One of the main assumptions of Classical Liberalism is that people are rational creatures, capable of thinking for themselves and acting in their own best interests. However, the obvious, glaring reality is that people are more like guinea pigs - although less cute and cuddly, to be fair. But both will eat anything that you put in front of them. They’ll eat ‘till they’re sick. They’ll chew through the wires of your TV and electrocute themselves.
Rights and responsibilities are reciprocal; degrade the ability to meet the latter and the former will evaporate in effect even if not in name.
The problem with the vices is that they directly act to destroy the ability to meet responsibilities. They're corrosive at the neurological level. Hence, those that seek to enslave will promote the vices, knowing full well that an enervated and degraded population will simply fall into slavery. It's an old trick. There's an account in Herodotus about a Persian emperor who did just this to a restive city of Ionian Greeks in order to prevent further revolts. It worked like a charm.
Caesar's charisma and leadership of his troops, his battlefield-won authority as leader of his "mannerbunde," led him to mastery of Rome in the middle of a chaotic and disintegrating Republic. His attempts to be merciful to his enemies, appealing to their shared aspirations for the greatness of Rome, got him killed. His adopted son Octavian did not make the same mistake, and established an Imperial political order that lasted for centuries. The American Republic is in free-fall; Trump has been a kind of proto-Caesar figure (just drive around rural America to see that the country folks desperately want him to be the savior of the US) but can he save the country? Ultimately no, because he is limited by his materialism (true of most of the Boomer generation). Can a true American Caesar be found in time to save the Republic, and lead the people out of the morass of degeneracy? An inner fire, a spiritual clarity, a fundamental orientation to what is eternally true, and a ruthless attitude toward the servants of decay and destruction, are needed, because "Liberalism is moral syphilis" (Jonathan Bowden). And the inner core of American patriots would have to recognize him. A pretty tall order for a hollowed-out US.
Excellent essay succinct and to the point. In truth both liberal free market capitalism and leftist socialism are empty soulless ideologies. What is capitalism? The mass production of goods and services with the idea that owning these things will make you "happy" and your life better. Really? Then why is everyone in debt up to their eyebrows working long hours even two or three jobs In this "free market" paradise? Everyone loves the "free market" when it works for you when it craps on you you want a bail out whether you're AIG, GMC, or the little guy in the street. You're free to slave away at a desolate boring mundane "job" and to choose from one of the factions that make up the USA one party state to serve their paymasters and contributors and it isn't you. Liberal democracy is a great system for con men/women, thieves and garden variety low life bottom feeding scumbags. It's not good for middle class, and working class honest citizens. Now to socialism it's claimed goal is to more evenly distribute the goods and services created by capitalism to more people that were denied it except for a select lucky few. The idea being that this would make a happier citizenry and a better quality of life. Well we see how that worked out. Misery, corruption, perpetual shortages, alcoholism, broken families, working yourself to death in antiquated state run factories and dead end jobs. Not exactly utopia which translates from the Greek as "no place" or "a place that could never exist". The truth is socialism was NEVER about sharing anything let alone wealth. It was ALWAYS about and oligarchy that swindles and steals everything uses it for themselves and tossed scraps to the masses if they tot the party line. I would suggest the Bolshevism was elitist from the get go. Why? When the Russian Social Democratic Party met in 1903, they had a big uproar between two faction. One led by Vladimir Ulianov AKA Lenin the other by Julius Martov (Tsederbaum) it was over how to proceed to socialism. Martov wanted to work within the system and gradually enlighten the populace to the joys of Marxian bliss. Lenin argued that it would take too long what was needed was a full time 247/365 we never close cadre of revolutionaries that eat, sleep and drink revolution. You don't cooperate with the oppressors you overthrow them and jam socialism down everyone's throats (my words) at the point of a gun or noose. Unable to agree they split into Lenin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Mensheviks. Lenin's crew won out and eventually Mensheviks fell in line and joined the Lenin mafia. My point Bolshevism was always about an elite created by an elitist, populated by elitists, and opportunists looking for a "new racket" to enrich themselves. As you can see both capitalism and socialism are flawed. What's needed is an authoritarian system, Imperial Russia, Imperial Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, or for our own time a "people's community", not a Marxian socialism, but a cultural socialism based on ethnicity, cultural and historical characteristics. Where it's all for one and one for all, not all for me and screw you. When you have a market system that is watched by the people through a nationalist party and the will of the people is expressed through the party, and the people tell the state and the giant conglomerates what to do and what they want not the other way around as we currently have in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Rolo I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts and please check out my substack page too.
