Posted on 10/19/2022 6:47:32 AM PDT by karpov
It has become increasingly clear that the political Right in America is not what it used to be. In particular, my own preferred slant of classical liberalism is being replaced. In its stead are rising alternatives that don’t yet have a common name. Some are called “national conservatism,” and some (by no means all) strands are pro-Trump, but I will refer to the New Right. My use of the term covers a broad range of sources, from Curtis Yarvin to J.D. Vance to Adrian Vermeule to Sohrab Ahmari to Rod Dreher to Tucker Carlson, and also a lot of anonymous internet discourse. Most of all I am thinking of the smart young people I meet who in the 1980s might have become libertarians, but these days absorb some mix of these other influences.
I would like to consider where the older classical liberal view differs from these more recent innovations. I don’t so much intend a cataloguing of policy positions as a quest to find the most fundamental difference, at a conceptual level, between the classical liberal views and their New Right competitors. That main difference – to cut to the chase — is how much faith each group puts in the possibility of trustworthy, well-functioning elites.
A common version of the standard classical liberal view stresses the benefits of capitalism, democracy, civil liberties, free trade (with national security exceptions), and a generally cosmopolitan outlook, which in turn brings sympathy for immigration. The role of government is to provide basic public goods, such as national defense, a non-exorbitant safety net, and protection against pandemics.
In the classical liberal view, elites usually fall short of what we would like. They end up captured by some mix of special interest groups and poorly informed voters.
(Excerpt) Read more at marginalrevolution.com ...
One thing the old Classical Liberals didn’t imagine was a vast welfare state. And that a political party would seek to profit by having lawless immigration and having these people become clients of the welfare state and vote for more taxpayer-supplied benefits.
Another article by someone who does not understand what he’s talking about. He got close with the “ low trust society and government” but does not elaborate what caused that. That is the core of our discontent.
"Andy
2022-10-19 07:57:40
The thing about your "ideological Turing test" is that it's indistinguishable from "strawmanning the opposition in a polite way that still leads to my own conclusions."
Because if anything, claiming to be ideologically neutral, is an ideologic trick all in itself, to make everything else look like ideology.
Once Tyler starts strawmanning his own opinions, and ironmanning other opinions, or even engaging in conversations with other people who hold those opinions, rather than the simplified cutouts he gleans from his Twitter-centric media diet, then maybe we'll be getting somewhere."
You’re right; like so many of todays thinkers, this author is lost in philosophical musings, when there is a perfect road map right in front of his eyes: The US Constitution.
If people would just read the Constitution until they fully understood what it was intended to do - and why that is necessary, we could finally have the possibility of a national conversation absent the tyranny of an oversized government.
Sounds like an egalitarian elite vs an anti-egalitarian hoi polloi.
Does any of this make sense?
“sympathy for immigration” is what transformed California from Reagan America into the 3rd world progressive bastion it now is.
Idolizing free trade is what stripped America of entire industries.
The GOP supp⁸orted this garbage. Their big donors wanted it. You can probably get more of it by voting for another Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney
The percentage of “classical” liberals is less than 1%. People who call themselves liberals today truly have no idea what classic liberalism is.
There has been a populism vs elitism divide forming since the 1990s. Elites have done very very well from globalism. The rest of the country got unemployment and lower wages. Buchanan was talking about this in 1992. Trump ran with it
There has been a populism vs elitism divide forming since the 1990s. Elites have done very very well from globalism. The rest of the country got unemployment and lower wages. Buchanan was talking about this in 1992. Trump ran with it
The author of the article is in the weeds, and at some level is wedded to the structures responsible for the mess we're in.
Big difference between “sympathy for immigration” and erasing the border.
The writer seems to wish we had more faith in DNC establishment propaganda.
Bkmk
“Most elites are intelligent and also they are as well-meaning as the rest of us, even if the bureaucratic nature of politics hinders their performance.”
And there’s where he lost the thread.
But this whole thing is about more than just a divide between elites and populists. That conflict is just a derivative of the real fundamental conflict, which is one of faith, morality and fundamental worldviews, not one of politics, or economics.
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