
The dangers of illiberal liberalism - farseer
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/08/17/the-dangers-of-illiberal-liberalism
======
extralego
The author is confused.

He says he is a liberal “in the enlightenment sense.” He cites John Locke and
John Stuart Mill.

But then he makes a “contrast”:

 _> In contrast, today’s so-called progressive liberals are often intolerant,
calling for official censure against anyone perceived as uttering non-
progressive views._

What the author fails to reconcile is that this “progressive liberal” target
of his is all but the product of John Stuart Mill’s brand of liberalism that
includes many wonderful things but has a certain clause that makes all the
difference. Mill’s liberalism defended democratic ideals predominantly in
cultural terms. That is, democracy to the extent that it does not interfere
with free market capitalism.

Fast forward 150+ years through 2 world wars, the Great Depression, the
federal reserve Vietnam, globalization, corporate takeover, etc., etc. and old
Mill’s ideas are not looking so spiffy. The instability is anything but
defensible, so what can the ole’ liberals do now but hunker down on the
culturalism? There you have it.

There is nothing new or complicated about this. Mill and Marx defined the
terms way back when.

The youngsters in the US are having trouble working through it because their
parents skipped the conversation entirely, but they’ll figure it out. Fool
them once.

So, this is not about free speech. The only problem here is this author’s
insistence that it’s a contention between old and new. It’s not, of course.
It’s a contention between capitalism, it’s glories, and messes it makes.

------
jeromebaek
Same old tired argument. Free speech is sacred, we are regressing to the
middle ages, bu-but _the Enlightenment!_ , etc.

Read some Wittgenstein for a change: [https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-
whether-speech-violence...](https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-
speech-violence/)

"Why do we describe hurtful words as a punch to the gut or a slap to the face?
For so long, the free speech debate has been built upon an incoherent premise:
that speech is powerful enough to solve social ills, but can’t inflict as much
damage as a fist."

~~~
Tade0
Speech itself is nothing without actions, power and trust - talk is cheap.

The same insults and threats hurled at you by a person in a position of power
have a very different meaning when coming from someone powerless.

Likewise promises from somebody trustworthy are much more powerful than from a
stranger.

My point being: it's not the speech that's powerful, it's the person behind
it.

~~~
mlevental
you seem very certain soft (volume) speech can't harm. okay then you should be
fine with this experiment (and confident about its result): let me put you
into a room and have people come in for 8 hours a day and call you stupid,
ugly, worthless, a disappointment, etc. in perfectly mild tones for exactly
one month. we'll perform a mood/outlook/mental health assessment before and
after. do you think there will be a difference in the two assessments?

~~~
changchuming
Huh? What you're saying does not relate to what he's saying at all. He's
talking about people in positions of power, you're talking about volume?

------
bediger4000
This might be a fair argument, except for the "affirmative action" that
conservative/fascist ideas get. Sure, individual reporters probably are
liberals. But owners are not: see Sinclair's mandatory statements. Owners near
monarchism is going to select for editors that keep their personal beliefs out
of it, and give conservative ideas a big boost, way beyond their merit,
because they'll catch grief from owners/CEOs if they don't. This is some of
the same, The Economist's writers sucking up to owners/plutocrats.

~~~
bediger4000
Which coward chose to "censor" me by downvoting instead of just answering with
logic, reason and good, conservative common sense? By downvoting without a
reply, you've played into my argument. Thanks for confirming that
conservatives just want affirmative action for their opinions.

~~~
dang
Please don't let downvotes trigger you into breaking the site guidelines,
which ask you specifically not to post like this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

As for the parent comment, possibly it was downvoted because it used
ideological tropes. HN is not a place for ideological battle (regardless of
what you're battling for/against), because ideological battle tends to burn up
everything else.

Edit: looks like you did it again here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513).
Please don't post like that to HN.

------
mschuster91
> These key tropes—“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—are now
> frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo,
> invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful.

The point is that denying trans people (for example, as they're targeted the
worst by both rightwingers, "centrists" and some lefties aka trans-
exclusionary radical feminists) the right to choosing freedom over their
bodies is a direct attack on their basic human right to exist. Either one
supports letting trans people live in peace or one does not - and the latter
position is directly and actively intolerable in a society that calls itself
"civilized" and "respecting human rights".

There is no valid position in any society that denies a group of people the
right to exist. We had that already with the Nazi regime and with Stalin's
Soviet Union, no need to repeat history again.

~~~
mpweiher
Pure hyperbole. Nobody is denying their right to _exist_.

~~~
mschuster91
A couple days ago "concerned parents" literally declared "hunting season" on a
12-year old child: [http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-
season/](http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-season/)

This is reality, there's a reason why suicide and self harm ratios are
enormous among LGBT, especially youth.

~~~
mpweiher
While I find the actions of these parents despicable, they do not constitute
"denying the right to exist".

~~~
jeromebaek
What else denies the right of someone to exist, other than threats to
physically mutilate and kill?

Do you think the child has a soul separate from the body that the parents
won't be able to touch? Do you think the child has a clean innocent soul
that's immune to harm?

~~~
mpweiher
I did not see a threat to kill.

The "knife" comment was a crude, terribly crude, reference to a
"transitioning" operation.

Again, I am not condoning the crude language and possible actions, but among
those I don't see "denying the right to exist".

Objecting to use of bathrooms is not denying the right to exist.

