Directly raising awareness / popularity of these principles among the general public seems pretty doomed. It’s hard enough to get people to care about good policy and politics even when it’s about very concrete kitchen-table stuff, without getting drowned out by culture war memes. Abstract principles of political philosophy are even harder to get mindshare for.
This might be a hot take, but I think most people are some combination of insufficiently smart and emotionally mature enough to grok bedrock liberal principles and why they might be good.
This creates a serious problem for any society wishing to be built on these principles. Here in America, the Founders seemed to understand this, which is why they went to great pains to creates what would effectively be an elected aristocracy rather than a true democracy. They understood the danger of mob rule and populism (I think we can fairly argue that Cromwell’s revolution, which they knew well, was a type of populism in hindsight), and didn’t fully trust the people to act in their own best interest (though to be clear there was disagreement about this point among the Founders).
We’ve had periods of time when more of American society at least, and importantly more of those who were in positions of power, grokked bedrock liberalism. But with the breaking of the old systems for creating the next generation of leaders (changes to Ivy League admissions), we’re now in a place where the last generation of solidly bedrock liberal leadership is dying out. And while it’s not gone, we have many who can take power who aren’t onboard with its principles, and the only way I see to get that back would be to wrestle control of the training institutions (the Ivy League) back into the hands of those who would consistently promote bedrock liberalism.
Perhaps there are better ideas I haven’t thought of. I’m thinking in terms of restoring what was lost. Perhaps there’s a way to fix things forward instead. I’m not sure.
Hmm, I’m not so pessimistic. I don’t think the core concepts of liberalism are so complex or unintuitive that the median civically engaged citizen can’t follow along given an amenable background culture.
And lots of policy, political philosophy, culture, big ideas, etc. are driven by elites of some form, not just liberalism. Ideas and culture among elites can change and spread very quickly. I don’t think a liberal renaissance requires “wrestling control” of any particular institutions so much as a cultural shift that is already happening to some degree (it just needs slightly better steering IMO).
I fall on the pessimistic side because I think cultural affiliation with a particular set of norms is a shallow force. By that I mean it will optimize for the meme version of something that can be said in 5 words rather than the real thing. I in fact think that’s how America ended up where it is today: we stopped teaching liberalism deeply, went with shallow, meme liberalism, and then this got warped into the two sides of the culture war we have today. Even if there is a cultural shift back to favor more traditional liberal values, it will only have a positive impact in favor of bedrock liberalism to the extent that elites actually understand it and believe in it enough that they will make hard choices because they believe liberalism is right.
A good analogy might be the Nerva-Antonine emperors of Rome starting with Nerva and continued by Trajan. They led a partial restoration of republican values, but that restoration didn’t actually change the imperial power structure, and thus was only a shallow return to republicanism (they importantly all remained emperors!). Similarly, short of a deep reformation of elite training systems (the relevant power structure here), I’m doubtful of an ability of a cultural shift towards liberalism to actually result in the deep liberalism we enjoyed in the past, rather than something like the trappings of liberalism while maintaining the bones of the current cultural regime.
You seem to talk mostly about the elites losing faith in traditional, bedrock liberal values as the cause of our troubles today. And that partly aligns with reality as I see it.
But in my view, the fundamental story of the late 20th century and early 21 century is the decline of traditional media and cultural gatekeepers and the political emancipation of the non-elites, whether through the rise of conservative radio talk shows, the Gingrich revolution, or Pat Buchanan-style paleoconservatism, and continuing all the way to populism and the Trump-led rebellion of Republican primary voters against the Republican elites in 2016.
If the elites believe in cancellation and jamming their opinions down the throats of the masses, that certainly bodes poorly for liberal values. But I don’t think that suffices to explain the conundrums of our age, because to me the elites have significantly less power and control than they used to, both culturally (to some extent) and politically (to a large extent). This has culminated in Trump 2.0, where scorn at and opposition to elites (whether in bureaucracy, academia, the Groups, etc) is the norm of the day.
I don’t think the masses were ever true believers in bedrock liberal principles, except for waving them around as applause lights to signal patriotism during times of external strife like the Cold War. But in the past, their influence on public discourse used to be muted. Media heads used to decide what topics were worth covering or thinking about, party leaders used to decide what candidates were even available, the elites used to decide what being American stood for, and all this was done without obtaining much input from the lower classes.
Today, that has been turned on its head. And I think the consequences of these changes have been an unmitigated disaster for the entire Western world.
