Liberalism - The God that Died
The thing you learn about liberalism and left-wing ideologies in general is that they typically don't understand many of the concepts they espouse. If you ask a liberal or a leftist what universal healthcare is, the assault weapon's ban, or Obamacare, they stare at you blankly until you get a sheepish reply that they can't actually tell you what it is. That is, not what it fundamentally; some can tell you what they think it is as an idea-of-an-idea, but as an actual policy measure they're completely bereft of even a concept of what it's supposed to be. Oh they will pretend to and defend it blindly, telling you that you MUST support it, or you are a nazi, fascist, racist, bigoted evil person that's worse than Hitler, and that every European country does it (they don't) so we must copy it (but they can't explain what it is outside of some vague concept), but when asked what it actually is, most can't define it. They will freely admit they don't REALLY know what it is. This is in part because most of these ideas or policies aren't even real things. But you have to support or it else you are a bad person. It takes the form of an almost religious like faith in the idea, except most religions at least understand what their own beliefs are supposed to be.
But while this is often clear with policy, it also tends to be true with political ideology fundamentally. If you ask a leftist what socialism is, most of them will act as if they know, that it means welfare and all good things of course, but they can't actually define it. When you do define it for them, they will proclaim they don't believe in Marxist socialism or that Marxist socialism really doesn't contain all the things it says in the communist manifesto and try to handwave away all the problems with it historically, by saying it's not "real socialism", despite the fact they can't even seem to define what "real socialism" even is or how it would be good for society. Let alone provide a coherent doctrine for it or an actual historical basis for it succeeding either. Many will point to Nordic models, despite the fact there is no Nordic or Scandinavian model, and these systems tend to have more privatized healthcare than we do, no minimum wage, mandatory military service, abortion limits capped below 12 weeks and flat taxes instead of progressive one's, the exact opposite of a socialist or left-wing progressive model, which tends to be based unironically on Venezuela, like Bernie Sander's plan. They're a vapid, substance less lot that focus more on good feelings of an idea of an idea rather than actual grounded thing or policy measure. Sadly, despite their attempt to be otherwise and often recognizing the failure of socialists, liberals tend to do the exact same thing but for liberalism.
Despite claiming to have made all western civilization and all of society being based around liberalism or liberal ideas, other than the complete lack of evidence, outside of vague generalities (I.E. All Good things are liberalism), they can't really pin down what it is or what core doctrine there is inside of it. Fundamentally it is not doctrine at all, rather a vague set of ideals, but it is treated as such. Even if there was a clear doctrine it would not make it good, but the fact it has none is endemic to the problem; it's essentially empty rhetoric. This is why it makes such a good trojan horse for communists and socialists to hijack and use to overtake universities, media organizations and other organizations in society. 93% of the media being left-wing or left-leaning and the majority of universities is not some kind of accident but rather a deliberate push to gain power. And thinkers such as Herbert Mercuse, the father of the new left who influenced entire generations of students, legitimately argued that only ideas from the left should be accepted while ideas from the right should be outright rejected, which has occurred because it was a rubric for his plan.
Liberalism claims to be the progenitor of the west, that all good things came from it and society is completely based on it. But naturally none of the ills of society can be attributed to it, because our society is not true liberalism, and "real liberalism has never been tried". They will tell you this unironically to your face and act as if they are different from leftist socialists while using all the exact same arguments to defend it. We were always liberal, and are always coming from liberalism, but we are not liberal right now as it's not real liberalism, but also liberalism is why everything is so good. Modern liberals which make up the bulk of liberals are not actually "real liberals", only the liberal and 5 other people they know are the real liberals and everyone else is an imposter. Something tells me this is little better than a psychotic delusion. You and 5 other people who are the "one-true-liberals" built all of western society and all modern liberals are fakes? Or, conservatives are actually secretly liberal and don't know it, thus robbing conservatives of all their accomplishments and giving it to liberals who they admit have failed in all their endeavors. It's maddening to a degree and obviously absurd, but stands as their actual claim to how society is ran or should be run.
