Thread by @paulcrider

Okay, stream-of-conscious thread on liberalism, neoliberalism, politics, policy, and philosophy commencing here and going through the night. (There'll be long gaps and pauses) 🧵#NeoliberalShillBracket

Liberalism is values, practices, & institutions. Usual stuff: representative government, now w/ high suffrage democracy, tho that wasn't always the case. I think at this point liberalism requires democracy and without it—whatever may've been once true—it's not really liberalism.

Okay so rep. gov't and high suffrage democracy. Also markets; professional state bureaucracy, rule of law and a constitutional legal tradition; stable property rights and a welfare state. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Liberal values and virtues. Freedom: positive, negative, and republican. The individual should enjoy a presumption of non-interference in many areas of life, but this is defeasible. The home and family are not apolitical. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Positive liberty: liberal institutions, including the state, should secure the social and economic conditions so that each individual stands a good chance of developing their capacities and designing and executing their life projects. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Republican or relational freedom: liberal institutions should strive to liberate individuals from oppressive relations. Liberalism should frustrate, obstruct, & degrade concentrations of power, economic and political. In the gov't this means separate powers and checks & balances.

Relational freedom brings me to equality. Inequality is a constant force in social, economic, and political affairs. Like gravity. Freedom naturally produces inequality. Not a knock against freedom—just how it is. This doesn't mean we have to suffer (stark) inequality.

But the way inequality works is it produces justifying ideologies, abetted by the just world bias and the natural inclination folks have to idolize the rich and powerful, be obsequious to them, and be just generally fascinated by them. What Smith observed. #NeoliberalShillBracket

We should understand liberalism in non-ideal terms. Ideal theory is a giant waste of time. We shouldn't imagine what a perfectly just society would look like and then brazenly apply those principles to the real world and its rich social and historical contextual landscape.

Freedom and equality *only have meaning within the social context.* We look at the world as it is right now: actually existing relationships, institutions, and patterns of behavior. From there we make our moves to improve society somewhat. #NeoliberalShillBracket

What are the most corrosive inequalities and oppressive unfreedoms? How do we make those whole who bear the worst? From freeing the oppressed—grokked in full social context—we move toward realizing the universal that liberalism aspires to. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Secure the flourishing of trans people—now Target Number 1 of the reactionary right. Secure Black flourishing—long the bête as it were noire of American illiberalism. Decriminalize sex workers. House the homeless. *Capitalize* the poor. #NeoliberalShillBracket

In liberalism from margin to center freedom *effervesces up* to the universal from liberating the most unfree, understood as always in the social context. This contrasts with the trickle-down theory of defining freedom in vacuous, acontextual ideal terms (such as behind a veil).

Break for dinner!

Force and coercion are ineliminable. If you think you've gotten rid of it, you've just disguised it. The moment you define property rights, for example, you're drawing an at least somewhat arbitrary line and preparing to do violence upon its breach.

https://twitter.com/AeonSkoble/status/1635100205216600065?s=20

We can also never eliminate vulnerability from society. @adamgurri is good on this. "[Liberalism] is the attempt to balance authority and the sources of coercion against one another ... to minimize cruelty and vulnerability as much as any system can."

liberalcurrents.com/finding-libert…

"Effervescing freedom" is a concept I picked up from Black feminism. Because liberals should be attuned to living context, they should also be prepared to learn from non-liberals. Not a very liberal liberalism to be epistemically shut off from other perspectives.

Talked a lot about freedom and equality. Diversity and pluralism are crucial as well. Liberalism is also about getting people with very different comprehensive worldviews to live and hopefully thrive together in peace. Forbearance is thus an essential liberal virtue.

But there's advantage in diversity to go along with its more commonly remarked upon difficulties. People with different perspectives bring different approaches to social problems, allowing society to leverage more robust problem solving capacity.

State capacity is indeed important. But that's why I think it's helpful to think of the state as an arena (or set of arenas). Libertarians make a mistake when they implicitly view The State as a singular actor.

https://twitter.com/Max_P94/status/1635122854516899840?s=20

So we try to avoid concentration of power of individuals or groups within the state by separation of powers, rule of law, democratic elections, and a free and adversarial press, among other devices. We shouldn't confuse this with making the state itself weak or impotent.

