The Age of Liberalism is not dead yet but its history has some of the character of a Greek Tragedy. The ideas that lit up its 18th century youth..... individual liberty and pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, progress through shedding of superstitions and replacing them with science and reason......are still, three centuries on, very much our Western philosophical lodestone. These ideas, forged in The Enlightenment, are ones that the vast majority of Westerners would view as axiomatically Good; right across the political spectrum from Left to Right.
It is not my intention to rain on this parade of Enlightenment Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known. My purpose to suggest that Liberalism may have, in our time, reached a kind of inflection point wherein its ‘Bads’ may now be starting to outweigh its ‘Goods’. In other words, Has Liberalism's Flame Burned Too Bright?
A big part of the success of those Enlightenment ideas was that they benefitted – paradoxically and unwittingly – from the persistence of traditions and social norms against which they had set themselves. These long pre-Enlightenment Classical and Christian traditions underpinned the new ideas and nourished them even as they were ‘progressively’ being eroded and supplanted by them. Enlightenment Liberalism was, in other words, unknowingly eating the very seed corn that sustained it......https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/has-liberalisms-flame-burned-too
This kind of social pressure to conform to the ‘right’ kind of thing requires an ethnic majority as its roots, though, does it not? Or does uttering these very words make me an ethno-nationalist?
This ethnic majority has to exist at a local and community level - not just a national one. Paan spitting in Hounslow, Fun runs excluding women in Whitechapel, black American gang culture in Brixton. We don’t want that here in Britain and we should be able to say it without hesitation.
The solution seems to me to require three elements:
1) Stopping all illegal migration and ensuring the massive influx of foreigners who came across as part of the Boriswave are prevented from settling in significant numbers - regardless of any adverse short term economic impact;
2) the adoption of a Danish-style model whereby integration is ‘forced’ by preventing significant ethnic/religious enclaves from forming, and in some cases taking measures to break them up. Easier said than done, I know.
3) At the very least, tolerating rather than embracing foreign cultures and removing any incentives received over and above those available to the native population - essentially doing away with the concept of “indirect discrimination”.
"Do not be an ethnonationalist" "Be British"
????
The Age of Liberalism is not dead yet but its history has some of the character of a Greek Tragedy. The ideas that lit up its 18th century youth..... individual liberty and pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, progress through shedding of superstitions and replacing them with science and reason......are still, three centuries on, very much our Western philosophical lodestone. These ideas, forged in The Enlightenment, are ones that the vast majority of Westerners would view as axiomatically Good; right across the political spectrum from Left to Right.
It is not my intention to rain on this parade of Enlightenment Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known. My purpose to suggest that Liberalism may have, in our time, reached a kind of inflection point wherein its ‘Bads’ may now be starting to outweigh its ‘Goods’. In other words, Has Liberalism's Flame Burned Too Bright?
A big part of the success of those Enlightenment ideas was that they benefitted – paradoxically and unwittingly – from the persistence of traditions and social norms against which they had set themselves. These long pre-Enlightenment Classical and Christian traditions underpinned the new ideas and nourished them even as they were ‘progressively’ being eroded and supplanted by them. Enlightenment Liberalism was, in other words, unknowingly eating the very seed corn that sustained it......https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/has-liberalisms-flame-burned-too
Centrism is the problem. We need illiberalism not warmed-over neoliberalism with a few safety net programs.
“We do not do this sort of thing here”.
This kind of social pressure to conform to the ‘right’ kind of thing requires an ethnic majority as its roots, though, does it not? Or does uttering these very words make me an ethno-nationalist?
This ethnic majority has to exist at a local and community level - not just a national one. Paan spitting in Hounslow, Fun runs excluding women in Whitechapel, black American gang culture in Brixton. We don’t want that here in Britain and we should be able to say it without hesitation.
The solution seems to me to require three elements:
1) Stopping all illegal migration and ensuring the massive influx of foreigners who came across as part of the Boriswave are prevented from settling in significant numbers - regardless of any adverse short term economic impact;
2) the adoption of a Danish-style model whereby integration is ‘forced’ by preventing significant ethnic/religious enclaves from forming, and in some cases taking measures to break them up. Easier said than done, I know.
3) At the very least, tolerating rather than embracing foreign cultures and removing any incentives received over and above those available to the native population - essentially doing away with the concept of “indirect discrimination”.