Obviously, none of the American founding fathers believed in liberalism, European leaders, or really anyone else in the west until about the 1930's, when the past was retroactively rewritten to proclaim liberalism had created or somehow gained monopoly over things like Democracy, Freedom, justice and so on. The concept of Democracy, Freedom, Justice and other "good things in society" predate liberalism by nearly 2000 years, with the Romans and Greeks in particular having very complex ideas of Democracy and Republics thousands of years before thinkers like John Locke or Rosseau even exist. John Locke was never actually a major figure in government and never created a government based on his ideals; in fact just about every major liberal thinker had no involvement in running governments or crafting policies at all. They are self important academics, who's supporters proclaim retroactive credit for creating the west or modern western democracies, despite having no involvement at all. Many of the enlightenment figures never knew each other, were hundreds of years apart, and likely would have killed each other in real life had they ever met, with diametrically opposed views. Locke for example was a die-hard anti-Catholic who believed they needed to be removed from British society, while Galileo was a die-hard catholic with all three of his daughters joining the monastery. Other than their opposite and opposing views and their only likelihood of ever meeting in all probability being on a battlefield or as diplomats to resolve war disputes, they also did not know each other and did not form a coherent ideology. In fact none of the supposed enlightenment figures shared a coherent ideology at all, and one was never created at this time. To take credit for not only democracy and freedom but also things like science, facts and logic is an absurdity of the highest order. All of these things predate liberalism by thousands of years, and none of the people responsible for making these modern societies identified as liberal or even espoused liberal ideals. Nor can anyone claim sole ownership over these ideas; scientific reason is universal and apolitical, and there are different views on how to run a democracy from a liberal, conservative, moderate, socialist, and various other perspectives.
The problem with liberalism is not the fact it's wrong about everything; because that's bad enough. It's the reason why, and the reason why is that the adherents refuse to be right, and make up their own reality. Fundamentally anything based on something so detached from reality is destined to fail, and because lives depend upon us being correct, hundreds of millions as a result of policy measures, it behooves us to be right and not just throw things at the wall and hope they stick. You have a moral duty in government to very carefully think through your ideas, as even slightly wrong ideas can be disastrous for millions of people. We can't be so cavalier as to just assume things, we have to be certain we are right. The Truth matters, and it matters especially for the most underprivileged in society with no power or resources to contest the issues of the day or survive a disaster should it come. This is in the end who liberalism hurts the most.
I should say, that I am not personally against ideas such as Freedom, Democracy, or Justice, and believe in a Republican form of government, with a constitutional basis and firm set of checks and balances as a rule and not as a back-up for the system, but my main issue with liberalism is that it claims ownership of this idea and acts like only it can be responsible for the good things in the west, which it demonstrably is not and it's own belief in is incredibly harmful for society. I am as against the "People's Republic of North Korea" as I am against a liberal Republic; it is ran by people who fail to grasp even the idea of what they are espousing, and this is no accident. The problem, and my problem, is with liberalism's idea of freedom, democracy, justice and so on, not with the ideas themselves. Liberalism is the God that has now died; an infallible, perfect ideology that will lead to an end of history itself, with this concept perhaps best captured by Francis Fukuyama in his "End of History", who's predictions of the future virtually all have failed. The liberal Zeitgeist of societal perfection and an end of politics was captured by this, and perhaps represents their greatest failures; they simply were wrong. But in being so fanatically convinced of their correctness, have doomed segments of society, and are intent on dragging the rest of us down with them. It is the complete and utter failure to accept the faults of liberalism that have lead to our current conditions, and only by realizing this and correcting for them can we begin to repair our society.
The Primary Issue - Mixing the end results with the method
The primary issue comes in a very simple form; the liberals can't accept their flaws, because they've simply defined themselves as being correct. The key issue with all of the liberal and leftist thinkers ideas is in the fact they have already decided they are right, definitionally. That by writing it down on a piece of paper, it has made it so that their ideas are facts and can't be questioned. They confuse the outcome they desire (Freedom, Democracy, liberation of all workers etc.) with the methodology and can't separate the two. There is often more than one way to skin a cat, or to solve the same problem, but a leftist or liberal believe the solution is baked in to the ideology. For example, a liberal might accuse someone of "wanting more dead kids" if they don't support gun control, because in their minds the only way to lower crime is through gun control and by no other means. The reality is more complex than this; one can lower crime in a myriad of ways without infringing on people's right, such as hiring more police, having better policing standards or methods, lowering poverty or other social problems, improving education and so on, and does not necessarily require gun control. While there is a dubious belief that gun control will lower crime to begin with, as disarming law abiding citizens will not disarm criminals and crime existed before guns and occurred at higher rates before it's invention, and most crimes do not involve guns at all, the left and liberals will insist that we must ban them as it is the only cure to the problem.
