The late Australian Roger Sandall from ‘Designer Tribalism-the communal great escape’:
‘Everybody wants out. City dwellers want out to the suburbs, suburbia wants out to the country, and tourists can’t go far enough searching for exotic locations and wide open skies. In America a recent strand of radical libertarianism takes this escapism to a new political level. It proposes autonomous islands in the sea, beyond the jurisdictional writ of the state — or any state you’ve ever heard of — where true individual liberty will be preserved on what appear to be decommissioned ocean-going oil rigs. ‘
Recommended.
Since that article (perhaps): There is now an enormous gap between American city and country life, along with populist revolts beneath both political parties. The large gap between Democrats and Republicans, and arguably a common vision of law and country, is now even larger; filtering down to everyone. It’s when everyone sees the problems, and no one says a word that I get worried.
I’d argue a more religious, more patriotic, pro rule-of-law and civic-minded majority is now perhaps only a minority, and there will likely be a more entrenched Left, pushing up against a ‘neo-liberal’ and increasingly authoritarian (big-tech, big gov’t) majority. The drivers of change on the Left tend to be violent radicals, utopians, and will concede to liberal idealists from time to time, but generally against a common enemy.
As to the loss of that more religious, more patriotic majority, It’s likely inversely related to the rise of the ‘woke’ religiosity fulfilling many of the human basics along with libertarian anarchy as ‘base-states’ for American civic life. The ‘wokeism’ tends to be revelatory (relying on anti-rational irrationalism, feelings, and ‘poetic truths’). It also tends to be anti-speech and deeply ideological, advocating violence when necessary (not limiting violence in principle).
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
Human nature and the pressures of maintaining legitimate authority against reality haven’t changed all that much.
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As posted:
From Alien Powers: The Pure Theory Of Ideology:
‘Ideology is a philosophical type of allegiance purporting to transcend the mere particularities of family, religion, or native hearth, and in essence lies in struggle. The world is a battlefield, in which there are two enemies. One is the oppressor, the other consists of fellow ideologies who have generally mistake the conditions of liberation.’
and:
‘Yet for all their differences, ideologies can be specified in terms of a shared hostility to modernity: to liberalism in politics, individualism in moral practice, and the market in economics.’
Arnold Kling reviews the late Kenneth Minogue’s ‘The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes The Moral Life,‘ and finishes with:
‘Overall, I would say that for libertarians Minogue’s book provides a litmus test. If you find yourself in vigorous agreement with everything he says, then you probably see no value in efforts to work with progressives to promote libertarian causes. The left is simply too dedicated to projects that Minogue argues undermine individual moral responsibility, and thus they are antithetical to liberty. On the other hand, if you believe that Minogue is too pessimistic about the outlook for freedom in today’s society and too traditional in his outlook on moral responsibility, then you would feel even more uneasy about an alliance with conservatives than about an alliance with progressives.’
Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’
Related On This Site: From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’