Beautifully said. Us peasants have been victimized by the "right" globalists as sure as the leftist revolutionaries. When the chips are on the table, they're happy to collaborate to keep us in our place.
I'm finding the point of disagreement between the New Right advocates (Deneen) and the Straussians (Anton) to be fairly nuanced. Best I can tell, Straussians think tradition and modernity, as well as reason and revelation, are at odds, while the New Right does not. This will doubtlessly lead to some large disagreements on important issues. But it's not your typical New Right v. Libertarian right debate...
Thank you. Some liberals have I think a progressive project that extends to understanding ancient thought, our history, and traditions and have a cautious approach to those traditions. All liberalism aims I think at some expansion, but this form of liberalism the expansion includes the understanding of 'old hat' thinkers as still extremely relevant to our day. So I find myself confronted not by the organic and pro-institutional arguments, which appear to me to be consistent to my own left-environmental-liberalism, but by the framing as anti-liberal. I worry about this framing to be honest. To use another argument, the ancients recognised democracy as leading to tyranny. Of course they meant something different by democracy than us. The problem is where to draw lines and barricades. Many of us liberals defend our system of government and call that system democratic. Whereas I would say that the system is principally rule by honour, and that is a good thing. The collapse of that honour will lead to democracy and that collapse will then lead to tyranny. So it's vital to defend what we have left of honour which is at the moment under heavy attack, principally by 'populists' who wish to impose a more democratic system -- 'populism' -- ie one closer to tyranny (as seen in Russia).
It's the irreconcilable difference between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is a totalizing force and it its inherently contradictory to democracy. Liberalism will humor polities with the notions of performative democracy but it cannot tolerate true dissent in democratic outcomes. These contradictions are coming to a head. The question is how is this resolved. The answer will be discovered in the inevitable financial crash that is on the horizon as this is always the case when economic deficiencies are no longer capable of being ignored. I suppose liberalism will simply decide the exception and will stop pretending (we got a preview the past few years) that it has interest in democracy. If history is any indicator the solution is going to be a strong man that will come in to channel the demos against the oligarchical aristocracy. Probably going to be DeSantis although Trump will probably be the trigger that produces the state of exception that will permit the true strong man to rise to power.
What I Said at Harvard
Beautifully said. Us peasants have been victimized by the "right" globalists as sure as the leftist revolutionaries. When the chips are on the table, they're happy to collaborate to keep us in our place.
I'm finding the point of disagreement between the New Right advocates (Deneen) and the Straussians (Anton) to be fairly nuanced. Best I can tell, Straussians think tradition and modernity, as well as reason and revelation, are at odds, while the New Right does not. This will doubtlessly lead to some large disagreements on important issues. But it's not your typical New Right v. Libertarian right debate...
We are not returning to consensus of 1787 that we have Christian Republic.
Thank you. Some liberals have I think a progressive project that extends to understanding ancient thought, our history, and traditions and have a cautious approach to those traditions. All liberalism aims I think at some expansion, but this form of liberalism the expansion includes the understanding of 'old hat' thinkers as still extremely relevant to our day. So I find myself confronted not by the organic and pro-institutional arguments, which appear to me to be consistent to my own left-environmental-liberalism, but by the framing as anti-liberal. I worry about this framing to be honest. To use another argument, the ancients recognised democracy as leading to tyranny. Of course they meant something different by democracy than us. The problem is where to draw lines and barricades. Many of us liberals defend our system of government and call that system democratic. Whereas I would say that the system is principally rule by honour, and that is a good thing. The collapse of that honour will lead to democracy and that collapse will then lead to tyranny. So it's vital to defend what we have left of honour which is at the moment under heavy attack, principally by 'populists' who wish to impose a more democratic system -- 'populism' -- ie one closer to tyranny (as seen in Russia).
It's the irreconcilable difference between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is a totalizing force and it its inherently contradictory to democracy. Liberalism will humor polities with the notions of performative democracy but it cannot tolerate true dissent in democratic outcomes. These contradictions are coming to a head. The question is how is this resolved. The answer will be discovered in the inevitable financial crash that is on the horizon as this is always the case when economic deficiencies are no longer capable of being ignored. I suppose liberalism will simply decide the exception and will stop pretending (we got a preview the past few years) that it has interest in democracy. If history is any indicator the solution is going to be a strong man that will come in to channel the demos against the oligarchical aristocracy. Probably going to be DeSantis although Trump will probably be the trigger that produces the state of exception that will permit the true strong man to rise to power.
Powerful, a clarion call and a pleasure to read. I will peruse it a few more times