I'm a conservative republican who happily acknowledges that the particular political tradition that I wish to "conserve" is for the most part Classical Liberalism. I do not criticize leftists by calling them 'Liberal', I criticize them for pushing theories and policies that are actively ILLIBERAL. I do not regard "Progressives" as 'Liberal' in any sense other than that they misappropriated the label when their rightful name was badly discredited by their public failures.
By the same metric though, I also disagree with the way you have likewise employed a meaning of 'Democracy' that has similarly experienced dramatic conceptual drift from its origins as a political concept. What we have in the West today would certainly not qualify as "Democracy" by the standards of Plato. Indeed, our sole concession to that ancient conception is our jury selection, as the only feature of our society that still uses sortition to select common people to act in an official capacity. Nor, by the writings of the Founders, was the United States ever intended to be a "Democracy". They drew a meaningful distinction between a "Democracy" and a "Republic", writing at great length about the dangers and flaws of Democracy, a distinction that you have erased by treating a Constitutional Republic as merely a subtype of Representative Democracy rather than a separate system altogether that deliberately has both democratic and anti-democratic elements.
You've likewise rather stretched somewhat absurdly to present a false "both sides" picture, when it's pretty much entirely the Left that's attempting to remove and replace Classical Liberalism. Your examples are informative in this regard: "dictator for even one day" is clear hyperbole, not an actual attempt to subvert the governing structure like court packing. Sorry, but EVERY campaign makes "On Day 1" promises and Trump's rhetoric on this regard still falls short of his predecessor's "I don't have the Authority, but if Congress won't act, I will!" "I have a pen and a phone." Obama who largely ushered in the era of an Imperial Presidency and Biden having likewise been constantly rebuked by the courts for exceeding his authority. Worse, you've actively misrepresented the position of Classical Liberalism on both "prayer in schools" specifically and moral education in schools in general. Classical Liberalism opposed restricting the religious freedoms of others, the idea that a Teacher or students would not be permitted to voluntarily pray at school would be regarded negatively as imposing a religious test and oppressing both Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association.
Plato, as later Rousseau, believes that once political society is properly ordered, it can contribute to the restoration of morals. A good political order, good education and upbringing can produce “good natures; and [these] useful natures, who are in turn well educated, grow up even better than their predecessors”
Locke did not contradict this. Education, which Locke felt should address both character and intellect, is therefore best achieved by providing the pupil with examples of proper thought and behaviour, by training the child to witness and share in the habits of virtue that are part of the conventional wisdom of the rational and practical man.
By the standards of Plato you are correct. However, direct democracy has been replaced by representative democracy for a number of reasons not the least of which it was technically impossible prior to the election of computers and remains practically impossible because citizens do not have the time to vote on every issue.
I am well aware of the Democracy vs Republic debate and use it myself when discussing presidential elections. However, House and Senate elections are very similar, if not identical to parliamentary elections. Flawed and still not direct democracy but definitely representative democracy.
The purpose of this piece was not to debate the distinctions between a Republic and a Democracy, but to point out that as both are "liberal democracies" (despite some technical differences) and that there are "norms" we must all follow if we do not wish to become illiberal societies. I was not equating the actions of both sides but pointing out the dangers and linguistic games that both sides employ. I have a preference of who I'd like to see in the White House but that doesn't mean I think society is now comprised of good guys and bad guys.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" against both sides. We are all too often blind to the sins of those we see as our friends.
One of the purposes of my reply was to point out that those "some technical differences" are deliberate and deeply significant and as such they are NOT both "liberal democracies". A Republic may have some democratic elements, but it likewise has deliberately anti-democratic elements. It is not a subset of "democracy". You may not have felt it necessary to include, but I'm of the opinion that ignoring that distinction frankly undermines your argument by effectively treating "liberal" and "democratic" as synonymous terms, which in turn implicitly removes many of the safeguards our Constitutional Republic specifically imposes against a democratic majority (ab)using the power of government in illiberal ways.
There is an irony within both Liberalism and Democracy that they are not, in themselves, sufficient to sustain and defend themselves. Liberalism needs a Conservatism to preserve it against illiberalism and Democracy needs anti-democratic Rule of Law, Due Process, and the insulated Courts to apply and enforce them against the momentary passions of the mob.
The USA is a constitutional republic. It isn't a liberal democracy. Majority of politicians on both sides of the aisle call it a democracy, but it isn't. There are many democratic form of governments, but we aren't one of them.
I don't claim to be a political scientist or historian, but a liberal democracy is a framework or foundation of ideas as proposed by John Locke, and our constitutional republic is based on the principles of liberal democracy. Great Britian has a parliamentarian system, which is also a form of liberal democracy.
Correct. One can argue that it's different than parliamentary democracies or that the election of the president isn't based on popular vote, but the US is a liberal democracy as it "is a form of government that combines the organization of a representative democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy."
