plan policy. As Stephen Collinson pointed out on CNN, they are taking to a new level what they have been doing since Trump took office: weaponizing the government to put Trump back into power.

As the Manhattan grand jury’s investigation got close to a decision, McCarthy backed an investigation of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Promptly, committee chairs Jim Jordan (R-OH, Judiciary), James Comer (R-KY, Oversight and Accountability), and Bryan Steil (R-WI, House Administration) demanded that Bragg turn over all documents and testimony related to the investigation and appear before them to answer questions. As the counsel for the district attorney’s office, Leslie B. Dubeck, pointed out in response, these demands are “an unprecedented and illegitimate incursion on New York’s sovereign interests” and amount to  “unlawful political interference.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told Washington Post reporter Greg Sargent: “This is an extreme move to use the resources of Congress to interfere with a criminal investigation at the state and local level and block an indictment.” It is, he said, “the kind of political culture you find in authoritarian dictatorships.”

At Axios today, Sophia Cai and Juliegrace Brufke ran the numbers of Trump backers in Congress. Thirty-seven Republicans have already endorsed him, and in the House, McCarthy has put them into key positions. Trump supporters make up more than a third of the Republicans members on the Committee on the Judiciary, which oversees the legal system, and the Committee on Oversight, which oversees government accountability. Nine of the 25 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee support him; 11 of the 26 Republicans on House Oversight do, too.

What is actually in the indictment remains unknown, but the language Republicans are using to attack it reveals that what it says doesn’t particularly matter. Their claim that “the Left” is “weaponizing government” against the right echoes “post-liberal” ideology. This worldview explains why the right wing continues to lose ground in society despite Republican victories at the polls. The problem is not that right-wing positions are unpopular, post-liberal thinkers insist, it’s that the “left” has captured the nation’s institutions.

They argue that the ideas that underpin democracy—equality before the law, separation of church and state, academic freedom, a market-driven economy, free speech—have undermined virtue. These values are “liberal” values because they are based on the idea of the importance of individual freedom from an oppressive government, and they are at the heart of American democracy.

But post-liberal thinkers say that liberalism’s defense of individual rights has destroyed the family, communities, and even the fundamental differences between men and women, throwing society into chaos. They propose to restore the values of traditional Christianity, which would, they believe, restore traditional family structures and supportive communities, and promote the virtue of self-sacrifice as people give up their individualism for their children (their worldview utterly rejects abortion).

The position of those embracing a post-liberal order is a far cry from the Reagan Republicans’ claim to want small government and free markets. The new ideologues want a strong government to enforce their religious values on American society, and they reject those of both parties who support democratic norms—for it is those very norms they see as destructive. They urge their leaders to “dare to rule.”

Those who call for a new post-liberal order want to “reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” as Christopher Rufo put it after Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed him to the board of New College as part of a mission to turn the progressive school into a right-wing bastion. “If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory,” Rufo told Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, “we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States.”

To spur that process, Republicans have turned to so-called culture wars, but as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo notes, issues are becoming heated not in some vague way, but because Republicans are deliberately making normal processes partisan to destroy consensus about them. So, for example, Rufo pushed the idea that the legal framework “critical race theory” was being pushed in public agencies and public schools in order, he told Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker, “to politicize the bureaucracy.” He hoped to “take some of these essentially corrupted state agencies and then contest them, and then create rival power centers within them.”

The Republican attacks on Bragg reflect this process. They are quite deliberately destroying public faith in the justice system, declaring Trump’s looming indictment a political attack even before we know what’s in it, and attributing the indictment to a single man—a Black man— rather than to a jury of ordinary citizens. That attack, as Raskin pointed out, is their own attempt to politicize the Department of Justice and then take it over.  

It is important to understand the pattern behind these attacks on American institutions. They are not piecemeal; they are a larger attack on democracy itself.

Republicans are wrong, not only in their attacks on Bragg, but also in their premise that liberal democracy is immoral. It has not destroyed families or communities, or ended self-sacrifice: just the opposite.

The principles of liberal democracy made nineteenth-century writer Harriet Beecher Stowe turn her grief for her dead eighteen-month-old son into the best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which showed why no mother’s child should be sold away from her. It made Rose Herera sue her former enslaver for custody of her own children after the Civil War. It made Julia Ward Howe demand the right to vote so her abusive husband could not control her life any longer.