I mostly agree with your comment. My only quibble is that I’d say anyone who gets themselves into a position of power is vying to be an elite, and old elites are largely no longer actually elites in that people don’t look up to them; they’re thought of more as these weird people who weild some power but aren’t really in charge (except when they make convenient scapegoats, in which case they are secretly in charge!). The likes of Trump and Rogan are just as much elites as JFK and Cronkite were, though they treat the role quite differently, and many don’t want to call them “elite” because it disdains the associations the term used to carry, and many modern elites have made a career of being anti-elite, meaning anti the old elite order.
I know my take is largely opinion here, but I remember when I was a kid and the case was made more vigorously and still many didn’t get it. They seemed just unable to reason through second and third order effects. All they cared about was if their preferred group or policy won, and if second order effects came up, the response was often that it “just” wouldn’t happen because no one would do those things once their preferred thing was enacted.
So to be clear, I say this because I think bedrock liberalism requires understanding second and third order effects. The whole reason to buy these ideals is because you understand them, because liberalism inevitably means letting people you disagree with sometimes get their way, and understanding why that’s necessary and good.
Controversial ideas need to be defended bravely, clearly, and often to keep them in the Overton Window. A persistent drip of timely examples and anecdotes combined with a simple interpretation is much more effective. Ideas like “free speech” are very easy to defend in a simple way. Just pointing out that “in Britain, they just put someone on trial for calling someone a Karen” is a fine way to argue for continuing to protect free speech, without needing to get into any abstractions.
The free speech issue is not that simple, I think a lot of people agree on free speech with exceptions ™ , the fight is often about which free speech ™ should be the norm. It’s similar to how people can have different notions of fairness. I am not sure what would act as an intuition pump for most of people to agree with more fair and liberal notions of free speech.
The distinction I’m driving at is between making an in-depth intellectual argument about liberalism (which is what you and Gordon are focused on) and a winning emotional appeal (which is what I’m focused on).
My claim is that support for liberalism has been eroded by too few winning emotional appeals for it, and that they’re actually easy to make. It’s not necessary to address the ambiguities. Just share anecdotes that stir up positive feelings in the right direction.
Let me reiterate why your original comment seems to be downplaying how difficult it is to intuition pump the ideas of liberal free expression.
For a case study, take Modi’s India which also emotively endorses free speech[1][2]— but the activist groups have been screaming left and right about how his government has been steadily eroding liberal free speech norms[3].
Extrapolating from the case in India, at this point around the world it’s mostly a debate surrounding which exceptions people want do they want people criticising the government when they’re doing perceived good policies? Or insulting certain groups of people? People don’t feel strongly about liberal notions of free speech in good parts of the world, and the people who do—western classical liberals— are struggling to get their intuition pumps out there.
I can see the developing economy and cultural differences objections to the former example, so let’s take, case study of Trump, he uses the Applause Lights of free speech even more so than others. He even passed an executive order to restore free speech[4] , where his admin seems to be disagreeing on the same exceptions ™ . They think misinformation-by-outgroup shouldn’t be under free speech, others who disagree think misinformation-by-outgroup-2 shouldn’t be covered. Trump admin curbing on press freedom[5] from outgroup yet inviting —fringe and online activist— internet personalities from their own[6], which is to say their free speech policy seems to be amounting to “free speech for me not for thee”.
It would be difficult to rescue the banner free speech with “In britain they put you in jail for calling people karen” , without also engaging with “Destiny should be prosecuted for mocking on the retired firefighter who died during first trump shooting”.[7]
I think other way would be to play the information and Dark Side Epistemology game better than the illiberal side, but it would be a constant battle as evident from short-lived success of western liberal free speech advocates from prior generations and the difficulty adapting to populism,cancel-culture favoring social media environments.
When I became Prime Minister, I especially invited Pakistan to my swearing-in ceremony so we could turn over a new leaf, yet every noble attempt at fostering peace was met with hostility and betrayal. We sincerely hope that wisdom prevails upon them and they choose the path of peace. I believe even the people of Pakistan long for peace. Look, regarding what you said about criticism and how I deal with it. If I had to summarize in one sentence, I welcome it. I have a strong belief that criticism is the soul of democracy. I want to tell all the young people the following. No matter how dark the night may seem, it is still just night, and morning is bound to come.