Congress and the Senate are democratically elected based on popular votes if I'm not mistaken.
Actually, our constitutional republic was based on Judeo Christian values. Our rights and freedoms you spoke of were given to us by God. That is in our Constitution.
How is that liberal democracy working out in the UK? The majority in power are arresting their own citizens and protecting immigrants. Citizens are mad due to children being murdered by immigrants. How does that fit into the model you speak of. The parliamentarian system doesn't give everyone rights, just the majority in power. Why was the new land discovered and the experiment called America started? Due to the types of things happening now in Britain. Theory and reality are 2 different things.
No, you are saying all these governments are alike, but they aren't. I said there are different types of democracies. You are doing in your article what you says annoys you. Taking a phrase liberal democracy and applying it all over. You have to break down each country and see if it applies. The rights in the UK and Canada for example of all citizens is not being respected. Where is the freedom in both countries when people chose to speak out? In Canada, the government stole the money from truckers. Is that a true democracy? UK they arrest citizens and protect illegals that attack citizens. These things don't apply to the definition of liberal democracy you spoke of. Maduro would say he is a democracy after stealing an election and holding people prisoner to build a highway that protested. You mentioned Kamala Harris. When she was AG she incarcerated many black men for minor drug charges and gave them long sentences because it was cheap labor for the state? Compare those 2 actions? Are they both socialist? Yes. A form of slavery? Yes. Her father was a socialist professor. I am done with this conversation.
I appreciate your use of the political compass, I'm a fan of how it really helps against the extreme polarization and lumping of different positions.
However lumping "market economy" on the vertical axis is against the principle of the compass: it clearly belongs on the left-right economic axis.
For this reason there is a distinction between "liberalism" (political) and "liberism" (economic). There is theoretically a space in the bottom left for liberal collectivism, i.e. a democracy with economic collectivism . However there are no large historical examples, as collectivism always degenerated into illiberal state.
I'm not sure where I specifically put "market economy" on the vertical axis. I said it was a characteristic of Liberal Democracies, which it is.
I'm not arguing that there are variations in freedom of these markets however I'm not sure what liberal collectivism would look like unless it's simply another way of saying social democracy; combining individual freedoms with welfare programs.
As for there not being any large scale historical examples of collectivism degenerating into an illiberal state, isn't that what all communist states represent? The Soviet Union was both collectivist (or it at least paid lip service to the concept) and illiberal.
My point is that market economy is a concept perpendicular to liberal democracy. It is a position on the left/right economic continuum, independent from political power distribution.
In theory there could be a state that was both economically collectivist and a liberal democracy (i.e. not authoritarian).
I pointed out that in practice all the large collectivist states (like the USSR) ended up authoritarian. So I have no example of liberal collectivism "in the wild"; it might even be impossible above a certain size.
But this doesn't change that the economic model is not part of the definition of "liberal democracy".
Apparently, you are not an American, or you would not be confused by how the term liberal is used in America as opposed to Europe. Around 1900, liberal had the same meaning in America as in Europe. There were various political factions, populists, progressives, labor, and capitalist establishment, all of whom were more or less liberals. And then there were socialists, who were not.
The populist faction soon collapsed with some evolving into white supremacists or other kinds of social conservatives and others moving into the socialists or labor groups. Progressives were a wide group with overlap between the capitalist establishment on one side and with labor on the other. FDR's administration was progressive in this latter sense. Because the label progressive (used by short-lived parties in 1912 and 1924) was associated with the turmoil of the teens and early twenties, FDR labeled his brand of labor progressivism as "liberal" Hence left-liberals have come to be called just liberals in the US, with right-liberals called libertarians or classic liberals.
Nope, not an American, but lived half my adult life down there so, yes, I am aware of how American's use the term. In Canada we have the Liberal Party which necessitates the use of the term "small 'l' liberal" because we are all, with the exception of the illiberal left and illiberal right, "liberals."
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. As is the case with any political philosophy differences arise when you get to the details which is why we have different parties and sub-categories of "liberal."
The fact that you needed to differentiate between "left-liberals,", "right-liberals," and "classic liberals" underscores the problems with using the term to only reference the left.
I wasn't sure if you knew the origin of the curious American use of the term liberal. It's completely arbitrary and ad hoc, but it stuck, sort of like the American use of the term "red" for conservative when for the first half of my life "red" meant Left, as in the conservative Cold War slogan "Better Dead than Red".
There are not three terms, right-liberal and classic liberal refer to the same thing, as does libertarian.
I'm a conservative republican who happily acknowledges that the particular political tradition that I wish to "conserve" is for the most part Classical Liberalism. I do not criticize leftists by calling them 'Liberal', I criticize them for pushing theories and policies that are actively ILLIBERAL. I do not regard "Progressives" as 'Liberal' in any sense other than that they misappropriated the label when their rightful name was badly discredited by their public failures.
