The End of Liberalism.

[JoeB131]

How can we understand this paradox?

did you take out your "how to improve your vocabulary book" and have an overdose?

In recent days we’ve seen inspiring demands for liberty from the oppressed citizens of Iran.

That's where you just start off wrong. The Iranians don't want "liberty". They want food and basic goods that the Ayatollahs can't provide because the Koran doesn't have a chapter on economic management.

I'm old enough to remember when the Shah got overthrown, and a lot of otherwise well meaning people thought this was a positive development. Didn't quite turn out that way.

Our situation in the West today seems the opposite: too much ill-used liberty combined with a soft authoritarianism that we have largely welcomed. We buy what we want, throw away what we no longer desire, and allow the debt to accumulate. We enjoy Caligulaesque sexual liberty but no longer marry nor have children....

Blah, blah, blah... every generation has this 'The last generation was so much more virtuous than this one". It's called looking backwards through rose colored glasses.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Baby steps to the stars, Baby!

Liberalism as a label ebbs and flows, but liberal thinking, the kind of liberal thinking that led to the French and American Revolutions that established western democracy is alive and well. Even among many who today label themselves as 'conservative'.

Disgusted With Conservatism, America Was Born Liberal.

But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

That is a bullshit generalization Frank, and you know it.

Not since the Civil War has America yearned for an "All powerful central government".

And it was the republican party which was organized around that thought to prosecute that war and edict.

Irony, eh?

Like I said, many who call themselves 'conservative' today think liberally....

`​

 

[Mindful]

Baby steps to the stars, Baby!

Liberalism as a label ebbs and flows, but liberal thinking, the kind of liberal thinking that led to the French and American Revolutions that established western democracy is alive and well. Even among many who today label themselves as 'conservative'.

Disgusted With Conservatism, America Was Born Liberal.

But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

The idea of having 50 states with 50 different governments is a failed experiment. A central government couldn`t be worse than the mess we have now with ridiculous institutions like the Senate and the Electoral college.

One could argue that Germany's success is in part due to decentralisation.

 

[Mindful]

How can we understand this paradox?

did you take out your "how to improve your vocabulary book" and have an overdose?

In recent days we’ve seen inspiring demands for liberty from the oppressed citizens of Iran.

That's where you just start off wrong. The Iranians don't want "liberty". They want food and basic goods that the Ayatollahs can't provide because the Koran doesn't have a chapter on economic management.

I'm old enough to remember when the Shah got overthrown, and a lot of otherwise well meaning people thought this was a positive development. Didn't quite turn out that way.

Our situation in the West today seems the opposite: too much ill-used liberty combined with a soft authoritarianism that we have largely welcomed. We buy what we want, throw away what we no longer desire, and allow the debt to accumulate. We enjoy Caligulaesque sexual liberty but no longer marry nor have children....

Blah, blah, blah... every generation has this 'The last generation was so much more virtuous than this one". It's called looking backwards through rose colored glasses.

I defend to the death your right to disagree.

But exactly who are you disagreeing with? Me? Or Theodore Dalrympe?

 

[NYcarbineer]

So pretty much the end of modern civilization
The end of 1,000 years of progress in science, education and rationality
A new dark age

This is what would happen with the end of liberalism. I don't think you understand what liberalism is?

Are you again talking about your vision of turning the west into a muslim hell hole, that still is 1000 years behind in science, even executing gays?

lol, conservatives have been committed to an eternal struggle against equal rights for gays,

and then you hear them trying to accuse liberals of that. Who is surprised?

 

[NYcarbineer]

[
But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

lol the above post occurs the day after Beauregard Sessions declares a big central government crackdown on the states that have legalized marijuana.

 

[initforme]

Some things in the OP need explanation such as the part about people not marrying or having kids. When did people! stop marrying and having kids? As far as taking the edge off..people have always done this. Its a necessity as the stresses of working etc increase. When a person spends most of their adult lives working and in most cases doing something that in the end really doesn't make a difference one way or the other, they like a little escape.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Baby steps to the stars, Baby!

Liberalism as a label ebbs and flows, but liberal thinking, the kind of liberal thinking that led to the French and American Revolutions that established western democracy is alive and well. Even among many who today label themselves as 'conservative'.

Disgusted With Conservatism, America Was Born Liberal.

But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

That is a bullshit generalization Frank, and you know it.

Not since the Civil War has America yearned for an "All powerful central government".

