7 Comments

Yep, absolutely agreed. Patrick Deneen, Matthew Goodwin, Michael Lind, Paul Embery, all acknowledge this process.

Expand full comment

A country was fortunate to be colonized by an English speaking people. It advanced their civilization. I recommend the book Empire. The British ruled most of the world from 1450 to 1950 and the world was better for it.

Expand full comment

Yep, absolutely agreed. Patrick Deneen, Matthew Goodwin, Michael Lind, Paul Embery, all acknowledge this process.

Expand full comment

What's with trying to repeatedly slander the word libertarian? Nothing in here makes sense. The real meaning focuses on being against coercion and force. It does not imply any particular specific cultural mores and indeed one could have many different views. The formal formation of the libertarian political philosophy as an offshoot of the word libre / libera,l as in classical liberalism, really started in America. The few french predecessors in terms of philosophy would be Frédéric Bastiat and more so in Gustave de Molinari: https://mises.org/wire/gustave-de-molinari-first-anarcho-capitalist

Your previous referenced article on Apex Egalitarianism did not explain the meaning of your misuse of the term and seemed specious starting from men born free of equal rights to the conclusion of wokeism and the current state of affairs. Being of equal rights does not mean equal outcomes or abilities at all. The EU or french declaration may be different but on its own, equal rights merely refers to negative (natural, inalieable) rights, not positive rights granted by the State.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for your comment.

Here the term libertarian define, as per Clouscard work, the "do as you wish" hedonistic paradigm that speard in Western societies by the late 60's and mostly carried by the left i.e. the confusion between freedom and emancipation from the traditional structures.

I share Clouscard analysis that this epicurian "left libertarian" ideology is an objective ally for neoliberal capitalism. Basically, the binary political division left vs right became archaic after the 60's

For further clarity, I invite you to check Michel Clouscard works.

In term of my piece on eglitarianism, I used the declaration of rights of men as a starting point to demonstrate how the concept of equality progressively moved among the left from equality before law, equality at the start, to equality of outcome, equality at the end.

I invite uoj to read some othe rof my post for more details. As I am restricted to 1200 words max per article, it is sometimes a challenge to convey extremely nuanced and complex concepts. All my article are linked between each other and will provide the full picture.

Thanks again for your comment 😊

Expand full comment
Jun 15, 2023Liked by Dupont Lajoie

Thanks for your patient clarification. I have to apologize for being so hasty to criticize on use of terms. I see now you're coming from an very different continental perspective. Although after a brief and not thorough of Clouscard's works, maybe he might his own rationale for such idiosyncratic reasoning of using Marxist social criticism but I will admit I'm not yet so convinced. Coming back to overloading the same word with different, sometimes antagonistic meaning, it reminds me of how the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, being their more right wing nationalist (but not really populist) party, is different from what an English speaker would expect from the name; and just the same but yet another different example is how the Liberal Democratic Party of Australia is actually the English classically liberal or American versiin libertarian political party--very different from the Japanese LDP and modern Anglo meaning of the term.

Expand full comment
author

It is very tricky indeed to juggle with terms that can have diverse meaning depending on the geographical location.

In USA, liberals are what in France we would call "libertarian left" while libertarian are what we would call "liberals" i.e. in the economic sense (e.g. neoliberal capitalism).

Anyway, thanks again for your comments, I am always happy to discuss and exchange intellectual thoughts on social and societal topics.

Expand full comment