Three Flaws of Classical Liberalism

Not all it's cracked up to be

Photo by Marcin Nowak on Unsplash

Dec. 2019

Our Situation

We live in a period of massive civilizational decline and this period of decline has been going on for at least several decades. Western culture is not merely crumbling, it has already largely crumbled. This culture that used to praise realism now praises mysticism and sophistry. High art used to aim at beauty and now aims at sophomoric irony. The myth of equality has glorified the mundane and obfuscated what is truly sacred. All over the Western world, people feel a kind of vague sense of purposelessness, as if no one had any strong idea about what they are doing with their life here on Earth. Aspiration has been replaced with cynicism.

There is only one way out of the present crisis: grass-roots action to patiently rebuild the social capital, information outlets, and self-confidence necessary to repair and rebuild Western culture.

Some Fatal Flaws of Classical Liberalism

1. A society based around only the protection of negative rights breeds purposelessness.
   
   The rights to life, liberty, and property are extremely important and the classical liberals were right to emphasize them. But those who understand that the government ought to be restrained to protecting those rights and nothing more, often slip into believing that civil society too, should never censure anyone who is not violating those strictly defined, negative rights. Such thinking leads to a kind of “ACLU liberalism",” which though sometimes admirable, usually ends up with its adherents thinking and behaving as if refraining from harming others were all there is to the good life.
   

2. In an open society, institutions can be easily infiltrated.
   
   Nepotistic groups have an advantage over non-nepotistic groups. Social networks of malicious persons, like the Frankfurt school, can gain power in society’s institutions and promote their friends. In a democracy, small organized groups can extract resources fro the disorganized masses.
   

3. The mainstream media is enormously powerful and liberal society places no checks or balances on it.
   
   In any society where the public has influence over politics, those who inform and educate the public often have more power than the de jure leaders. Since information is not costless, no one can take in all available information from all sources. Some information outlets must be trusted, and they will have ample opportunities to abuse that trust.
   

What We Can Do (First Steps)

Those who hate Western Civilization are organized and those who love it are not. Even just meeting each other is a good first step. The next step is education. Most people were taught highly misleading narratives of history in public schools. By distributing educational pamphlets, hosting lectures, and increasing our own erudition, we can undermine those narratives.