Similarly, a socialist will proclaim that the only way to improve the lives of the workers, often "somewhat", is to implement a socialist model of economics which historically has proven to fail. Ignoring the betterment of workers that has occurred within capitalism already and how the standard of living has drastically improved, they insist upon a broken model with a track record of failing and that has no explanation of how it will even work, just that it will. The problem is that they define themselves as being correct, that the only option ideologically is to support their methods. They confuse the outcomes with the methods; if you want to lower crime, you MUST ban guns, if you want to help workers you MUST give control over to the government, even if there's no logical evidence that this will work. A liberal democracy is the only real democracy and the only way a democracy can function, otherwise it's not real democracy, or it is unknowingly liberal. The same is true with every liberal position it follows the same pattern. It's not that there are different versions or views on things like Democracy, it's that liberalism can claim ownership of all these things.
Never mind that the Greeks and the Romans view of Democracy predate the concept of liberalism by thousands of years, and justice, morality, fairness and other concepts are innate to humans and have been around with them in some form of another for millions of years. People do not have liberal values, or even democratic ones, they have human values such as fairness which leads to adopting ideas like democracy to give the most fair form of governance, flaws included and accepted. The problem with liberalism could be summarized as being what the liberals think liberalism is vs. what liberalism actually is. The liberals believe liberalism to be something that it is not, to have an ahistorical claim on all of western history and it's creations, as well as democracy and other systems of government that predate western society as well, with various tribal societies having versions of democracy and other systems 10's of thousands of years ago, and so to falsely attribute this to themselves gives them a false sense of correctness. It's not that democracy, freedom, justice, and the like are bad, it's that the liberal's interpretation and implementation of a system designed to uphold these values are bad and based on a false premise, which gives them a false sense of security and superiority that they don't really have. They think their ideas will work because they don't really understand the crux of the issue of democracy, freedom and so on, and their failure to understand it but belief in having done so makes their decisions in government incredibly dangerous. Most liberals have little more than a surface level understanding of the ideas, and therefore the problems tend to collapse as proper safegaurds aren't put in place to keep society running. There is little beyond pontificating about why "democracy is good" or "freedom is good" without really explaining how to create a system of checks and balances to maintain these things.
Those that do have an in-depth understanding of classical liberal thinkers blindly attach themselves to people who also never made functioning governments and also have no idea how these things work. The problem of falsely taking credit for
Liberalism's Origin - The enlightenment hoax
The foundational basis of liberalism rests entirely upon a lie, that the Enlightenment happened and was a real thing. Most modern liberal thinkers will acknowledge that no such Enlightenment really occurred, and that the so-called Enlightenment figures never or barely knew each other, had no cohesive shared ideology, with no established doctrine for it, and most were hundreds of years apart with Diametrically opposed views. Had many met in real life they likely would have tried to kill each other, as in all probability elites from each nation meeting like this would probably occur on the battlefield. Be it the notoriously anti-Catholic John Locke squaring up against Galileo or the French Liberals fighting the British, they probably would not have agreed on most of their ideas and the few that did meet in real life did not. While many try to lump Isacc Newton with John Locke as being a part of the enlightenment, Isaac Netwon and Locke famously did not get along together and Newton considered Locke's idea both hideously amoral and unscientific. Virtually every figure in the enlightenment was extremely religious and did most of their scientific studies because they were fascinated by what they considered God's creations and wanted to study them, rather than the secular atheist view that many modern liberal thinkers would hold. Many if not most held wildly unscientific beliefs, and only ran in to scientific discoveries in many cases by accident. Galileo famously did not believe that the moon caused the Tides, despite this being known for thousands of years, and was right only in that the sun did not orbit the earth, being wrong about most his views. This he derived largely from bible itself, which he believed through his own interpretations implied the earth revolved around the sun, and only set about trying to prove this to push away the Church's ire on him. All three of his daughters served in the monastery and he was devoutly religious.