You are a fan of the 'good King', but how do you get one? You are a little vague on that point. And History demonstrates that most of them were not 'good'.
The problem with an autocrat dictiating terms is that it still is no guarantee of positive behavior. Imagine Jeffrey Epstein, for instance. I do believe that a sense of ethics and self-discipline is important both to societies and to individuals, but the strength of these derives from the surrounding culture. Cultural ethics, for instance will dictate the difference between fair and shady business practices. I sometimes return to the now-unfashionable concept of sin, which I've redefined to be any activity where having fun has trangressed the boundary into destructive territory. It may be fun to cheat somebody, for instance, but that practice is sinful because it will destroy trust and good will that might otherwise prevail. In a highly ethical society, the advantage will usually go to one who is willing to disregard ethiics. Only strong social disapproval, or a punitive and effective legal system, will hold such practices in check. Or a just autocrat: but the "good king" is a widely recognized ideal seldom achieved in practive. I do, however, believe, that some unspoken restraint of fair-play underlies most people's idea of liberalism, and that there is such a thing as liberal retarint which is not entirely opposed to liberal freedom. And, it may be consistent with a benign autocracy, assuming that such could ever be achieved in paractice. There's the trick.
The need for prohibition on vice directly ties to the discipline instilled through environment or tradition. Had fentanyl been readily available to American colonists it would not mean the abject failure of ALL settlements; only some. The surviving ones, replete with experience would establish traditions disallowing its use. The West (America in particular) succumbs to poisons of all sorts not necessarily because they collectively lack survival instincts, but because her enemies understand these axioms and weaponize them through propaganda. Deliberately, she lost her best men, strongest traditions, and the self correction derived from natural consequence.
Now consequences catch up, releasing the kinetic energy of too many decadent decades. Should she survive, the process shall invert. From the consequences come the traditions. From the traditions come better men. If only we could first remove the poison from our wells.
"The story I read the other day about two high-schoolers OD’ing on fentanyl is another. @libsoftiktok makes the case for limiting personal liberties better than I ever could."
How so?
Were the high-schoolers not acting as they did despite the supposed limitation of personal liberties? The limitations clearly did not work. How does that make the case that they were a good thing?
The arguments you make are the same as the ones the prohibitionists used in the US about a century ago. It didn't work. It simply gives the gangsters a huge opportunity to make money in supplying a demand that goes unmet by legal means. Crime increases, the militarization of the police against us all continues, liberty is lost, and the vice that they tried to legislate out of existence just keeps right on existing.
Rights and responsibilities are reciprocal; degrade the ability to meet the latter and the former will evaporate in effect even if not in name.
The problem with the vices is that they directly act to destroy the ability to meet responsibilities. They're corrosive at the neurological level. Hence, those that seek to enslave will promote the vices, knowing full well that an enervated and degraded population will simply fall into slavery. It's an old trick. There's an account in Herodotus about a Persian emperor who did just this to a restive city of Ionian Greeks in order to prevent further revolts. It worked like a charm.
Caesar's charisma and leadership of his troops, his battlefield-won authority as leader of his "mannerbunde," led him to mastery of Rome in the middle of a chaotic and disintegrating Republic. His attempts to be merciful to his enemies, appealing to their shared aspirations for the greatness of Rome, got him killed. His adopted son Octavian did not make the same mistake, and established an Imperial political order that lasted for centuries. The American Republic is in free-fall; Trump has been a kind of proto-Caesar figure (just drive around rural America to see that the country folks desperately want him to be the savior of the US) but can he save the country? Ultimately no, because he is limited by his materialism (true of most of the Boomer generation). Can a true American Caesar be found in time to save the Republic, and lead the people out of the morass of degeneracy? An inner fire, a spiritual clarity, a fundamental orientation to what is eternally true, and a ruthless attitude toward the servants of decay and destruction, are needed, because "Liberalism is moral syphilis" (Jonathan Bowden). And the inner core of American patriots would have to recognize him. A pretty tall order for a hollowed-out US.
