A World After Liberalism:Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right

[ltlee1]

"Liberalism aimed to free people to discover and express their individual identities, apart from coercive interference. But by uprooting people from historic communities and social roles, the radical right predicted, liberalism would trigger an anxious preoccupation with group belonging. The triumph of liberalism would therefore coincide with its collapse. By pressing people to ask, “Who am I?” its social logic would lead them back to the most basic human question, “Who are we?” At its heart, the radical right was a response to this spiraling crisis of belonging. It argued the crisis could not be solved by returning to conventional national or religious identities, since that would merely restore a sick patient to a condition when its symptoms first appeared. The solution to the crisis would require Western culture to unlearn a millennia-long mistake, sustained by centuries of Christian belief, that attempted to ground its legitimacy outside of itself. Political life does not depend on truths or values that transcend our identities, the radical right claimed, or on a biblical vision of human unity. It depends on recognizing that human identity, at its most primordial level, is something inherited. To an age of growing individualism, this movement’s message was powerfully dissonant: Your identity does not belong to you alone. It joins you forever to those of your kind, and separates you forever from those who are alien. To know and to affirm this inheritance is to live a meaningful life; to deny it is the greatest tragedy; to be denied it the greatest injustice." (From the Introduction of "A World After Liberalism"

https://www.amazon.com/World-after-Liberalism-Philosophers-Radical-ebook/dp/B098RF76YH?asin=B098RF76YH&revisionId=f62dfff2&format=1&depth=1

According to Mathew Rose, Liberalism is as successful as it is self-destructing. Rose then introduce 5 thinkers who might dominate the
post-liberal world. But his book does not focus on the most intriguing
question.

Can Liberalism reborn like the legendary Pheonix?
IF YES, under what condition and how long would it take?

[ltlee1]

From his perch of being a Council member of National Endowment For Humanities(NEH) and Senior Fellow and Director
of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life, Mathew Rose seems to have resigned to the inevitably rise
of a new conservatism and a world after (Western) liberalism.

"We are living in a postliberal moment. After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds.
Its most serious challenge does not come from regimes in China, Russia, or Central Europe, whose leaders declare the
liberal epoch is “at an end.”1 It comes from within Western democracies themselves, where intelligent critics, and not just
angry populists, are expressing doubts about its most basic norms.

Critiques of liberalism are as old as liberalism itself, of course, and its ideas have never gone unchallenged. For centuries,
philosophers have questioned it from all sides. They have blamed it for increasing inequality and exploitation, and for
corrupting culture and religion. They have been especially skeptical of its vision of human beings as rights-bearing individuals
who are defined by their ability to choose. But if our moment is not novel in every respect, it is jarringly new to some of us.
The idea that human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, or cultural pluralism might be rejected out of principle, and
not blind prejudice, is bewildering to many. They are ideas associated with antiquated books and defeated causes—with people
living in the past, not looking toward the future.

A new conservatism, unlike any in recent memory, is coming into view. Ideas once thought taboo are being reconsidered; authors
once banished are being rehabilitated; debates once closed are reopening. There is disagreement about how this intellectual space
opened up, but there is no doubt who is filling it. Nationalists, populists, identitarians, futurists, and religious traditionalists are
vying to define conservatism in ways previously unimaginable. To a remarkable degree, they dissent from an orthodoxy that
seemed settled as recently as 2016."

[ltlee1]

On Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 4:34:42 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:

Actually, liberalism's self-enmity or self-poisoning is actually not a new idea.
Great Polish philosopher had reached that conclusion more than 30 years ago.

"Three decades ago, Leszek Kolakowski wrote:
As I was browsing through The Open Society and Its Enemies again after many years, it struck me that
when Popper attacks totalitarian ideologies and movements, he neglects the reverse side of the threat.
By this I mean what could be called the self-enmity of the open society—not merely the inherent inability
of democracy to defend itself effectively against internal enemies by democratic means alone, but more
importantly, the process by which the extension and consistent application of liberal principles transforms
them into their antithesis." ( Quoted by Ivan Krastev )
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/02/01/europes-democracy-paradox/

[ltlee1]

The West is after liberalism. It is also after democracy.