A free press makes a stronger democracy! Today on #WorldPressFreedomDay, let us reaffirm our commitment towards steadfastly supporting a free press. It is the multiplicity of ideas and human expression that makes us more vibrant as a society.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
RSF notes that the range of threats presented by the incoming Trump administration is without precedent in modern American history. For instance, Trump has:
Issued at least 15 separate calls to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks in political retaliation;
Vowed to investigate media outlets that are critical of him;
Insulted or threatened journalists hundreds of times on the campaign trail;
Formed an alliance with anti-journalism tech mogul Elon Musk;
Threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with jail time in an apparently successful effort to extract concessions on content moderation; and
Sued multiple media outlets for coverage he disliked.
“F**k it, f**k the dude, the firefighter guy. F**k Trump, f**k the people that support him. I just want you to know, right? In case you are confused or whatever, if one of you were in the crowd and you are a conservative fan of mine and you get blown up or whatever, I am making fun of you the next day on Twitter.”
“Donald Trump incited an insurrection and then was granted full criminal immunity for possibly all of his involvement. I have zero sympathy for anything that happens to him or anyone who supports him. I will argue this position against any and all conservatives of reasonable size, but there’s a reason none of you spineless hacks step outside of your echo chambers.”
Most of the current debates about liberalism are debates about how to trade off between competing liberal priorities. I would regard these debates about exceptions to free speech—whether any are tolerated, and which ones—as debates within a common liberal framework. Typically, proponents of each site, all of whom are taking one liberal view or another, cast their opponents as illiberal (in the theory sense, not the American “progressive-vibe” sense). Opponents reject this label because they genuinely don’t perceive themselves that way.
I think the whole debate would be better if we recognized that there are exist high-stakes tradeoffs between competing liberal priorities, and that it’s these competing visions of liberalism that are at the heart of contemporary political discourse in America.
I only partially agree, I wouldn’t be surprised if “free speech” is now on the road to suffering the same fate as the word “democracy”—china calls itself a democracy,they too have the word “free speech” in their constitution . I think trump’s admin definition and aspiration for free speech— the legal animosity towards media, academics— is not what past US liberals would recognise as such and is departure from that tradition. What use is free speech if your critics are indirectly being suppressed? Even authoritarian governments give citizens enough “free speech” to not arrest them in day to day lives, people self censor on certain topics similar to them being taboo. I have seen some public intellectuals reacting to this mess by embracing free speech absolutism—because they get accused of being biased towards one side and disregarded if they’re partial— but those positions are very hard to get intuitions for.
I think a lot of politicians only pay a lip service to so called “liberal principles” and in the end do realpolitik.
It sounds like what you are hoping for is to avoid illiberal backsliding by making everybody crystal-clear on what liberalism is and giving them a deep understanding of why they should support it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s tractable. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s necessary. How successful have China and Myanmar been in convincing the world they being run on liberal principles?
My view is that most people are pretty clear on the concrete facts of life that matter for liberalism.
Am I being persecuted for my beliefs?
Is my life at risk due to my identity?
Can I say what I want?
Is my property secure, and am I free to transact?
When people debate politics, I contend they typically are debating over tradeoffs inherent in liberal ideas, or between values orthogonal to liberalism. Examples of the latter include dealing with externalities such as pollution, environmental destruction, or public aesthetics. Note that a liberal society can still care about things other than liberalism, and sometimes that will result in tradeoffs with liberalism-maximalism. Making a democratic choice for non-liberal maximalism is still a position compatible with liberalism.
China probably has convinced it’s own populace that it’s democratic—a government run by the people for the people. I contend a lot of people practically against liberal principles will answer in order no,no,yes,yes to those questions in good parts of the so called backsliding or authoritarian world,maybe the last question would be more controversial depending on how it’s framed. Liberalism doesn’t impact majority of people’s life as directly as one might think in the short run, most people just want to get by, and majoritarianism is not the same as liberalism, but the people who’re part of the majority are likely to have more positive experience with the system.
I agree on the tradeoffs, rorty’s patchwork metaphor seems to fit quite well here.
Agreed. Perhaps a better test of a society’s relative liberality is to examine its worst examples of infringements of liberal views—its worst censorship, persecution of demographic groups, limits on property rights, and so on, defining these terms broadly.
I think that the tradeoff between allowing people to pursue their cultural and aesthetic agendas through legal means and preserving a basically liberal government and intercultural framework in which those agendas are pursued is an extremely difficult one to get right. It tends to produce a sense of paradox and hypocrisy. It’s also very hard to figure out when we’re facing a slippery slope into illiberalism or a non-preferred implemention of the tradeoffs inherent in liberalism.