It made Black mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker call out Thomas Jefferson for praising liberty while denying it to Black Americans; Sitting Bull defend the right of the Lakota to practice their own new religion, even though he did not believe in it; Saum Song Bo tell The New York Sun he was insulted by their request for money to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty when, three years before, the country had excluded people like him; Dr. Héctor García realize that Mexican Americans needed to be able to vote in order to protect themselves; Edward Roberts claim the right to get an education despite his physical paralysis; drag king Stormé DeLarverie throw the first punch at the Stonewall riot that jump-started the gay rights movement.

And self-sacrifice? Americans trying to push the United States to live up to its principles have  always put themselves on the line for freedom rather than permitting democracy to fall to white supremacists or theocrats. As James Meredith recalled of his long struggle to desegregate the University of Mississippi in the 1960s: “My entire crusade at Ole Miss, you see, was a love story. It is a story about my love for America….”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[indizombie]

We've reached finally at the position of an unamended constitution which is actually amended in practise. Liberal democratic character of the Constitution has not been altered by amendments but, minorities are lynched, journalists are prosecuted or worse, killed. Lawyers are attacked for doing their professional duties, activists from civil society are thrown behind bars and the ED is unleashed against all. Then there is targeted prosecution for some and impunity for others. Abuse of criminal law has been raised to the level of a policy. You do not need a gun to be a terrorist. You can be thrown into jail for the thoughts in your mind. You, as a lawyer can argue a case in court and be thrown in jail...The legal profession is in danger. We all know what happened in the Delhi riots, Elgar Parishad and Bhima Koregaon cases; these cases represent the transformation of the victim into an accused in a Court of law by the use of UAPA.

Indira Jaising, senior advocate

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Helen Pluckrose

Published: Apr 30, 2023

In Western societies, nobody seems to think conservatism is the belief that society is already conservative or that Marxism is the belief that one lives in a Marxist state. Certainly nobody mistakes the movement that presumptuously calls itself ‘Social Justice” for holding the belief that we live in a just society. In these cases, it is easily understood that conservatives are people who stand for conservative values while Marxists are those who seek the implementation of Marxism. Meanwhile the “Social Justice” movement (or “wokeism”) is defined by its belief that society is highly unjust and desire to remedy this in certain very specific ways. In all of these cases, these positions are understood to represent goals in a society which its proponents believe to fall short of them.

Liberalism, on the other hand, is very often understood (by non-liberals) as a belief in liberalism, not as a goal but as a social reality - a goal achieved. This understanding of liberalism is often expressed differently by those on the left and those on the right but still expressed.

When this misconception is expressed by non-liberals on the left, it often takes the form of an accusation that liberals want to maintain the “status quo.” This clearly implies a belief that the status quo is liberal and, further, that liberals know it and are invested in keeping it that way. This generally stems from a feeling that left-liberalism is not radical enough. When it comes from the Marxist left, it might look like this:

When it comes from the identity-based Critical Social Justice left, it looks more like this,

When the right claim that liberals believe society to already be satisfactorily liberal, this is more often expressed by the right-winger telling anybody arguing for a liberal society either that we don’t have one or that liberalism isn’t working. This clearly implies a belief that the speaker believes we do have one and that it is working. These exchanges might look more like this:

It is from people on the right I have been hearing a lot recently, and specifically with the claim that liberalism has failed because authoritarian Critical Social Justice still exists. They usually go on to argue that we need to try some form of social conservatism. I have always found this quite bewildering because, at the same time as I, and other liberals, have been arguing against authoritarian CSJ and for liberalism, social conservatives have been arguing against it and for social conservatism and they have not succeeded either.

In what sense, then, is it reasonable to argue that liberalism has failed and social conservatism is needed when social conservatism (and all other critics of CSJ) have failed too? It is not as though social conservatives said “Go on, liberals. You have a go first and if that’s no good, we’ll give it a try.” They have been trying at the same time to persuade more people to their way of thinking.

There are social conservatives who would be quite happy in a properly liberal society where they get to believe, speak and live according to their own values, and have no wish to impose them on anyone else. For them, it may well seem that the ‘live and let live’ ethos of a liberal society is a reasonable Plan A, but if that does not work, then they would be justified in pushing for a socially conservative moral code. This would make sense, but asking liberals to support it does not. We don’t want, in a UK context, for people to be cancelled for insulting the monarch any more than we do for misgendering a trans person.

When people single out liberalism as the ethical framework that has failed, they seem to be indicating that they think liberalism was the one that had the power to succeed. That is, that they think we live in a society run on liberal principles. Yet, very often, when describing what has failed to me, they indicate the same highly illiberal things that I have been addressing as a liberal for many years. I think some of this comes from the fact that we call the kind of society we live in a ‘liberal democracy,’ which does seem to suggest that it is governed on the principles of liberalism, To some extent, this is true, in that a liberal democracy is defined as “a democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are officially recognised and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.” There’s a lot of wriggle room there, though. Which rights and freedoms do people have? Which people? And what limitations on political power are in place?