And it was the republican party which was organized around that thought to prosecute that war and edict.

Irony, eh?

Like I said, many who call themselves 'conservative' today think liberally....

`​

You haven't been paying attention, we live in a surveillance state that gave Orwell nughtmares. We're under constant surveillance no matter where we go - for our own safety. The only "Liberals" decrying this government power are Libertarians.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

[
But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

lol the above post occurs the day after Beauregard Sessions declares a big central government crackdown on the states that have legalized marijuana.

Sessions is a Big Government Progressive

 

[Moonglow]

In recent days we’ve seen inspiring demands for liberty from the oppressed citizens of Iran. Our situation in the West today seems the opposite: too much ill-used liberty combined with a soft authoritarianism that we have largely welcomed. We buy what we want, throw away what we no longer desire, and allow the debt to accumulate. We enjoy Caligulaesque sexual liberty but no longer marry nor have children. We eat until we are obese, legalise drugs that take the edge off, consume a degraded popular culture that leaves us stupefied, and alter our brainscapes through unceasing consumption of online ephemera. Amid these seemingly unlimited personal choices, we can see the growth of an encompassing state and transnational institutions that make innumerable decisions in politics and economics over which average citizens exercise no control. If this is the form of ‘liberty’ that protesters in Iran aspire to achieve, then any liberation is likely to prove Pyrrhic.

In a world longing for liberty, advanced western liberalism seems to have reached a dead-end. Having promised liberation from any constraint that is not chosen by the consent of the individual, we have created nations of individualists who are now responsible to no-one in particular, but simultaneously subjects of an all-encompassing state and international order. That liberalism has succeeded. It has also visibly failed. Western liberal democracies are in a state of internal crisis: by every measure, they are wealthy, powerful, and unchallenged by any ideological contender. But an internal rot has spread as its citizens feel at once powerless amid their autonomy. Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded.

How can we understand this paradox?

The end of liberalism | Coffee House

Where is your input in all this?

 

[Mac1958]

The end of liberalism | Coffee House

Anyone who seriously thinks that we'll see an "end" of either liberalism or conservatism has allowed themselves to become so encased in their ideological cocoon that there's little hope in having a normal conversation with them.

When I see a Presidential candidate representing one ideology getting 60% to 70% of the popular vote, I'll start to believe it. The one currently in the White House got 46%.

So this is all a little absurd.
.

 

[Mindful]

In recent days we’ve seen inspiring demands for liberty from the oppressed citizens of Iran. Our situation in the West today seems the opposite: too much ill-used liberty combined with a soft authoritarianism that we have largely welcomed. We buy what we want, throw away what we no longer desire, and allow the debt to accumulate. We enjoy Caligulaesque sexual liberty but no longer marry nor have children. We eat until we are obese, legalise drugs that take the edge off, consume a degraded popular culture that leaves us stupefied, and alter our brainscapes through unceasing consumption of online ephemera. Amid these seemingly unlimited personal choices, we can see the growth of an encompassing state and transnational institutions that make innumerable decisions in politics and economics over which average citizens exercise no control. If this is the form of ‘liberty’ that protesters in Iran aspire to achieve, then any liberation is likely to prove Pyrrhic.

In a world longing for liberty, advanced western liberalism seems to have reached a dead-end. Having promised liberation from any constraint that is not chosen by the consent of the individual, we have created nations of individualists who are now responsible to no-one in particular, but simultaneously subjects of an all-encompassing state and international order. That liberalism has succeeded. It has also visibly failed. Western liberal democracies are in a state of internal crisis: by every measure, they are wealthy, powerful, and unchallenged by any ideological contender. But an internal rot has spread as its citizens feel at once powerless amid their autonomy. Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded.

How can we understand this paradox?

The end of liberalism | Coffee House

Where is your input in all this?

I'm pondering it. Given our cultural differences.

And linguistic misunderstandings.

 

[AVG-JOE]

[
But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

lol the above post occurs the day after Beauregard Sessions declares a big central government crackdown on the states that have legalized marijuana.

Sessions is a Big Government Progressive

No.... Sessions is a big government conservative, wanting to dictate life from D.C. and the republican victory in the Civil War is his justification.