The enlightenment as it's called never really happened. While there was a global push for democratic governance sparked by the American war of independence or American revolution, this was not necessarily created by or inspired by any well known enlightenment figure, nor were these figures directly involved in any of this. The classical liberal figures themselves in many cases did not refer to themselves as liberal, never using the term, and did not know one another. Figures considered to be classical liberals or associated with classical liberals often had wildly contradictory and diametric views, and shared no coherent ideology, be it on science, religion, philosophy, or politics. Many modern classical liberals would not even consider Kant, Rosseau, or Hegel to be classical liberals, as they clearly inspired Marx and Engels, with their ideas serving as the basis of socialism, and many of their ideas are so wildly separate from another, with Hobbes for example believing in an absolute sovereign to run society and redistribute property while others believed in complete anarchy, so as to make the entire ideology incoherent. The truth is there is no singular classical liberal strain of thought, no singular doctrine or belief connecting these random people, and their ideas are often bereft of any substance or directly contradictory to what modern liberals espouse, at times supporting outright dictatorships to run society or iron-fisted rule.
Nor can the creation of much of modern society be traced to these figures. Scientific reason for example existed thousands of years ago with the Romans and Greeks in western society, and before it in Egypt and Mesopotamian, and was not an invention of classical liberal figures. Be it Plato or Aristotle, or the Hippocratic oath, ideas on science and impartiality already existed, as did Democracy and Freedom, in Greek society thousands of years before it ever emerged in the 1600's. They did not create or refine scientific thinking or democracy, and were not even responsible for the creation or major parts of newly emerging democracy governments at the time. None of the American founding fathers called themselves liberal or had studied classical liberal thinkers very heavily, nor did they take their ideas from them. When Napoleon took power he killed 10% of the European population and subjugated most of Europe under an iron fist, perhaps the only real classic liberal inspired leader. The Napoleonic codes are still common throughout Europe today and are used as the basis of the charter of Human rights by the U.N., as the Soviet Union for some reason was allowed to right the charter of human rights for the U.N. By giving undue credit to liberal thinkers of the era, we have essentially allowed untested, unproven ideas to take control of our society, which is currently killing it. The liberal delusion of their ideas making the west has lead them to believe their ideas actually work, when most do not, and is currently destroying us. It is precisely due to a lack of a foundational basis that this is happening, and a failure to understand that liberalism does not have a monopoly on freedom and justice and was not responsible for the west's creations and values at all.
Classical liberal Thinkers - John Locke
Most modern liberal intellectuals assert they are "classical liberals", based on ideas from the 1600-1800's which in their minds are clearly superior than what modern liberals have morphed in to. The problem is classical liberalism is as intellectually bankrupt as modern liberalism and modern liberalism is based on classical liberalism, with it's core flaws manifesting themselves in modern liberals and leftists as the ideology collapses in on itself and tears itself apart at the seems. Most modern liberals will deliberately distance themselves from traditionally classical liberal thinkers such as Rosseau and Kant, given that they are the obvious inspiration for communism and socialism and in particular Marx, Engels and Hagel, and will generally reject their ideas or even rewrite history to assert these thinkers were never considered classical liberals at all. While I do appreciate them distancing themselves from various bad liberal thinkers, in the end when you have conversations with classical liberals about how bad classical liberalism actually is, it simply comes down to the fact that most liberal thinkers are simply rejected by modern classical liberals, ironically. As said before, the enlightenment was not really a thing and none of these people share a coherent ideology with each other, and so naturally there are variants of classical liberalism that are completely at odds with other versions of classical liberalism, almost in their entirety. Part of the problem of dissecting the failures of liberalism is that it is difficult to pin down any coherent or cohesive idea or doctrine they base their ideas on it; if an idea is bad, it was "never really liberalism" to begin with.
However, most modern classical liberals will naturally call themselves Lockian liberals, and I understand the attraction. John Locke actually knew Isaac Newton, perhaps one of the brightest minds the world has ever known and the founder of modern physics and creator of modern calculus, and therefore liberals can proclaim a merging of scientific reason and liberal thought through this. This is despite the fact Isaac Newton did not like John Locke and despised his political views, and with good reason. The problem with Lockian liberalism is the problem with all liberalism; it's adherents do not understand or know anything about it, or conveniently ignore it's problems. There is very little of real substance that Locke believes in that is actually good for society; perhaps his own singularly good idea is the idea of social contract theory, that is that man has an obligation to the society they are within and should give back to it. While a good idea in and of itself, Locke butchers this concept quite severely and steals it from Hobbes, and it is much better represented by the people whom he derived this entire idea from, the greek thinker Plato who got it from another Greek Thinker Glaucon, which is where Hobbes got this idea from himself. John Locke believes that humans should be completely remade by society in to an entirely new person, which is not only physically impossible, but would require a massive draconian and anti-human effort.
