Gone is the appreciation for diversity, disagreement, and proceduralism. Enters an insatiable thirst for public morality, purpose, and collective attachment.
What a succinct summary of the contrast between the values the Jonathan Rauch wishes to keep and the values of what Wesley Yang calls the Successor Regime.
Incidentally, if you missed it, Jonathan Rauch had a good conversation with Russ Roberts.
To overcome the spiritual void of Liberalism, Bitton sees one alternative as “a hybrid model of governance—one that recognizes the need for the state to intervene when civil society fails to sustain its own institutions, stands ready to legislate specific moral principles, and refuses to remain agnostic vis-à-vis substantive definitions of the good life. Of course, doing all of the above need not require the total abandonment of liberalism: Encouraging certain ways of life does not mean imposing anything upon anyone.”
The Liberal (or Progressive) insistence on equal respect flatly rejects the idea that there could be encouragement of any particular way of life.
Progressives generally make an unprincipled exception and actively discourage particular ways of life: traditional ways.
First, Bitton is not using liberal and progressive synonymously, quite the opposite. Second, the problem with Woke Progressives is precisely that they *don’t* respect everyone equally, especially not rural Whites for example, and that they not just encourage, but actually *do* want to enforce, a particular way of life (Green, equal outcomes, unarmed, masked, highly regulated, etc.).
A state that “stands ready to legislate specific moral principles” is just as likely to legislate Woke principles as conservative ones, maybe more so given the preponderance of Wokeness among the educated and ruling classes.
While left post-liberalism does indeed focus on public morality, purpose, and collective attachment, it offers only demented versions of such things. If properly ordered, these things need not be bad, but of course the question is how do you ensure that these are indeed properly ordered.
The only way forward is some version of post-liberalism. Left post-liberalism has largely defeated liberalism. Calls for more liberalism is a call to send another cavalry charge against a tank formation.
Underappreciated insight: “As an intellectual reaction against an oppressive order, classical liberalism is first and foremost a negative ideal. Most liberal theorists know what they do not want—domination, illegitimate hierarchies, dogma”
Later: “For much of the 20th century, liberalism existed within a convenient trichotomy, alongside fascism and communism.”
It’s easy to understand the value of proceduralism, when one is acutely reminded everyday that the alternative is to descend into fascism, communism, or some other tyranny. Now that the Soviet Union’s collapse has faded into distant memory, however, the threat of “domination, illegitimate hierarchies, dogma” no longer feels imminent, at least not in the minds of many people. (Tyler Cowen coined the phrase, “The Great Forgetting”.) With no fear of “an oppressive order”, a negative ideal against that order becomes underappreciated.
Bitton’s diagnosis, “most of the West’s civilizational challenges stem from the simple fact that liberal societies are no longer producing liberal citizens,” is correct and reminiscent of Reagan’s warning, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” However, I think Bitton errs in emphasizing “a positive vision for the liberal order” as the cure. The value of liberalism is, actually, a negative one: it’s the only governing philosophy in human history to have successfully prevented “an oppressive order”. A liberal society may not be perfect nor “truly satisfying”. But, it beats all the alternatives.
The anti-racist “successor ideology” is also negative – against racism.
And virtually all agree that “racism” is bad, altho there is no longer agreement on what “racism” means.
Conservatives / traditionalists / liberals need to be clear that “racism is treating people differently because of their race”.
That’s the racism to be against.
The Woke folk are against a “racism whenever the group average outcomes are different between whites and Blacks” (capitalization deliberate). Note this is never applied to the NBA to compare Black and Hispanic rates.
If there is freedom, there will be average group outcome differences. Those who favor freedom, must oppose racist policies to equalize outcomes.
“Liberalism” is failing because it succeeded in gaining power yet failed to deliver an acceptable color-blind society — because Democrats wanted to use Black lower avg achievement to call Republicans and all Americans racist, so as to win elections & power. For many Americans, the racial differences were OK, but specific policies were suspected of needing improvement – and the colorblind society remains the ideal.
I found Mr. Rauch’s fawning praise for our Information Oligarchy very difficult to stomach. For example, he goes ecstatic about the miracle of COVID-19 vaccines ( rolled out a mere 1 year??? after they were created!), without mentioning that big S ‘Science’ and its perverse incentives also created the virus.
Short trustworthiness test: if you think Donald Trump is the problem, you are the problem.
Yes, Rauch is preaching veneration of the establishment oligarchy. Rauch seems like his full time day job is promoting the political authority of this oligarchy. The podcast was nauseating. With all due respect, this dampens my respect for both Russ Roberts and Kling. I still completely respect Kling and Roberts on free market capitalism, but they have a habit of promoting these corrupt pundits.
Rauch is better on this topic the more theoretical he is. Yes, he’s right that a free society needs functioning and organised bullshit filtering institutions. Most of the Econtalk podcast was about this s kind of (correct) theory.
But the goes and imagines that Twitter inc. is one of those functioninginstitutions.
The best bit was when Roberts praised his beautiful idealization of how the system should work and then Rauch goes and says “No that’s actually the reality.”
If this part means “if you think Donald Trump is *the* problem”, that indeed makes you a bunch of the problem.
And, anyone who thinks that Trump is
more of the problem than his recent predecessors were, is also a bunch of the problem.
I wouldn’t even say that. I can respect different judgements on Trump. But Trump aside, Rauch asserts that politicians other than Trump are generally honest, sober, fact-based people is a disqualifying remark.
Wow, excellent. My rudimentary translation: Humans likes to fight. Given peace, they will find something to fight about.