Liberalism bad and good

In a recent discussion about liberalism and political correctness I wrote:

I believe that it is the deepest and most authoritative beliefs of modern Western society that have opened us to the jihadist menace…. The problem is with ALL of us, with our whole society, with our belief that non-discrimination is the highest moral principle replacing the traditional idea of the Good.

I sent that blog entry to Jim Kalb with the following note:

I’ve been using this formulation a lot lately, and it was actually something you said a couple of months ago that helped me toward it. Prior to that, my formulation for a non-destructive liberalism had been, “To be acceptable, liberalism must operate within a cultural and moral order that is not liberal.” But then somewhere you said something like, “What makes liberalism a problem is not just the liberal belief in equality and freedom; it is making equality and freedom the most important thing.” Now that’s essentially the same idea as mine, but I think it makes the point more clearly. It gets to the heart of the issue. It both describes modern liberal society, and provides the solution to it. If equality and freedom are a society’s highest values, the society must destroy itself. If things other than equality and freedom are the highest thing, like God, or traditional culture, or family, then the liberal elements will be there but will not allowed to go so far that the threaten they existence of the society itself.

So it’s not an either/or question between liberalism and traditionalism. It’s a question of which is first, and which is second.

Jim Kalb replied:

Yes, I think that’s an important point. It also means you don’t have to have a comprehensive plan for the new right-wing order. You just have to support things that dislodge equal freedom as the final standard and at a minimum put something broader like the human good in its place. Once you have a new ultimate governing principle then all other considerations can be taken into account and find their level over time. In short, all you really have to avoid is liberal extremism—insistence that equal freedom is the sole legitimate ultimate standard for human relations.

LA to JK:

Fantastic argument. Brilliant.

JK to LA:

The basic idea is that liberalism is extreme and unnatural. As Unadorned/Fred Scrooby says, what you oppose to it is the idea of acting like a normal human being.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2005 01:31 PM | Send