Beyond this, few liberals would actually support most if any of Lockes major views. He believes that children as young as three or infants should work in factories with their parents, and that people are naturally lazy and should be conditioned from a young to brutal hard work so that they are willing to be more productive for society and naturally for his own benefit as an aristocrat at the time. He believed humans were blank slates and that society should rewrite them in to new people to better serve society, which while incredibly draconian is also untrue as humans have a large portion, at least 55% of their nature, encoded to them at birth due to genetics and things like empathy and morality are provable functions of the brain that have centers where they operate, as well as personality. He believed in gun control and that there should be curfews for people, so that they could be restricted by society and kept from harmful actions. He also believed in eliminating minority ethnic or religious groups from society as he believed in order for democracy to work, societies needed to be homogenous, and Locke was particularly anti-catholic as a result. Finally, Locke believed in an elected monarchy or dictator, with people choosing to elect their leaders who would lead with an iron fist, rather than requiring a revolution or violence to overthrow them. While all of these ideas are ideas many classical liberals would reject despite calling themselves Lockian liberals, they are also ideals from which the communists later derived and are eerily reminiscent of Maoism, who claimed to be inspired by Locke at times. Children working as slaves in sweatshops, brutal backbreaking labor being good to condition them, society melding them in to the perfect citizens to be ruled over, an elected dictatorship of the proletariat and everyone being a blank slate to be brainwashed and rewritten by society are all a natural extension of Locke's ideas. In the word's of Mao, "Man, woman, boy, girl, we are all the same.", an idea Locke tried to hammer as he believed children if properly conditioned would behave and act like adults, an obviously scientifically untrue belief. This is before getting in to the violent repression of religious minorities, such as the Uyghur people.
However, it also more loosely applies to all of socialism. Be it the nazis, who repressed religious minorities, believed in hardwork somehow liberating people (with the sign at the opening of Auschwitz saying "work will set you free"), strict social controls and mass brainwashing propaganda, or the "dictatorship of the people" to represent people, or the Soviets with gulags, repression of Jews and Christians, mass brainwashing and the attempt to make "New Soviet man", the perfect man to fit in soviet society (the same as the concept of the "New Aryan man"), communism and national socialism seem strikingly similar to Locke's ideas, perhaps because they were based on it. In fact, the Soviet Union was allowed to write the charter of human rights in the United Nations, and based this on Locke and the Napoleonic codes, as their inspiration for "human rights" was drawn from classical liberals. The fact of the matter is there is a direct line from classical liberalism to modern socialism and communism, and it is eerily similar. Even if this is not the intent, it is the inevitable outcome of these actions and beliefs, or at least the most likely.
Regardless, very few modern classical liberals would actually agree much with any of Locke's ideas. Outside of the vague generalities of Freedom and Democracy, or the social contract, of which many other classical liberals also believed in, such as Hobbes, Rosseau, Kant and the like, his ideas were extreme and unsavory even at the time (hence the Disdain by Isaac Newton). His works were not published until at least a hundred years after his death, and had little if any influence on any major democratic government at the time, such as the United States. Some will try to say that Thomas Payne's "life, liberty and property" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is based on Locke, but Thomas payne was not a founding father and these ideas predate Locke in English society for quite some time, with no obvious mention made to Locke as to why these ideas were even derived. Essentially he had little to do with the creation of western democracies, and his ideas are overwhelmingly bad and authoritarian, likely an inspiration for many of histories worst dictators. Yet many continue to defend him and claim themselves to be Lockian liberals, which is another form of ignorance. Hobbes perhaps is the best of the classical liberals and the closest to what modern liberals would want in his political theories, yet still has little to say on racial equality or how to run a modern democracy, which is essential to modern society, and believed in an absolute sovereign with nearly unlimited powers as a Monarch. From this follows the view that no individual can hold rights of property against the sovereign, and that the sovereign may therefore take the goods of its subjects without their consent. This is fundamentally the basis of communism and socialism, that asserts that food and medicine are a human right, and therefore need to be obtained via theft from the state by stealing and reorganizing all the farmland and taking control of the entire healthcare system. Unfortunately it is also in the charter of the UN that food and medicine are human rights justifying the exact same thing, taken from such liberal thinkers. The idea of an absolute sovereign seizing control of all territory perhaps directly justifies Stalin, Mao, and every dictator of communism, all for the good of the people naturally.