 

[Votto]

In recent days we’ve seen inspiring demands for liberty from the oppressed citizens of Iran. Our situation in the West today seems the opposite: too much ill-used liberty combined with a soft authoritarianism that we have largely welcomed. We buy what we want, throw away what we no longer desire, and allow the debt to accumulate. We enjoy Caligulaesque sexual liberty but no longer marry nor have children. We eat until we are obese, legalise drugs that take the edge off, consume a degraded popular culture that leaves us stupefied, and alter our brainscapes through unceasing consumption of online ephemera. Amid these seemingly unlimited personal choices, we can see the growth of an encompassing state and transnational institutions that make innumerable decisions in politics and economics over which average citizens exercise no control. If this is the form of ‘liberty’ that protesters in Iran aspire to achieve, then any liberation is likely to prove Pyrrhic.

In a world longing for liberty, advanced western liberalism seems to have reached a dead-end. Having promised liberation from any constraint that is not chosen by the consent of the individual, we have created nations of individualists who are now responsible to no-one in particular, but simultaneously subjects of an all-encompassing state and international order. That liberalism has succeeded. It has also visibly failed. Western liberal democracies are in a state of internal crisis: by every measure, they are wealthy, powerful, and unchallenged by any ideological contender. But an internal rot has spread as its citizens feel at once powerless amid their autonomy. Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded.

How can we understand this paradox?

The end of liberalism | Coffee House

The Founding Fathers, such as Ben Franklin, understood that only a moral society can be a free society. As he put it, the Constitution will last only as long as society was moral, but eventually corruption would overwhelm society and we would all fall back into despotism.

It works like this, we give people freedom but eventually they are become unable to restrict their own freedom in favor of moral conduct that does not harm others in society. At that point, society is then faced with government becoming their moral inner voice for them. It then can deteriorate until the morals of society are no better than that in a prison. At that point you simply build a big wall around them and hire a warden.

This is why I'm a conservative. Most sneer at the "God botherers" and demand that the economy is what needs attention and not a moral character.

But in reality, wealth is but a powerful tool that will only exacerbate the evil result of ones lack of moral fiber, which will cause others to suffer.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[
But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

lol the above post occurs the day after Beauregard Sessions declares a big central government crackdown on the states that have legalized marijuana.

Sessions is a Big Government Progressive

Sessions is Trump's biggest fan.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Conservatives rant about 'liberty' one minute and the next minute they're ranting about morality.

Morality is the restraint of liberty.

 

[Marion Morrison]

Baby steps to the stars, Baby!

Liberalism as a label ebbs and flows, but liberal thinking, the kind of liberal thinking that led to the French and American Revolutions that established western democracy is alive and well. Even among many who today label themselves as 'conservative'.

Disgusted With Conservatism, America Was Born Liberal.

But Modern American Liberals reject individual liberty and yearn for an All powerful central government.

The idea of having 50 states with 50 different governments is a failed experiment. A central government couldn`t be worse than the mess we have now with ridiculous institutions like the Senate and the Electoral college.

One could argue that Germany's success is in part due to decentralisation.

Germany is circling the drain.

 

[Votto]

Conservatives rant about 'liberty' one minute and the next minute they're ranting about morality.

Morality is the restraint of liberty.

Right, tell us again why we need government to help the poor again? Why does government need to pay for everyone's health care and retirement and welfare?

Oh, that's right, your morality is OK, but anyone else who has moral positions contrary to yours should be shouted down.

My bad.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Conservatives rant about 'liberty' one minute and the next minute they're ranting about morality.

Morality is the restraint of liberty.

Right, tell us again why we need government to help the poor again? Why does government need to pay for everyone's health care and retirement and welfare?

Oh, that's right, your morality is OK, but anyone else who has moral positions contrary to yours should be shouted down.

My bad.

Because a moral society with the means to do so takes care of its poor and sick.

 

[Votto]

Conservatives rant about 'liberty' one minute and the next minute they're ranting about morality.

Morality is the restraint of liberty.

Right, tell us again why we need government to help the poor again? Why does government need to pay for everyone's health care and retirement and welfare?

Oh, that's right, your morality is OK, but anyone else who has moral positions contrary to yours should be shouted down.

My bad.

Because a moral society with the means to do so takes care of its poor and sick.

Conservatives give much more of their time and money to helping the poor than Dims do.

Dims, on the other hand, sit around trying to get Dims elected who will force them to give more of their time and money to the government in the hopes of taking care of the poor for them.

Naturally, this is a false hope. Only about 9 cents on the dollar goes towards those in need.