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Is Liberalism too Idealistic?

Teaddict

So, just a simple debate.

Is Liberalism too idealistic?

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Reply 1

ourlastmemory

Yeah. It's a nice thought but I think it's impractical in it's pure form.
I could attempt to contribute something more intelligent but I'd probably just be shouted down :sigh:

Reply 2

Diaz89

Isn't it Liberalism that brought Colonialism

Reply 3

MaceyThe

I think so.

It would be great if it worked, but there are too many people exploiting its weaknesses to further their own ends. e.g. Islamic extremists.

Reply 4

rajandkwameali

I think it is a good theory in principle, since everyone in some sense values freedom.

But i can where it is idealistic in the sense it assumes people would handle freedom responsibly. For a liberal society to work, there would have to be some kind of educational process in place beforehand, since few in human history have ever lived how most liberals desire society to be.

Reply 5

rajandkwameali

Diaz89

Isn't it Liberalism that brought Colonialism

The Age of Discovery did, which was before liberalism as a political movement started.

Reply 6

SunOfABeach

What is idealistic about Liberalism? Just tolerate other people and let everyone live the way he/she likes. It's one of the most practical/rational theories. Be it Cultural Liberalism, Economic Liberalism or Social Liberalism. Nothing idealistic about them.

Reply 7

Diaz89

rajandkwameali

The Age of Discovery did, which was before liberalism as a political movement started.

Reply 8

PGtips92

Diaz89

Isn't it Liberalism that brought Colonialism

What does Liberalism have to do with Colonialism?

Reply 9

Cherudim

Liberalism as a concept no. Liberalism applied to human behaviour as it stands, yes.

Reply 10

Chi019

Yes, writers like Lawrence Auster often make the point that the key to liberal ideology is the belief in tolerance or non-discrimination as the ruling principle of society. The principle of non-discrimination must, if followed consistently, destroy every human society and institution. A society that cannot discriminate between itself and other societies will go out of existence.

Auster also makes an interesting point regarding the liberal view of equal outcomes being required rather than equal opportunity:

The basic reason for the "liberal" double standard has already been alluded to. It is that today's "liberals" are really leftists who have rejected the older liberal belief in a shared equality of citizens before the law and have embraced the socialist vision of "equality as a fact and equality as a result," as Lyndon Johnson famously put it. Since people are unequal in their ability to accumulate property, as Hayek argued in the Mirage of Social Justice, equality of results can only be pursued by treating people unequally. This is the origin of the double standard.

Moreover, since socialism has been discredited following the fall of Soviet Communism, the left has for tactical reasons largely shifted its demand for equality of results away from the economic sphere to the cultural/moral sphere and the advancement of "oppressed" cultural and ethnic groups. The result is cultural socialism, which entails the same kind of bureaucratically imposed egalitarian “solution” as existed under the older socialism, and thus leads to a cultural double standard. This cultural double standard goes something like this: Since "we" (e.g., whites, Westerners, Christians, men, conservatives, Americans, the U.S. armed forces, Republicans, and heterosexuals) constitute an allegedly dominant group in society and are better off than the "Other" (e.g., nonwhites, non-Westerners, Moslems, women, liberals, immigrants, enemy combatants, Democrats, and homosexuals), our superior position violates the imperative of equality. In order for the desired state of equality to be attained, we, the unfairly dominant group, must be condemned, excluded, and dragged down, while the Other must be celebrated, included, and raised up. In short, in the name of equality, society is divided into two radically distinct groups, to which radically different rules apply.

Under this "liberal" regime, for example, the cultures of recent immigrants are regarded as having the same importance as the historic American culture, an "equality" that is systematically reflected in text books and curricula, in museums and other cultural institutions, and even in political rhetoric and national symbols. But such artificial equality, by its very nature, downgrades and diminishes our national identity while placing unassimilated and often hostile immigrants and their cultures at the "heart of America," as Bill Bradley once approvingly put it. The same is true of the "liberal" perspective on the Middle East conflict. The claims of Israelis and Palestinians are regarded as equally legitimate. But since the Palestinians do not accept the existence of Israel, to accord Israelis and Palestinians "equal" political rights in the same land is to delegitimize and destroy a civilized country while empowering a culturally diseased community that straps bombs to its children and celebrates the mass murder of innocents with outbreaks of communal ecstasy.