No classical liberal thinker's ideas actually differentiate themselves very well socialism or communism and it's not difficult to see why liberalism later turned in to Authoritarianism. Hobbes was highly influential and tutored many great thinkers including Galileo, and so he directly inspired many other enlightenment thinkers to be rabid authoritarians who wanted a glorious leader to redistribute all property as well, and not just later leaders like Mao or Stalin. If one is to actually go in to and give an in depth analysis on any classical liberal thinker or classical liberal inspiring individual, they tend to support incoherent, incohesive and at times directly authoritarian ideals. From who are we to take our ideas from, John Locke who wanted an elected dictator and 3 year old children to work in factories and for humanity to be rewritten as he thought we were blank slates? Hobbes who wanted an absolute sovereign to redistribute all private property? Or perhaps Kant, Rosseau, and Hegel, and the Napoleonic liberals, who very clearly directly inspired socialism and communism?
Perhaps instead during this golden age of reason we should look to our religious extremists such as Locke who hated Catholics or Galileo who didn't believe in tides and many other factors but who's only claim to fame is that the earth orbited the sun, and only believed this due to his extreme interpretations of the bible and set out to prove it? The same time period of the Spanish inquisition, puritans and several major European wars? Perhaps we should look to the freedom and equality of Napoleon when he murdered 10% of Europe (killing 6 million of the nearly 60 million people at the time) and subjugating half the continent? Which group of self proclaimed or now-proclaimed classical liberal thinkers do we actually endorse? And if none of them, what in the hell do we actually base all of classical liberalism on? Nothing, as it would appear, which is the most dangerous thing to base any ideology on; pure lies.
Nor is modern liberalism in line with classical liberalism. The solution to modern woke race equity is racial equality, as well as religious equality and equality for all minorities. Equality means an equal opportunity to excel, and not equal outcomes as equity implies. However no classical liberal thinker believed in racial and religious equality or freedoms outright, and many were openly racist and bigoted. In fact racial equality does not become a thing in western society until the 1960's and 1970's largely as a result of the American-based civil rights movement, and is a relatively new phenomena in the world. Much of our modern societies ideals for equal rights for woman, races, and religious groups is a novel idea that has only existed for less than a 100 years, and been implemented in practice for a few decades. The antidote to Marxist equity is western equality, but this is not an idea contained within classical liberalism at all. In fact most ideas that classical liberals would espouse as the core of western society are relatively new. Even democracy has been around for about 250 years in the west, and much of European culture and history predates modern democratic trends, be it oxford which is nearly 800 years old or the kings and queens still present in many European countries. Many classical liberals such as Thomas Hobbes did not advocate for democracy at all. Ideas perceived to have hundreds of years backing them have only come around relatively recently, largely at the end of WWII as a rejection of the nazis and the violent wars Europe was involved in. Until America invaded and straightened out Europe, it was an authoritarian and violent place, with extremely deadly wars all the way from the crusades and napoleon to WWI and WWII. The myth of European excellence and peace is incredible when one considers it only started in 1945, and that Europe still is in involved in major wars today be it with Ukraine and various eastern European countries or the conflicts between Ireland and Britain, Spain and Catalonia and France and the Occitan people, as well as the former colonies. Europe has only been relatively peaceful for a few decades and is not historically democratic or peaceful nor has it been for most of it's existence, with the two deadliest wars in human history occurring there in the last 100 years.
It's the danger of self perception that is the problem and failure to see the problem for what it is and when it rears it's ugly head; modern liberalism is an idea that has only been around for a few decades, and naturally will be incredibly flawed. If this was accepted it would be much easier to fix, but because it's perceived in a fanatical almost religious like manner of perfection it can't be questioned and it's problem corrected.