By the same metric though, I also disagree with the way you have likewise employed a meaning of 'Democracy' that has similarly experienced dramatic conceptual drift from its origins as a political concept. What we have in the West today would certainly not qualify as "Democracy" by the standards of Plato. Indeed, our sole concession to that ancient conception is our jury selection, as the only feature of our society that still uses sortition to select common people to act in an official capacity. Nor, by the writings of the Founders, was the United States ever intended to be a "Democracy". They drew a meaningful distinction between a "Democracy" and a "Republic", writing at great length about the dangers and flaws of Democracy, a distinction that you have erased by treating a Constitutional Republic as merely a subtype of Representative Democracy rather than a separate system altogether that deliberately has both democratic and anti-democratic elements.
You've likewise rather stretched somewhat absurdly to present a false "both sides" picture, when it's pretty much entirely the Left that's attempting to remove and replace Classical Liberalism. Your examples are informative in this regard: "dictator for even one day" is clear hyperbole, not an actual attempt to subvert the governing structure like court packing. Sorry, but EVERY campaign makes "On Day 1" promises and Trump's rhetoric on this regard still falls short of his predecessor's "I don't have the Authority, but if Congress won't act, I will!" "I have a pen and a phone." Obama who largely ushered in the era of an Imperial Presidency and Biden having likewise been constantly rebuked by the courts for exceeding his authority. Worse, you've actively misrepresented the position of Classical Liberalism on both "prayer in schools" specifically and moral education in schools in general. Classical Liberalism opposed restricting the religious freedoms of others, the idea that a Teacher or students would not be permitted to voluntarily pray at school would be regarded negatively as imposing a religious test and oppressing both Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association.
Plato, as later Rousseau, believes that once political society is properly ordered, it can contribute to the restoration of morals. A good political order, good education and upbringing can produce “good natures; and [these] useful natures, who are in turn well educated, grow up even better than their predecessors”
Locke did not contradict this. Education, which Locke felt should address both character and intellect, is therefore best achieved by providing the pupil with examples of proper thought and behaviour, by training the child to witness and share in the habits of virtue that are part of the conventional wisdom of the rational and practical man.
We're on the same page wrt progressives.
By the standards of Plato you are correct. However, direct democracy has been replaced by representative democracy for a number of reasons not the least of which it was technically impossible prior to the election of computers and remains practically impossible because citizens do not have the time to vote on every issue.
I am well aware of the Democracy vs Republic debate and use it myself when discussing presidential elections. However, House and Senate elections are very similar, if not identical to parliamentary elections. Flawed and still not direct democracy but definitely representative democracy.
The purpose of this piece was not to debate the distinctions between a Republic and a Democracy, but to point out that as both are "liberal democracies" (despite some technical differences) and that there are "norms" we must all follow if we do not wish to become illiberal societies. I was not equating the actions of both sides but pointing out the dangers and linguistic games that both sides employ. I have a preference of who I'd like to see in the White House but that doesn't mean I think society is now comprised of good guys and bad guys.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" against both sides. We are all too often blind to the sins of those we see as our friends.
One of the purposes of my reply was to point out that those "some technical differences" are deliberate and deeply significant and as such they are NOT both "liberal democracies". A Republic may have some democratic elements, but it likewise has deliberately anti-democratic elements. It is not a subset of "democracy". You may not have felt it necessary to include, but I'm of the opinion that ignoring that distinction frankly undermines your argument by effectively treating "liberal" and "democratic" as synonymous terms, which in turn implicitly removes many of the safeguards our Constitutional Republic specifically imposes against a democratic majority (ab)using the power of government in illiberal ways.
There is an irony within both Liberalism and Democracy that they are not, in themselves, sufficient to sustain and defend themselves. Liberalism needs a Conservatism to preserve it against illiberalism and Democracy needs anti-democratic Rule of Law, Due Process, and the insulated Courts to apply and enforce them against the momentary passions of the mob.
The USA is a constitutional republic. It isn't a liberal democracy. Majority of politicians on both sides of the aisle call it a democracy, but it isn't. There are many democratic form of governments, but we aren't one of them.
I don't claim to be a political scientist or historian, but a liberal democracy is a framework or foundation of ideas as proposed by John Locke, and our constitutional republic is based on the principles of liberal democracy. Great Britian has a parliamentarian system, which is also a form of liberal democracy.
Correct. One can argue that it's different than parliamentary democracies or that the election of the president isn't based on popular vote, but the US is a liberal democracy as it "is a form of government that combines the organization of a representative democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy."
Congress and the Senate are democratically elected based on popular votes if I'm not mistaken.
Actually, our constitutional republic was based on Judeo Christian values. Our rights and freedoms you spoke of were given to us by God. That is in our Constitution.
