Thread by @yhazony

Liberalism is a system of political dogma built on 3 premises:
1. Reason is accessible to each individual and dictates political truth that applies universally.
2. All individuals are perfectly free and equal.
3. Individuals take on political and moral obligation only by consent.

It doesn't matter if you call yourself a progressive, a classical liberal, or a "conservative." If your political worldview is based on these three premises, you are a liberal. Liberals disagree among themselves on lots of things. They are still liberals.

So if, for example, the Flemish regional government bans kosher slaughter on the grounds that it violates universal reason, or if it were to ban circumcision as a violation of children's rights, this is a suppression of Jewish tradition by liberal political dogma.

Liberal premises have no resources for tolerating a diversity of political and moral traditions. Where liberalism is taken seriously, in its unmixed form, it will uproot every other political and moral tradition from the past.

The only reason that you think liberalism is capable of tolerance is because until World War II, liberalism was balanced, in Europe and America, by powerful countervailing Christian and nationalist traditions.

In the wake of the trauma of World War II, the ability of these conservative traditions to balance liberalism has collapsed. We are now facing a victorious liberalism, unmixed and without significant conservative opposition, throughout the West.

There is a powerful liberalism of the left, a centrist liberalism, and even a liberalism of the right. But an influential conservative political movement--one that is capable of permitting a real place for Christianity and Judaism--does not exist today in most Western countries.

In the absence of significant countervailing forces, liberalism has become a formula for perpetual revolution.

The nationalist movements of recent years are an attempt to stop this perpetual revolution machine. You may well object to these nationalist movements on various grounds. But this is what they are about: Trying to mount a defense against ongoing revolutionary liberalism.

Is there an alternative to liberalism that is neither Marxist nor fascist? I say that such an alternative is possible and very much needed today. Let's call it "conservative democracy."

A sketch of what this would look like is here: firstthings.com/article/2019/0…