Thread by @jholbo1

You know, @jtlevy ought to talk more about his book in relation to contemporary politics. It seems relevant to these interesting times. 1/ books.google.com.sg/books/about/Ra…

Let me try to condense a main lesson of it, as I see it, and give an obvious, contemporary application. 2/

Liberalism (in the broad sense, not the partisan D sense) concerns the proper relationship between the individual and the state. This leave 'intermediate groups' - thick civic society - betwixt and between. 3/

The 'proper' role of intermediate groups makes an antinomy. On the one hand, groups should be liberal through-and-through. Otherwise, individuals - who enjoy liberal rights and liberties! - may be unjustly 'trapped' in pockets of illiberal order. 4/

On the other hand, groups must be allowed to be quite illiberal. Part of liberalism is the right to form, via free association, little illiberal pockets - your weird church, say. 5/

The liberal-through-and-through option Levy calls 'rationalism'. The everyone-can-build-intentional-illiberal-communities option he calls 'pluralism'. Both options admit of reductio developments, run to 'pure' extremes. 6/

That is, 'rationalist' liberalism turns out to be illiberal (you lack the liberal freedom to be 'irrationally' illiberal, locally.) 'Pluralist' liberalism turns out to be illiberal since free association, widely practiced, can burden bystanders intolerably. 7/

(If Twitter and Google and Amazon were local bit-players, there would be no issue raised by their collective de-platforming of the President and his insurrectionist followers. Their actions would be 'civic society at its best'. Local groups standing against state tyranny!) 8/

In a sense the solution is obvious: COMMUNITY IS FOR LOSERS! (I added that. Jacob doesn't say it.) If you are a small group, in the shadow of larger groups, you tight-knitting together in a community - collective mutual protection against larger groups - is wholly in order. 9/

But once you ARE the Big Guy, you start to look like the Bad Guy. Big is bad. Because now people can't 'exit' from you, easily. You foot-stomp everywhere. And people who aren't 'in' you are still in your shadow, uncomfortably. 10/

We as a society have evolved a collective moral instinct that small-is-good, big-is-bad, as a way of threading the rationalist-pluralist needle. The cracks only show when a group gets Big. But this instinct has not expressed, healthily, as a policy of keeping groups small. 11/

It has expressed, unhealthily, as paranoid style cultural politics. Everyone, in order to legitimate their group, has to cast their group as David (US) vs. Goliath (THEM). Victimology becomes obligatory for healthy, card-carrying groupishness. This is not healthy! 12/

We have identity politics. And, in order to feel justified in having our identities, being - essentially - a victim of the other side has to be baked right in. 'No thick community without whining about the other side's impunity!' 13/

This is not to say that no one is really a victim! I'm a liberal because I think leftist grievances are, broadly, valid, deserving redress, and right-wing grievances are, mostly, absurd and bogus trolling and flopping for the ref. 14/

I picked my side because my side has right and justice on its side. No flabby relativism for me, no thanks! 15/

But I have one drop of sympathy for conservatives playing the victim card, absurdly, and it is this: liberalism itself nudges them into doing that, as a condition of feeling entitled to their (dominant!) group identities, which they want to keep! Everyone likes their family! end/