In the context of a basically liberal society, like the USA where I live, I tend to perceive most of the flaws in liberalism as stemming from human nature rather than capture of power centers by committed illiberal ideologues. Conservatives and liberals in the USA both see themselves as basically sticking up for what we’re here referring to as “liberal” values, and I think most members of both parties, even the far left and far right, see themselves as generally presenting contrasting versions of “liberalism.” So I think we have a case here where most US citizens see their nation as less liberal than it really is, in contrast to the example you give of China, a nation where most Chinese citizens may see their nation as more liberal than it really is.
I think there have been non-democratic liberal-ish societies in the past, but it’s hard to tell whether changing landscapes will leave room for the forces which may have caused liberalism to take hold from time to time.
This might be a hot take, but I think most people are some combination of insufficiently smart and emotionally mature enough to grok bedrock liberal principles and why they might be good.
This creates a serious problem for any society wishing to be built on these principles. Here in America, the Founders seemed to understand this, which is why they went to great pains to creates what would effectively be an elected aristocracy rather than a true democracy. They understood the danger of mob rule and populism (I think we can fairly argue that Cromwell’s revolution, which they knew well, was a type of populism in hindsight), and didn’t fully trust the people to act in their own best interest (though to be clear there was disagreement about this point among the Founders).
We’ve had periods of time when more of American society at least, and importantly more of those who were in positions of power, grokked bedrock liberalism. But with the breaking of the old systems for creating the next generation of leaders (changes to Ivy League admissions), we’re now in a place where the last generation of solidly bedrock liberal leadership is dying out. And while it’s not gone, we have many who can take power who aren’t onboard with its principles, and the only way I see to get that back would be to wrestle control of the training institutions (the Ivy League) back into the hands of those who would consistently promote bedrock liberalism.
Perhaps there are better ideas I haven’t thought of. I’m thinking in terms of restoring what was lost. Perhaps there’s a way to fix things forward instead. I’m not sure.
Hmm, I’m not so pessimistic. I don’t think the core concepts of liberalism are so complex or unintuitive that the median civically engaged citizen can’t follow along given an amenable background culture.
And lots of policy, political philosophy, culture, big ideas, etc. are driven by elites of some form, not just liberalism. Ideas and culture among elites can change and spread very quickly. I don’t think a liberal renaissance requires “wrestling control” of any particular institutions so much as a cultural shift that is already happening to some degree (it just needs slightly better steering IMO).
I fall on the pessimistic side because I think cultural affiliation with a particular set of norms is a shallow force. By that I mean it will optimize for the meme version of something that can be said in 5 words rather than the real thing. I in fact think that’s how America ended up where it is today: we stopped teaching liberalism deeply, went with shallow, meme liberalism, and then this got warped into the two sides of the culture war we have today. Even if there is a cultural shift back to favor more traditional liberal values, it will only have a positive impact in favor of bedrock liberalism to the extent that elites actually understand it and believe in it enough that they will make hard choices because they believe liberalism is right.
A good analogy might be the Nerva-Antonine emperors of Rome starting with Nerva and continued by Trajan. They led a partial restoration of republican values, but that restoration didn’t actually change the imperial power structure, and thus was only a shallow return to republicanism (they importantly all remained emperors!). Similarly, short of a deep reformation of elite training systems (the relevant power structure here), I’m doubtful of an ability of a cultural shift towards liberalism to actually result in the deep liberalism we enjoyed in the past, rather than something like the trappings of liberalism while maintaining the bones of the current cultural regime.
You seem to talk mostly about the elites losing faith in traditional, bedrock liberal values as the cause of our troubles today. And that partly aligns with reality as I see it.
But in my view, the fundamental story of the late 20th century and early 21 century is the decline of traditional media and cultural gatekeepers and the political emancipation of the non-elites, whether through the rise of conservative radio talk shows, the Gingrich revolution, or Pat Buchanan-style paleoconservatism, and continuing all the way to populism and the Trump-led rebellion of Republican primary voters against the Republican elites in 2016.
If the elites believe in cancellation and jamming their opinions down the throats of the masses, that certainly bodes poorly for liberal values. But I don’t think that suffices to explain the conundrums of our age, because to me the elites have significantly less power and control than they used to, both culturally (to some extent) and politically (to a large extent). This has culminated in Trump 2.0, where scorn at and opposition to elites (whether in bureaucracy, academia, the Groups, etc) is the norm of the day.