Steel manning Liberalism - The problems with Democracy and Freedom
Lets pretend for a moment that liberalism did actually get to claim Monopoly over democracy, freedom, and justice. Let's just say they invented these things in 1652 as rational skeptics and managed to produce all good things as we know it in the west and people unknowingly copied their wonderful ideas. This would still require liberals to take credit for all the bad things and ills these things have brought society, of which there are many. None of these ideas are self contained, self sustainable or stable and require a significant amount of outside help just to function. Liberals will often proclaim that if a system becomes authoritarian it can't be liberal, because by definition liberalism is only good things. Socialists often say the same thing, that it's "not real socialism" if it turns out bad as it has in almost every attempt to implement it in real life.
It should be noted that I am a proponent of democracy, freedom, justice and other-good-things in society and am not against all of these ideas. However none of these systems are perfect and contain within themselves the possibility of their own destruction. While most know Karl Popper's idea on the paradox of Tolerance, as in the overly tolerant will tolerate those who lead to their own destruction, thus leading to the end of tolerance (I.E. if we tolerate nazis then the nazis will bring back intolerance to our society), what's lesser known is the paradox of freedom, democracy, and the justice system. All of these systems are in necessary conflict with themselves, and all of them are in necessary conflict with each other. When looking at Democracy for example, it is possible to vote in a dictator, or to vote for half the population to be unable to vote, or possible for someone to vote to enslave 1/8th the population, or possible to vote to give away freedoms. It is conceivable that a country could vote to give up their own freedoms and install and authoritarian leader. Now while this may seem like an interesting hypothetical, none of these examples are things that haven't happened in democracies; Hitler for example was voted in to power, perhaps the most infamous Authoritarian in history. An actual liberal democracy, the Weimar Republic, is responsible for Hitler coming to power. At one point, half the population couldn't vote, or woman, until they got the vote in America, Iceland and eventually the rest of the west, and black people were slaves in the democracy of the United States. Democracy does not guarantee good decision making, in fact it never has. Democracy is only used because it is the most fair system, not because it is a good or reliable system for getting the right decision. What is popular is not what is always right or correct, and minorities have rights in modern democracies for a reason; democracy is not the end all be all of morality or freedom, or justice. In the words of Winston Churchill "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other's ones." Democracy requires a number of things to function correctly, a constitution guaranteeing freedoms to all citizens and a right to vote, an educated population with a pro freedom culture to want to make intelligent and well meaning decisions for society, a military and police force to physically protect it and it's adherents from being overpowered, but also restrictions placed on democracy itself.
For democracy to function, democracy must necessarily be curtailed; you can't be allowed to vote in a dictator. You also can't be allowed to vote away your freedoms and they must be enshrined in a constitution that is extremely hard to remove. Rights must be extended to minority groups so they do not lose too much power to a majority which might try and harm them. The reason for modern Republic's like the United States is they necessarily limit the power of democracy so that not every action is subject to democratic rule. A person should not have to consult "The people" for every action he does, from waking up and brushing his teeth to driving to work, and his very thoughts should not be controlled. The economy and their own private property should not be subject to the people's will, in addition to their feelings and beliefs. Maoist China was infamous for democratizing thought, that if you didn't agree with the majority you were struggle sessioned in to compliance because all had to bow down to the will of "the people", and all property was seized in the name of "the people", like in all communist societies, such as farms and hospitals, so that it could be democratized, naturally resulting in resistance from these people and their eventual mass murder, be it in the Ukrainian Holodomor, South African purges or with how Rednecks are demonized, or with the various Doctors plots in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and Cuba. Freedom is in necessary conflict with democracy, you must limit democracy so it is not taken away, and Democracy is in conflict with itself; you must limit democracy so that it does not make bad decisions. Not everything should actually be subject to the people's whim, and I should be free to be an independent person with my own thoughts and feelings even if it goes against the grain and even if it goes against the majority whim at the time. Democracy, in a free society, must always be backed by freedom, and necessarily filtered through this lens, such as the constitution in the United States, to function properly. Limited government MEANS limited democracy, and it is perhaps paradoxical to limit Democracy in order to save it. Democracy is also in conflict with justice; if a mob of angry people demand we lynch someone, we instead should put them on trial and find EVIDENCE of their crime, rather than just people being angry.
