(1) cultural liberalism, with emphasis on individualism, autonomy and progressive cultural attitudes (which was weaker in the United States when Democrats were the party of the Deep South and became dominant later);
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(2) the empowerment of educated elites, in the form of both technocracy and meritocracy, but going beyond just technical matters and extending to issues such as moral values; (3) an emphasis on establishing procedures for predictable implementation of laws and regulations.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 6 0 • view
Each one of these three tenets had positives and negatives. The problem was that there was little balance of power. These tenets were not seriously questioned from within the Democratic Party in the United States and many center-left parties in Europe after the 1980s.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 7 0 • view
Any criticism from the outside were not powerful or coherent enough. The hypothesis I am entertaining is that the ascendance of these three tenets – without adequate opposition – is the source of liberalism’s failure.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 7 0 • view
Cultural liberalism: first we have to admit it has paid off in many respects. Civil Rights is one of the most important achievements of 20th-century America, and ethnic, religious and sexual minorities face much less discrimination today than they did before. But the balance here is a delicate one.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 10 0 • view
It is one thing to defend minorities (and this is very consistent with liberalism as an opposition movement); it’s an entirely different thing to impose values on people who do not hold them (for example, telling people what language they can and cannot use).
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 12 1 • view
Without the adequate balance of power, cultural liberalism shifted more and more towards the latter. Empowerment of the educated elites: Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit tells the story brilliantly. www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Meri...
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 9 0 • view
The last four decades have seen a steady increase in the economic, social and political power of college graduates and more recently of post-graduates and those with degrees from elite universities.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 8 0 • view
College graduates also became the dominant force in center-left parties in Europe and in the Democratic Party and the United States. They justified their ascendance with meritocracy and identified their social power with “rule by expertise”.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 8 1 • view
The rest of society, in part as a reaction, came to view meritocracy as a rigged game and a way of blaming the victim – a type of sermon that almost claimed “if you are not acquiring college education and not adjusting to the post-industrial economy, then it is your fault that you are poor”.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 8 1 • view
It also supported a non-responsive, insular technocracy that complemented cultural liberalism, imposing things top-down without consent on the population.
dec 2, 2024, 5:02 pm • 9 0 • view