Another break. The protoliberals have been put to bed, but dishes and other chores call. True liberalism may have to wait for another episode of the Expanse (S5) as well. Stay tuned ...

So speaking of a free and adversarial press, let's talk about free speech! It's an essential liberal value, but I think it's often misunderstood. So, the government shouldn't censor books or media. Some nazis want to have a website or print pamphlets—let 'em knock themselves out.

Nazis, white supremacists, and other nasty people should be able to have demonstrations, but public property gets a little dicey. If it's a group that explicitly calls for violence against other members of the public, a local gov't can deny permits on account of public safety.

Likewise even given a public demonstration by fascists, the local gov't *should* be present in force, prepared and even expecting to shut things down if/when violence threatens. Neither liberals nor public officials are obligated to play dumb. We all see violence is the point.

For free speech as a private value/practice. Here is where there is the most misunderstanding, esp by reactionary centrists (who say they're liberals but aren't really). Liberals aren't obligated to indulge every stupid fucking idea. Again: LIBERALS DON'T HAVE TO PLAY DUMB.

We've learned explicitly from folks like Steve Bannon that the fascist strategy is to flood the zone with shit. He was talking about executive media management but the point applies to fascist discourse and reactionary centrism as well. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Play on liberals' sense that they must be open-minded, to let the good out-compete the bad in the mArKeTpLaCe Of IdEaS. Keep reinventing racist/misogynist ideas, cloaked in respectable, even "scientific" garb. We're expected always to entertain "race realism" or whatever.

But this stupid shit sucks limited oxygen from the discourse. We're not able to move on from discredited ideas to new and promising ideas bc some folks insist on putting new coats of paint on those discredited ideas. This is one way inequality perpetuates itself, mentioned above.

Reactionary centrists *flood the discursive zone with shit*, just like Bannon/Trump flood the political media with shit. Oh and by rxnary centrists I'm talking about the IDW and similar. Your Pinkers & Sullivans, &c. I name some names in this old thread.

https://twitter.com/paulcrider/status/1392902964830871556?s=20

This gets back to negative vs positive & freedom. Freedom of speech has a positive dimension. A liberal should be keen on seeking out or amplifying the speech of those voices typically suppressed. Sex workers, prisoners, the homeless, immigrants, &c. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Speaking of immigrants, let's talk about policy. Freedom of movement. Open borders.

Free people move across borders as a matter of course. Unfree people move across borders to become free.

#NeoliberalShillBracket

Freedom of movement is really the freedom to exercise agency over where one lives. The flip side of open borders then is of course #YesInMyBackYard. At the int'l frontier, armed agents of the state target moving persons with violence to stop their movement.

But within a country, local landowners exert their privileged power over local gov'ts to artificially restrict the supply of housing and public transportation so that newcomers cannot live where they would otherwise choose to live. It's the same freedom/unfreedom.

#Abundance. We should allow building and development in the absence of oppressive zoning and other restrictions. And we should foster energy and material abundance. In the shadow of climate change, this means rules to foster a vibrant clean energy market *and* public investment.

Decriminalize drugs. Decriminalize sex work. Radically reduce criminal sentencing and reorient criminal justice to a rehabilitation model rather than a retributive one. I don't think of myself as a police abolitionist but I *do* affirm prison abolition. #NeoliberalShillBracket

Free trade.

I support free trade and positively loathe "Buy American" campaigns, though I do think there's *some* room for *mild* industrial policy. I think regional revitalization *can* make political sense, especially when there are national security or supply chain concerns.

We should tax bads more than good. Carbon taxes. Land value taxes. Inheritance and wealth taxes, both for the sake of degrading, however slowly, extreme inequality. Otherwise taxes should be simple. Abolish TurboTax. (I've used TurboTax for ~10 years now).

And furthermore #AbolishICE #AbolishDHS #FreeThemAll
That's a wrap for tonight folks. If you like what you've seen of Crider liberalism, you can do your part to bring it into reality by voting for me in the #NeoliberalShillBracket End 🧵