A collection of 24 posts
Liberal pluralism remains the best way to secure as much freedom as possible for a nation with 340 million diverse inhabitants, and this point should become clearer as clashing illiberal forces compete to impose their own versions of law and morality on everyone else.
The case against retweets, what’s wrong with the War on Terror, equality in light of difference, and more.
Many liberals are strangely eager to concede that liberal societies are morally and spiritually bankrupt without religion to give life meaning.
For Aron, politics is the art of living together, the art of the possible, and requires an “acute awareness” of the limitations of our power to influence reality.
Meritocratic reformers claimed that they wanted equality. But instead they sought to replace the aristocracy of birth with an aristocracy of ability.
If life is better than ever before, why does the world seem so depressing?
This kind of regime-analysis disappeared with the rise of classical liberalism, which supplied an altogether different language of politics.
Stalin publicly misused the term so often, in fact, that Princeton history professor Stephen Kotkin has suggested he lacked a fundamental understanding of the word’s meaning.
As COVID-19 suffocates the global economy, borders remain closed, and tensions mount between EU countries, the US and China, etc., Fukuyama’s critics are taking the opportunity to dismiss the “The End of History?” while ignoring its basic premises.
They believe in the perfectibility of man in their own image: a combination of unscrupulous optimism and narcissism.
Material benefits can always be translated into political power because the political world has always been interwoven with the cultural world.
Your accountability is just your portion of the mob’s.
Some progressives may indeed be primarily motivated by resentment, but that does not in itself invalidate the argument to pursue greater equality.
In his opening statement in the debate with Žižek, Peterson said that Marx’s solution to the ills of capitalism was “bloody violent revolution.” That’s not quite right.
If a pregnant woman has the legal option to abort but is unable to raise a child in her financial circumstances, she has fewer meaningful choices than a woman who lives in a society with legal abortion and generously state-subsidized childcare.