This definition certainly does not indicate that a society is really what could reasonably be considered liberal. Countries defined as liberal democracies have had institutional slavery and colonialism, denied women the vote and criminalised homosexuality among other very clearly illiberal things. If ever a country were fully liberal, it would likely not have liberals in it as we’d then be conservatives trying to conserve the liberal society. (This is a little facetious, but it is true that if people in a country are having to argue for liberal principles like freedom of speech and belief or the equal treatment under the law, then it is lacking in its liberalism).

This is a good distinction between liberal democracies and liberalism.

Liberal democracies are countries in which citizens have the right to actively participate in political processes, such as voting and expressing their opinions through speech and peaceful protest. These countries typically also grant a wide range of civil liberties, such as freedom of religion, speech, and press. However, in practice some countries may be more liberal than others – for example, those with a strong constitutional protection of individual rights may afford their citizens a higher degree of liberty than those without. Additionally, depending on the country’s culture or demographics, certain liberties may be more widely accepted than others. In general, liberal democracies share commonalities when it comes to protecting civil rights and liberties but can vary greatly in terms of how liberal they actually allow their citizens to be.

Liberalism is an ideology which promotes individual freedom, civil rights, and the importance of the rule of law. It emphasizes the protection of individual liberty through government guarantees of civil rights, freedoms, and responsibilities in societies. It also stresses that governments should limit its intervention in economic activities except for enforcing contracts, property rights and other market regulations that promote competition. Liberalism also stands for equal rights for individuals regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation; it supports the idea of personal responsibility and encourages a merit-based society where individuals can rise up based on hard work. The core values in Liberalism include respect for human dignity and individual autonomy, the free exchange of ideas and goods, equality under the law, justice tempered by mercy and compassion, social inclusion, environmental stewardship, international cooperation and a strong commitment to democracy.

Individual liberals will then vary on the weighting of these principles according to their politics and personal ethics. I, for example, as a liberal leftie, am more concerned with freedom of belief and speech than freedom of markets and, while I do support a meritocracy on principle, also think we cannot have one unless the equal rights for individuals regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and class includes thorough attention to ensuring access to opportunities. A right-voting libertarian might well be most concerned with the freedom of markets and minimisation of state control while also supporting equal rights under the law.

It seems clear to me that some who say that liberalism has failed really mean that society has failed to be liberal. This is not wordplay. It is the difference between antibiotics failing to work and an individual failing to take their antibiotics; a diet not working and an individual not sticking to their diet. If you are someone who would like to live in a genuinely liberal society but recognise that you are not, I urge you not to give up on liberalism, but help the push to create that society.

Other people, of course, genuinely do not want to live in a liberal society. Even if it fulfilled all its promises perfectly, they would not. Marxists do not. Social Justice activists do not. Social conservatives often do not. Postliberals do not. It is postliberals whom I have been reading most lately (and becoming very depressed by). They would be likely to reject the key tenets of liberalism with some variation of this:

Individual rights and freedoms.

We are suffering from an excess of individualism and freedom at the cost of meaningful connections. We should think less of individual fulfilment, rights and freedoms and more of family, community, responsibilities and commitment.

Pluralism - a positive view of having many different kinds of people, customs, cultures and ideas. Celebration of difference. Robust, reasoned debate.

Cultural integrity is being lost. We should encourage cohesion and shared values, traditions and customs.

Universalism - Being united in our common humanity, experiences and goals.

We should focus more on our own communities, families, nation.

Progress - We should keep seeking to advance our scientific knowledge and improve our society.

The relentless pursuit of progress is destabilising & alienating. In human rights it pushes humans away from their natural inclinations and relationships and, in science, is potentially dangerous, particularly in the realms of technology.

The freedom of markets, enterprise and innovation. (Liberals vary on the extent of regulation needed, if any)

There is too much focus on free markets and innovation. This leads to a shallow and artificial consumer culture, the commodification of people and the disruption of families.

If you think this way, you are clearly not a liberal, although you are not necessarily illiberal either. (I am not Ibram X. Kendi about liberalism). The growth of postliberalism, particularly in the UK, is gaining significant momentum as an attitude if not as a movement. Although proponents of it are usually very aware of what liberalism is (which makes a refreshing change from many of its critics), I think they too misattribute too many of society’s ills to it, often seem to conflate individuality with narcissism and freedom with irresponsibility, are too narrow in their outlook and can be unwarrantedly alarmist about technology. I intend to address these issues in forthcoming essays.