I don’t think the masses were ever true believers in bedrock liberal principles, except for waving them around as applause lights to signal patriotism during times of external strife like the Cold War. But in the past, their influence on public discourse used to be muted. Media heads used to decide what topics were worth covering or thinking about, party leaders used to decide what candidates were even available, the elites used to decide what being American stood for, and all this was done without obtaining much input from the lower classes.
Today, that has been turned on its head. And I think the consequences of these changes have been an unmitigated disaster for the entire Western world.
I mostly agree with your comment. My only quibble is that I’d say anyone who gets themselves into a position of power is vying to be an elite, and old elites are largely no longer actually elites in that people don’t look up to them; they’re thought of more as these weird people who weild some power but aren’t really in charge (except when they make convenient scapegoats, in which case they are secretly in charge!). The likes of Trump and Rogan are just as much elites as JFK and Cronkite were, though they treat the role quite differently, and many don’t want to call them “elite” because it disdains the associations the term used to carry, and many modern elites have made a career of being anti-elite, meaning anti the old elite order.
Disagree. People are plenty smart enough to understand them. The case for them just doesn’t get made vigorously.
I know my take is largely opinion here, but I remember when I was a kid and the case was made more vigorously and still many didn’t get it. They seemed just unable to reason through second and third order effects. All they cared about was if their preferred group or policy won, and if second order effects came up, the response was often that it “just” wouldn’t happen because no one would do those things once their preferred thing was enacted.
So to be clear, I say this because I think bedrock liberalism requires understanding second and third order effects. The whole reason to buy these ideals is because you understand them, because liberalism inevitably means letting people you disagree with sometimes get their way, and understanding why that’s necessary and good.
Controversial ideas need to be defended bravely, clearly, and often to keep them in the Overton Window. A persistent drip of timely examples and anecdotes combined with a simple interpretation is much more effective. Ideas like “free speech” are very easy to defend in a simple way. Just pointing out that “in Britain, they just put someone on trial for calling someone a Karen” is a fine way to argue for continuing to protect free speech, without needing to get into any abstractions.
The free speech issue is not that simple, I think a lot of people agree on free speech with exceptions ™ , the fight is often about which free speech ™ should be the norm. It’s similar to how people can have different notions of fairness. I am not sure what would act as an intuition pump for most of people to agree with more fair and liberal notions of free speech.
The distinction I’m driving at is between making an in-depth intellectual argument about liberalism (which is what you and Gordon are focused on) and a winning emotional appeal (which is what I’m focused on).
My claim is that support for liberalism has been eroded by too few winning emotional appeals for it, and that they’re actually easy to make. It’s not necessary to address the ambiguities. Just share anecdotes that stir up positive feelings in the right direction.
Let me reiterate why your original comment seems to be downplaying how difficult it is to intuition pump the ideas of liberal free expression.
For a case study, take Modi’s India which also emotively endorses free speech[1][2]— but the activist groups have been screaming left and right about how his government has been steadily eroding liberal free speech norms[3].
Extrapolating from the case in India, at this point around the world it’s mostly a debate surrounding which exceptions people want do they want people criticising the government when they’re doing perceived good policies? Or insulting certain groups of people? People don’t feel strongly about liberal notions of free speech in good parts of the world, and the people who do—western classical liberals— are struggling to get their intuition pumps out there.
I can see the developing economy and cultural differences objections to the former example, so let’s take, case study of Trump, he uses the Applause Lights of free speech even more so than others. He even passed an executive order to restore free speech[4] , where his admin seems to be disagreeing on the same exceptions ™ . They think misinformation-by-outgroup shouldn’t be under free speech, others who disagree think misinformation-by-outgroup-2 shouldn’t be covered. Trump admin curbing on press freedom[5] from outgroup yet inviting —fringe and online activist— internet personalities from their own[6], which is to say their free speech policy seems to be amounting to “free speech for me not for thee”.
It would be difficult to rescue the banner free speech with “In britain they put you in jail for calling people karen” , without also engaging with “Destiny should be prosecuted for mocking on the retired firefighter who died during first trump shooting”.[7]
I think other way would be to play the information and Dark Side Epistemology game better than the illiberal side, but it would be a constant battle as evident from short-lived success of western liberal free speech advocates from prior generations and the difficulty adapting to populism,cancel-culture favoring social media environments.
https://lexfridman.com/narendra-modi-transcript/
https://www.themirrority.com/data/press-freedom-index
2021 onwards
2010-2020 (with ranking)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/
https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-inauguration-set-trigger-period-unprecedented-uncertainty-press-freedom
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/05/politics/laura-loomer-donald-trump-meeting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer
https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/streamers/news-he-s-gotta-hate-farming-viewers-call-kick-streamer-destiny-controversial-opinion-donald-trump-s-assassination-attempt
Most of the current debates about liberalism are debates about how to trade off between competing liberal priorities. I would regard these debates about exceptions to free speech—whether any are tolerated, and which ones—as debates within a common liberal framework. Typically, proponents of each site, all of whom are taking one liberal view or another, cast their opponents as illiberal (in the theory sense, not the American “progressive-vibe” sense). Opponents reject this label because they genuinely don’t perceive themselves that way.
