"Regardless of their social and religious inheritance, the people of Europe are being pressured to recognize rights that derive from abstract ideas of freedom and autonomy, and which defy the norms of the indigenous religions: rights to abortion, surrogate birth, euthanasia and
so on, which are inevitably controversial in countries that have depended for their cohesion on their religious inheritance.
These rights form part of the worldview of the governing elite, who can legislate above the heads of sovereign governments.
These rights form part of the worldview of the governing elite, who can legislate above the heads of sovereign governments.
Moreover, the governments of the European nations have been asked to renounce the primary right of sovereign states, which is the right to determine who resides within their borders.
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The charge of ‘populism’ is levelled against movements for national independence and national renewal largely in order to discount the fact that they enjoy popular support: a majority voted for Brexit; but liberals discount their vote, because it is ‘populist’.
For there are two ways of appealing to the people – indirectly, through the institutions that safeguard the liberal voice, and directly, by asking them what they think.
Direct appeal to the people is rejected as dangerous. After all, they do not know what they think, or if they do know, it is because they think the wrong things. Only when guided and tempered by a liberal constitution can the people be trusted – and that means...
and that means filtering their raw emotions though a fine mesh of liberal hesitations, so that only a harmless stream of sentiment trickles forth.
The same charge of populism is levelled at the Law and Justice Party in Poland, and at Fidesz in Hungary. Both are accused of making too direct an appeal to the sentiments of the people, and in particular to their sentiments of belonging.
But ordinary people cling to forms of membership that are local, bounded and difficult to translate into bureaucratic norms.
Their values are shaped by religion, family, language and national history, they do not necessarily recognize the force of transnational obligations, universal codes of human rights, especially when those codes r in direct conflict w/ the specific obligations of family & faith.
It seems to me that the conflict between the Left intelligentsia and human nature has shifted from the sphere of socialism versus capitalism to this new sphere, of enlightened liberalism versus residual nationalism.
What the liberals condemn as populism is really the attempt to retain old and inherited sentiments of identity and belonging. And what the people condemn as elitism is really the enlightenment conception of a universal and borderless political order, ...
in which conflicts supposedly vanish because their cause – which is the competitive network of national loyalties – has been swept away".
Roger Scruton, q nego publica sem ler, explicando como e pq isentões e liberais se tornaram a nova esquerda.
Roger Scruton, q nego publica sem ler, explicando como e pq isentões e liberais se tornaram a nova esquerda.
