If this piece is supposed to be a good defense of liberalism, liberalism is doomed.
It gets so much wrong, in so many ways. Let me count them, starting with the bare-bones way Brooks describes liberalism. /1
It gets so much wrong, in so many ways. Let me count them, starting with the bare-bones way Brooks describes liberalism. /1
"Liberalism was based on the idea that the choosing individual is the elemental unit of society." Well, yes. Because human beings have...what's the phrase I'm thinking of? Unalienable rights? That inhere in us as individuals, not as extensions of any one group? /2
Yes, we're part of families and communities. But when you build any political ideology on anything other than the individual, from communitarian left to theocratic right, you get some form of authoritarianism. Some worse than others, but authoritarian nonetheless. /3
"Liberalism sometimes devolves into atomization, an alienated society of lonely buffered selves." No, the hedonism and narcissism that comes from affluence and post-modern cynicism does that. The state cannot direct us to be a community; we have to choose to be one./4
"Liberalism assumed that people are primarily motivated by self-interest...People are motivated by both self-interest and a yearning desire to lead a morally meaningful life." Well, okay, but liberalism cannot choose "moral meaning" *for* you, as an authoritarian state would. /5
"Liberalism is so thin it can’t even defend itself. When young people passionately demand racial equity, liberalism’s response is to protect free speech."
"Thin" means, I guess, "simple and true." And without free speech, equality is doomed, with no one left to argue for it. /6
"Thin" means, I guess, "simple and true." And without free speech, equality is doomed, with no one left to argue for it. /6
"Which is why the constitution of liberalism has to be supplemented with the morality of personalism."
The rest of this argument was right out of 1974 and I will stop there. But this was not a defense of liberalism; it wasn't even *about* liberalism, really. /7
The rest of this argument was right out of 1974 and I will stop there. But this was not a defense of liberalism; it wasn't even *about* liberalism, really. /7
I'm not sure what it was about, really, other than a plea to be nice to each other and see each other as fully-realized human beings. Which is always nice. But that, to me, is what liberalism is about. So, I don't get the piece. /8x