Excellent essay succinct and to the point. In truth both liberal free market capitalism and leftist socialism are empty soulless ideologies. What is capitalism? The mass production of goods and services with the idea that owning these things will make you "happy" and your life better. Really? Then why is everyone in debt up to their eyebrows working long hours even two or three jobs In this "free market" paradise? Everyone loves the "free market" when it works for you when it craps on you you want a bail out whether you're AIG, GMC, or the little guy in the street. You're free to slave away at a desolate boring mundane "job" and to choose from one of the factions that make up the USA one party state to serve their paymasters and contributors and it isn't you. Liberal democracy is a great system for con men/women, thieves and garden variety low life bottom feeding scumbags. It's not good for middle class, and working class honest citizens. Now to socialism it's claimed goal is to more evenly distribute the goods and services created by capitalism to more people that were denied it except for a select lucky few. The idea being that this would make a happier citizenry and a better quality of life. Well we see how that worked out. Misery, corruption, perpetual shortages, alcoholism, broken families, working yourself to death in antiquated state run factories and dead end jobs. Not exactly utopia which translates from the Greek as "no place" or "a place that could never exist". The truth is socialism was NEVER about sharing anything let alone wealth. It was ALWAYS about and oligarchy that swindles and steals everything uses it for themselves and tossed scraps to the masses if they tot the party line. I would suggest the Bolshevism was elitist from the get go. Why? When the Russian Social Democratic Party met in 1903, they had a big uproar between two faction. One led by Vladimir Ulianov AKA Lenin the other by Julius Martov (Tsederbaum) it was over how to proceed to socialism. Martov wanted to work within the system and gradually enlighten the populace to the joys of Marxian bliss. Lenin argued that it would take too long what was needed was a full time 247/365 we never close cadre of revolutionaries that eat, sleep and drink revolution. You don't cooperate with the oppressors you overthrow them and jam socialism down everyone's throats (my words) at the point of a gun or noose. Unable to agree they split into Lenin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Mensheviks. Lenin's crew won out and eventually Mensheviks fell in line and joined the Lenin mafia. My point Bolshevism was always about an elite created by an elitist, populated by elitists, and opportunists looking for a "new racket" to enrich themselves. As you can see both capitalism and socialism are flawed. What's needed is an authoritarian system, Imperial Russia, Imperial Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, or for our own time a "people's community", not a Marxian socialism, but a cultural socialism based on ethnicity, cultural and historical characteristics. Where it's all for one and one for all, not all for me and screw you. When you have a market system that is watched by the people through a nationalist party and the will of the people is expressed through the party, and the people tell the state and the giant conglomerates what to do and what they want not the other way around as we currently have in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Rolo I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts and please check out my substack page too.
You are a fan of the 'good King', but how do you get one? You are a little vague on that point. And History demonstrates that most of them were not 'good'.
The problem with an autocrat dictiating terms is that it still is no guarantee of positive behavior. Imagine Jeffrey Epstein, for instance. I do believe that a sense of ethics and self-discipline is important both to societies and to individuals, but the strength of these derives from the surrounding culture. Cultural ethics, for instance will dictate the difference between fair and shady business practices. I sometimes return to the now-unfashionable concept of sin, which I've redefined to be any activity where having fun has trangressed the boundary into destructive territory. It may be fun to cheat somebody, for instance, but that practice is sinful because it will destroy trust and good will that might otherwise prevail. In a highly ethical society, the advantage will usually go to one who is willing to disregard ethiics. Only strong social disapproval, or a punitive and effective legal system, will hold such practices in check. Or a just autocrat: but the "good king" is a widely recognized ideal seldom achieved in practive. I do, however, believe, that some unspoken restraint of fair-play underlies most people's idea of liberalism, and that there is such a thing as liberal retarint which is not entirely opposed to liberal freedom. And, it may be consistent with a benign autocracy, assuming that such could ever be achieved in paractice. There's the trick.
The need for prohibition on vice directly ties to the discipline instilled through environment or tradition. Had fentanyl been readily available to American colonists it would not mean the abject failure of ALL settlements; only some. The surviving ones, replete with experience would establish traditions disallowing its use. The West (America in particular) succumbs to poisons of all sorts not necessarily because they collectively lack survival instincts, but because her enemies understand these axioms and weaponize them through propaganda. Deliberately, she lost her best men, strongest traditions, and the self correction derived from natural consequence.
Now consequences catch up, releasing the kinetic energy of too many decadent decades. Should she survive, the process shall invert. From the consequences come the traditions. From the traditions come better men. If only we could first remove the poison from our wells.
"The story I read the other day about two high-schoolers OD’ing on fentanyl is another. @libsoftiktok makes the case for limiting personal liberties better than I ever could."
How so?
Were the high-schoolers not acting as they did despite the supposed limitation of personal liberties? The limitations clearly did not work. How does that make the case that they were a good thing?
The arguments you make are the same as the ones the prohibitionists used in the US about a century ago. It didn't work. It simply gives the gangsters a huge opportunity to make money in supplying a demand that goes unmet by legal means. Crime increases, the militarization of the police against us all continues, liberty is lost, and the vice that they tried to legislate out of existence just keeps right on existing.