I think the whole debate would be better if we recognized that there are exist high-stakes tradeoffs between competing liberal priorities, and that it’s these competing visions of liberalism that are at the heart of contemporary political discourse in America.
I only partially agree, I wouldn’t be surprised if “free speech” is now on the road to suffering the same fate as the word “democracy”—china calls itself a democracy,they too have the word “free speech” in their constitution . I think trump’s admin definition and aspiration for free speech— the legal animosity towards media, academics— is not what past US liberals would recognise as such and is departure from that tradition. What use is free speech if your critics are indirectly being suppressed? Even authoritarian governments give citizens enough “free speech” to not arrest them in day to day lives, people self censor on certain topics similar to them being taboo. I have seen some public intellectuals reacting to this mess by embracing free speech absolutism—because they get accused of being biased towards one side and disregarded if they’re partial— but those positions are very hard to get intuitions for.
I think a lot of politicians only pay a lip service to so called “liberal principles” and in the end do realpolitik.
It sounds like what you are hoping for is to avoid illiberal backsliding by making everybody crystal-clear on what liberalism is and giving them a deep understanding of why they should support it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s tractable. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s necessary. How successful have China and Myanmar been in convincing the world they being run on liberal principles?
My view is that most people are pretty clear on the concrete facts of life that matter for liberalism.
Am I being persecuted for my beliefs?
Is my life at risk due to my identity?
Can I say what I want?
Is my property secure, and am I free to transact?
When people debate politics, I contend they typically are debating over tradeoffs inherent in liberal ideas, or between values orthogonal to liberalism. Examples of the latter include dealing with externalities such as pollution, environmental destruction, or public aesthetics. Note that a liberal society can still care about things other than liberalism, and sometimes that will result in tradeoffs with liberalism-maximalism. Making a democratic choice for non-liberal maximalism is still a position compatible with liberalism.
China probably has convinced it’s own populace that it’s democratic—a government run by the people for the people. I contend a lot of people practically against liberal principles will answer in order no,no,yes,yes to those questions in good parts of the so called backsliding or authoritarian world,maybe the last question would be more controversial depending on how it’s framed. Liberalism doesn’t impact majority of people’s life as directly as one might think in the short run, most people just want to get by, and majoritarianism is not the same as liberalism, but the people who’re part of the majority are likely to have more positive experience with the system.
I agree on the tradeoffs, rorty’s patchwork metaphor seems to fit quite well here.
Agreed. Perhaps a better test of a society’s relative liberality is to examine its worst examples of infringements of liberal views—its worst censorship, persecution of demographic groups, limits on property rights, and so on, defining these terms broadly.
I think that the tradeoff between allowing people to pursue their cultural and aesthetic agendas through legal means and preserving a basically liberal government and intercultural framework in which those agendas are pursued is an extremely difficult one to get right. It tends to produce a sense of paradox and hypocrisy. It’s also very hard to figure out when we’re facing a slippery slope into illiberalism or a non-preferred implemention of the tradeoffs inherent in liberalism.
In the context of a basically liberal society, like the USA where I live, I tend to perceive most of the flaws in liberalism as stemming from human nature rather than capture of power centers by committed illiberal ideologues. Conservatives and liberals in the USA both see themselves as basically sticking up for what we’re here referring to as “liberal” values, and I think most members of both parties, even the far left and far right, see themselves as generally presenting contrasting versions of “liberalism.” So I think we have a case here where most US citizens see their nation as less liberal than it really is, in contrast to the example you give of China, a nation where most Chinese citizens may see their nation as more liberal than it really is.
I think there have been non-democratic liberal-ish societies in the past, but it’s hard to tell whether changing landscapes will leave room for the forces which may have caused liberalism to take hold from time to time.
There are even “non-democratic liberal-ish societies” today . . . like Singapore, Brunei, Dubai and other Gulf monarchies, etc
Singapore is democratic.