The key point is that the double standard results automatically from the demand for equality between inherently unequal things. The double standard is not a mere excess or defect of leftism, but its essence.

The problem can perhaps be better understood by considering how the leftist view of justice departs from the traditional Western view of justice. Traditional morality and classical philosophy define justice as giving each person his due, with equals getting equal results and unequals getting unequal results. Leftism, as we have said, defines justice as the guaranteed equality of outcome between individuals of unequal abilities and accomplishments. But equality between unequals cannot be just (because it involves the expropriation of the justly earned fruits of more talented labor) and is incompatible with liberty (because it requires force to achieve). To give the same to everyone requires that undeserved disadvantages be imposed on the more productive and therefore "better off" individuals and that undeserved benefits be provided to the less productive and therefore "worse off" individuals. In a vast inchoate society of many millions of people, equality of outcome can only be pursued by the systematic dragging down of entire classes of persons for the sake of undeserving strangers.

Furthermore, in order to justify this unjust system, the society must lie to its members about how the differences between the respective groups came about. It must claim that the more abundant goods possessed by the better-off group were all attained unfairly, by the oppression or exploitation of the worse-off group. It must devalue individual initiative and creativity and all the other virtues that make for the building up of civilization, while excusing (and ultimately rewarding) failure, misbehavior, and crime...

Therefore the real debate that we conservatives must seek to join with our "liberal" adversaries is not between their alleged support for equality and tolerance and our alleged bigotry and hatred. The real debate is between their desire to dismantle our traditional morality, institutions, and culture, and our desire to preserve our traditional morality, institutions, and culture—indeed our very freedom and existence as a people.

Modern liberalism is a leftist and nihilistic rebellion against the inherently unequal nature of the human condition. If we conservatives named this ideology for what it is, we would have a fair chance to defeat it or at least stem its advance. But if we go on imagining that leftists are liberals who share with us a common moral consensus as Americans—if we continue to regard their hateful assaults on us and our institutions as expressions of "silly" political correctness rather than of their fundamental drive to abolish our system of government and destroy us as a people, then we will be unable to oppose them in any way that counts, and they will keep driving us and our civilization backwards, step by step, until finally nothing remains. If we are effectively to oppose modern liberalism with its destructive double standards, we must oppose it on principle.

Reply 11

Chi019

It would be great if it worked, but there are too many people exploiting its weaknesses to further their own ends. e.g. Islamic extremists.

True, what has been interesting is the efforts to explain away the recent shooting at Fort Worth without noting his religion or extremist views.

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/006696.html

Although that is becoming increasingly difficult as more info comes to light.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6526030/Fort-Hood-gunman-had-told-US-military-colleagues-that-infidels-should-have-their-throats-cut.html

Reply 12

Doyle&TheFourFathers

Its idealistic, but not to the point where its goals are impossible.

Reply 13

Diaz89

liberal ideals shaped them

Reply 14

Aeolus

SunOfABeach

This pretty much.

Reply 15

Bagration

ourlastmemory

Yeah. It's a nice thought but I think it's impractical in it's pure form.
I could attempt to contribute something more intelligent but I'd probably just be shouted down :sigh:

It can reasonably be argued that between 1884-1909, Britain was a model Liberal state (with of course, some serious deficits that existed because of moral and cultural beliefs, not political ones) and it was hardly impractical, indeed it was one of the greatest periods in British history. You can even extend that date to 1931 or at a maximum stretch, 1945.

I am of course, talking about the one and only Liberalism, Classical Liberalism.

Reply 16