The "democracy" currently practiced is in reality anti-democratic democratism.

"Is democracy antidemocratic? If you apply the standards of a hugely influential modern understanding of what democracy ought to be, this question is not as paradoxical as it may seem. According to this understanding of popular government, which forms part of a larger view of human nature and society, the practices of actual democracies fall far short of, or egregiously violate, what is considered to be “real” democracy. This view is not confined to a small minority of theorists, and it is not of recent origin. It has been a powerful and growing influence in America and leading Western European nations and their colonial satellites for a couple of centuries. It has long been prominent in universities and intellectual circles, and it is today more widespread than ever—so ubiquitous, in fact, that its views are a prominent ingredient in public debate whenever issues of democracy or related issues are raised. This view of democracy informs a wide range of demands for reform that often extend far beyond politics. This understanding of democracy has become something like a new view of life, a replacement for old Western beliefs and practices, and in some instances appears to have taken on a religious dimension. The research behind this book provides overwhelming evidence for the view that a certain imaginative belief in democracy has emerged that has all the earmarks of an entire ideology and that is, moreover, perhaps the dominant political belief system in modern Western society. "

https://www.amazon.com/Ideology-Democratism-Emily-B-Finley/dp/0197642292/?asin=0197642292&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

[ltlee1]

What's wrong with Liberalism and neo-liberalism?
1. It is really "not a be all and end all value system." Very far from it.

"For there are human needs that liberalism cannot possibly satisfy—needs that it now struggles even to acknowledge.
Our need to bond with a family, community, and nation to the exclusion of others; our need to protect and pass on an
inheritance; our need to celebrate exceptional human beings and inequalities of achievement; our need to experience
self-transcendence through self-sacrifice; our need to exhibit loyalty to those specially like us—these are needs of the
human spirit that liberalism has often chosen to ignore or impugn.12

Liberalism aspired to order society around a vision of human beings, abstracted from all attachments, whose fundamental
needsare for prosperity, peace, and pleasure. It imagined human beings as rights-bearing individuals who could pursue their
own understanding of the good life. If liberalism is in crisis, it is because this picture of human life has proven to be
impoverished. Human beings are not defined through acts of individual choice and self-expression alone; they are social
creatures who find meaning through relationships they have not chosen and responsibilities they cannot relinquish. Human
identity is in this respect irreducibly illiberal, being embedded in lines of kinship and descent, existing only in a sequence of
generations, always as a child, and invariably an inheritor of a particular cultural and social patrimony. It is an irreducible
part of our nature, an absolute given, that we owe our existence to parents and peoples we did not originally choose.

We can no longer believe that human identity is determined by matters over which we have no say. But we also find it impossible
to credit the myth that our identities can be sustained by free choice and enlightened self-interest alone. It has become clear that
expanding our freedom of choice has left many people alone and unhappy, nostalgic for the structured communities and thick
identities that former generations possessed. "

2. Liberalism is a value orientation. Currently it is embodied in Western democracy.
Some think liberalism and Western democracy are not make for each other.

[ltlee1]

The following from Fred Dallmayr's 2019 book "Post-Liberalism: Recovering a Shared World" .
In short, horizontally structured political system of equality and vertically structured liberty cannot accommodate each other. Not for long.

""The dominant political ideology today, especially in the West, is called liberal democracy.
Taken at face value, the expression suggests a basic synergy and even equivalence of its
constitutive terms. A major aim of this book is to show the fragility and, indeed, untenability
of this facile assumption. Far from being complementary or mutually supportive, liberalism
and democracy in our time are an odd couple, frequently engaged in radical antagonism or
conflict. What is the reason or source of this conflict? A simple (perhaps simplified) answer
is this: the two partners operate in radically different registers or contexts. While liberalism is
located as an orientation or ideology in civil society, democracy is a public structure or type
of regime. Since ancient times, it is customary to distinguish between at least three types of
legitimate regimes: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (or republic).1 Of these, the first
two are hierarchically or vertically ordered, invoking a metaphysical warrant for public authority.
By contrast, democracy is horizontally structured, invoking “only” a human warrant. With his
deep and correct insight, Montesquieu perceived democracy as a new public paradigm
anchored in equality and even the “love of equality” among citizens.
...
The central motto of the French Revolution was “liberty, equality, and fraternity”—which means
that liberalism was allowed or meant to continue despite the changed public paradigm. Initially,
the motto did not seem to be far-fetched; there was indeed a certain synergy between liberty and
equality (as was evident in different public factions).