Values, Christian or otherwise, are not a form of government. But Judeo Christian values did inform the Enlightenment thinking of John Locke. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
Wrt rights there are two camps and John T holds one of them. The other is camp believes that rights are granted by governments.
If it was an easily settled matter there wouldn't be two groups. I happen to agree with those arguing that we are born with certain rights as I argue here: https://hoisttheblackflag.substack.com/p/natural-law-and-human-rights
But BeadleBlog is correct in his point.
How is that liberal democracy working out in the UK? The majority in power are arresting their own citizens and protecting immigrants. Citizens are mad due to children being murdered by immigrants. How does that fit into the model you speak of. The parliamentarian system doesn't give everyone rights, just the majority in power. Why was the new land discovered and the experiment called America started? Due to the types of things happening now in Britain. Theory and reality are 2 different things.
You are now arguing with yourself.
No, you are saying all these governments are alike, but they aren't. I said there are different types of democracies. You are doing in your article what you says annoys you. Taking a phrase liberal democracy and applying it all over. You have to break down each country and see if it applies. The rights in the UK and Canada for example of all citizens is not being respected. Where is the freedom in both countries when people chose to speak out? In Canada, the government stole the money from truckers. Is that a true democracy? UK they arrest citizens and protect illegals that attack citizens. These things don't apply to the definition of liberal democracy you spoke of. Maduro would say he is a democracy after stealing an election and holding people prisoner to build a highway that protested. You mentioned Kamala Harris. When she was AG she incarcerated many black men for minor drug charges and gave them long sentences because it was cheap labor for the state? Compare those 2 actions? Are they both socialist? Yes. A form of slavery? Yes. Her father was a socialist professor. I am done with this conversation.
I appreciate your use of the political compass, I'm a fan of how it really helps against the extreme polarization and lumping of different positions.
However lumping "market economy" on the vertical axis is against the principle of the compass: it clearly belongs on the left-right economic axis.
For this reason there is a distinction between "liberalism" (political) and "liberism" (economic). There is theoretically a space in the bottom left for liberal collectivism, i.e. a democracy with economic collectivism . However there are no large historical examples, as collectivism always degenerated into illiberal state.
I'm not sure where I specifically put "market economy" on the vertical axis. I said it was a characteristic of Liberal Democracies, which it is.
I'm not arguing that there are variations in freedom of these markets however I'm not sure what liberal collectivism would look like unless it's simply another way of saying social democracy; combining individual freedoms with welfare programs.
As for there not being any large scale historical examples of collectivism degenerating into an illiberal state, isn't that what all communist states represent? The Soviet Union was both collectivist (or it at least paid lip service to the concept) and illiberal.
My point is that market economy is a concept perpendicular to liberal democracy. It is a position on the left/right economic continuum, independent from political power distribution.
In theory there could be a state that was both economically collectivist and a liberal democracy (i.e. not authoritarian).
I pointed out that in practice all the large collectivist states (like the USSR) ended up authoritarian. So I have no example of liberal collectivism "in the wild"; it might even be impossible above a certain size.
But this doesn't change that the economic model is not part of the definition of "liberal democracy".
Apparently, you are not an American, or you would not be confused by how the term liberal is used in America as opposed to Europe. Around 1900, liberal had the same meaning in America as in Europe. There were various political factions, populists, progressives, labor, and capitalist establishment, all of whom were more or less liberals. And then there were socialists, who were not.
The populist faction soon collapsed with some evolving into white supremacists or other kinds of social conservatives and others moving into the socialists or labor groups. Progressives were a wide group with overlap between the capitalist establishment on one side and with labor on the other. FDR's administration was progressive in this latter sense. Because the label progressive (used by short-lived parties in 1912 and 1924) was associated with the turmoil of the teens and early twenties, FDR labeled his brand of labor progressivism as "liberal" Hence left-liberals have come to be called just liberals in the US, with right-liberals called libertarians or classic liberals.
Nope, not an American, but lived half my adult life down there so, yes, I am aware of how American's use the term. In Canada we have the Liberal Party which necessitates the use of the term "small 'l' liberal" because we are all, with the exception of the illiberal left and illiberal right, "liberals."
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. As is the case with any political philosophy differences arise when you get to the details which is why we have different parties and sub-categories of "liberal."
The fact that you needed to differentiate between "left-liberals,", "right-liberals," and "classic liberals" underscores the problems with using the term to only reference the left.
I wasn't sure if you knew the origin of the curious American use of the term liberal. It's completely arbitrary and ad hoc, but it stuck, sort of like the American use of the term "red" for conservative when for the first half of my life "red" meant Left, as in the conservative Cold War slogan "Better Dead than Red".
There are not three terms, right-liberal and classic liberal refer to the same thing, as does libertarian.