I have three books in my sights this week that defend liberalism. They take back three positions it has allowed progressives and conservatives to steal: anti-imperialism, religion, and equality.
(1) There is a sense in which liberalism *is* involved in imperialism. Not in imperialisim *simpliciter*, but specifically in European-based extra-European imperialism (excluding Russian imperialism), which is the imperialism the leftists object to (and which they call "imperialism" without qualifier). In this way: liberalism led to European growth, hence relative wealth and power, which led to their explorations and empires.
And if (as many on the left do) you define yourself against wealth, you could hardly do otherwise than to hate specifically those empires but not others. The American black liberation movement in particular was inordinately proud of sub-Saharan African empires, and for all I know still is. Among soy people I notice a real affection for Wakanda, as imaginary as Palestine.
They also hate America and Canada and Japan's late unlamented "co-prosperity sphere" and pre-1994 South Africa, but not China, Iran, India, or post-1994 South Africa. Oh yes, plus Israel's empire, even though it, too, is imaginary.
(2) Suppose it so that a thousand years ago a variety of Islam (the only? the dominant?) was more liberal than the contemporary dominant forms of Christianity (talk about a *low bar*!). Even if that were acceptably liberal to moderns, it would have no important implications for our world. Any promoters of such today would be slain by adherents of some more orthodox Islam, as orthodoxy is now reckoned. At best you might refute a claim that Islamic liberalism, somehow defined, is literally impossible. But with current definitions, it is obvious that it is not going to happen. (Gretchen, top trying to make "fetch" happen. It's not going to happen.)
(3) Equality of *permission* is a noble ideal. It is *precisely* what everybody *ought* to mean by equality of persons. However, we who believe so are a tiny and beset minority. Circumspice.
I fear that the word "liberalism" does not land, hijacked as it is in the USA.
(1) There is a sense in which liberalism *is* involved in imperialism. Not in imperialisim *simpliciter*, but specifically in European-based extra-European imperialism (excluding Russian imperialism), which is the imperialism the leftists object to (and which they call "imperialism" without qualifier). In this way: liberalism led to European growth, hence relative wealth and power, which led to their explorations and empires.
And if (as many on the left do) you define yourself against wealth, you could hardly do otherwise than to hate specifically those empires but not others. The American black liberation movement in particular was inordinately proud of sub-Saharan African empires, and for all I know still is. Among soy people I notice a real affection for Wakanda, as imaginary as Palestine.
They also hate America and Canada and Japan's late unlamented "co-prosperity sphere" and pre-1994 South Africa, but not China, Iran, India, or post-1994 South Africa. Oh yes, plus Israel's empire, even though it, too, is imaginary.
(2) Suppose it so that a thousand years ago a variety of Islam (the only? the dominant?) was more liberal than the contemporary dominant forms of Christianity (talk about a *low bar*!). Even if that were acceptably liberal to moderns, it would have no important implications for our world. Any promoters of such today would be slain by adherents of some more orthodox Islam, as orthodoxy is now reckoned. At best you might refute a claim that Islamic liberalism, somehow defined, is literally impossible. But with current definitions, it is obvious that it is not going to happen. (Gretchen, top trying to make "fetch" happen. It's not going to happen.)
(3) Equality of *permission* is a noble ideal. It is *precisely* what everybody *ought* to mean by equality of persons. However, we who believe so are a tiny and beset minority. Circumspice.
Will there be an audiobook of Equality of Permission?
I vaguely remember Kant calling the Enlightenment "the age of majority for mankind".
A thought provoking collection that explores the ideas history and values shaping liberal thought and society.