As during the Hanoverian period in England, liberty seemed willing to accommodate itself to the
new political conditions. However, relations between the partners began to deteriorate steadily
during the nineteenth century. Several factors accounted for this derailment; all of them conspired
to push liberalism or individual liberty in the direction of verticality and radical superiority, thus
rendering it at odds with democratic equality. Among the prominent factors of the period were
Social Darwinism (the cult of rugged individualism), industrialization (and the erosion of agrarian
society), and—last but by no means least—capitalism (with its stress on private or corporate profit)."

[ltlee1]

Here is Francis Fukuyama defending Liberal Democracy and his The End of History theme:

"Francis Fukuyama.. Still the End of History

Over the past decade, global politics has been heavily shaped by apparently strong states whose leaders are not constrained by law or constitutional checks and balances. Russia and China both have argued that liberal democracy is in long-term decline, and that their brand of muscular authoritarian government is able to act decisively and get things done while their democratic rivals debate, dither, and fail to deliver on their promises. These two countries were the vanguard of a broader authoritarian wave that turned back democratic gains across the globe, from Myanmar to Tunisia to Hungary to El Salvador. Over the past year, though, it has become evident that there are key weaknesses at the core of these strong states.

The weaknesses are of two sorts. First, the concentration of power in the hands of a single leader at the top all but guarantees low-quality decision making, and over time will produce truly catastrophic consequences. Second, the absence of public discussion and debate in “strong” states, and of any mechanism of accountability, means that the leader’s support is shallow, and can erode at a moment’s notice.

Supporters of liberal democracy must not give in to a fatalism that tacitly accepts the Russian-Chinese line that such democracies are in inevitable decline. The long-term progress of modern institutions is neither linear nor automatic. Over the years, we have seen huge setbacks to the progress of liberal and democratic institutions, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s, or the military coups and oil crises of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, liberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad. People across varied cultures do not like living under dictator-ship, and they value their individual freedom. No authoritarian government presents a society that is, in the long term, more attractive than liberal democracy, and could therefore be considered the goal or endpoint of historical progress. The millions of people voting with their feet—leaving poor, corrupt, or violent countries for life not in Russia, China, or Iran but in the liberal, democratic West—amply demonstrate this.

The philosopher Hegel coined the phrase the end of history to refer to the liberal state’s rise out of the French Revolution as the goal or direction toward which historical progress was trending. For many decades after that, Marxists would borrow from Hegel and assert that the true end of history would be a communist utopia. When I wrote an article in 1989 and a book in 1992 with this phrase in the title, I noted that the Marxist version was clearly wrong and that there didn’t seem to be a higher alternative to liberal democracy. We’ve seen frightening reversals to the progress of liberal democracy over the past 15 years, but setbacks do not mean that the underlying narrative is wrong. None of the proffered alternatives look like they’re doing any better."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/francis-fukuyama-still-end-history/671761/

[ltlee1]

A rejoinder from the American Conservative writer Declan Leary.

"Fukuyama’s theory of democratic triumphalism—and, for all its qualifications, it is that—has been
run through the wringer. Its maximal claims have all collapsed, and even those who beat war drums
for its march are starting to admit that they may have been too hopeful.

And so Fukuyama has shifted to more pragmatic arguments: maybe the stuff about liberal demo-
cracy written in the hearts of men was a little overstated—but look at the alternatives!"

Declan Leary does not explicitly criticize Fukuyama. But the title tells a lot. In short, Fukuyama's
defense is relying on questionable data.