At the same time, freedom is also in conflict with itself. While freedom and fairness is the ultimate aims of those who support democracy, it too can destroy itself. Too much freedom and we get anarchy, and a lawless anarchic society cannot protect people from interlopers. Criminals and warlords eventually take over, and people are robbed of their freedoms or unable to practice them as it is simply too dangerous to do so or a new leader overthrows our existing society and leads to a lack of freedom again. You have the freedom to give up your freedoms, and this must be curtailed to an extent as well. If America got rid of all police, all military, and all major laws enforcing organizations tomorrow, we would simply be invaded by China and taken over. We would lose our freedoms if we got rid of anything that could restrict it. Then, to protect essential freedoms and liberty, some amount of liberty must be curtailed or have the potential to be curtailed to allow ourselves to enforce the law. Necessarily SOME innocent people will be arrested and persecuted by the justice system, and some deserving criminals may be over-punished by the system or let down by it as well. For the justice system to function, some injustice must be allowed so as to allow the system to function; in war, some collateral damage of the people we are trying to save must be accepted. America and our allies killed 67,000 French people in WWII during bombing raids, but liberating them from the Germans saved them from millions of people dead. We have to accept some imperfection in the system for it to function as people and the world are imperfect. To try to push for perfect freedom or perfect justice results in it's own self destruction. This is not a hypothetical, as many modern liberals eschew war all together and claim to be "anti-war" despite the fact war is necessary to end war, I.E. one side must win or beat the nazis for the war to be over, violence is necessary to stop violence, and they want to defund the police and remove all the police and empty out all prisons because some injustice has occurred within the justice system. They legitimately fail to grasp the paradox of war, violence and justice, as well as that of freedom. And they declare their enemies fascist for being moderates who recognize this dilemma of trade-offs. You get to pick a better or more desirable outcome, you do not get to have a system with no problems, only how it manifests. Too much tolerance has lead to an influx of migrants who are antisemitic, leading to an antisemitic rise in Europe for example.
Necessarily, too many restrictions placed on freedom, justice, democracy, and other systems or the overuse of violence also all hurt these causes as well. If we clamp down on the people too hard or restrict who can vote or what you can vote for too much, it also becomes an authoritarian system just in a more direct and obvious way. Therefore a proper balance of these systems and way to maintain them is necessary. Democracy is not necessarily a good thing and often is a bad one. A system of checks and balances is not a back-up to the system but must be at the forefront of the system and filter every action within it, so that no one system gains too much or too little power and each system and function set in conflict and competition with itself and each other can be maintained at equilibrium. You can't allow the fox to guard the henhouse, and systems of government are separated such as the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the state and federal governments, or the FBI and CIA, so that no one entity gains too much power. Each system is always going to be biased in favor of itself, and so an outside system that can keep that system in check is necessary for it to function correctly. There must be as well an outside force for all of these entities to work, both in the government and outside of the government entirely, such as a well educated, well meaning and properly motivated society with a cultural foundation for freedom. Would democracy fix China or North Korea overnight when so many have been brainwashed in to believing in their leaders and would fanatically support them to their own deaths? What about with Russia, when Putin was put back in to power and became another Tyrant after the fall of the soviet Union? Without the cultural underpinning or basis to support freedom, justice, and a balanced democracy, democracy is destined to fall apart.
The problem with liberals and liberal thinkers is often that little if any is made of this and nothing is said. Liberalism "just works" and Democracy is "just good" and we shouldn't question it. Very few liberal thinkers such as John Locke ever had to actually run a government and were detached from society in general, with their ideologies failures stemming from a lack of practicality. An overly ideological and detached people tend to not understand real life pragmatic solutions and the paradoxes within their ideas. The only major thinkers to acknowledge the paradox and self-contradictions within liberalism were the socialists stemming from Hegel, or the Hegelians, and while Hegel himself took many of these ideas to be mystical or metaphysical, his adherents did not and seriously believed that the contradictions were a good thing. Lenin himself was said to want to "accelerate the contradictions" for society. Rather than acknowledging these flaws in liberalism, liberals simply double downed on them declaring them a good thing, and thus the only liberal thinkers willing to entertain the self contradictory problem of liberalism, or of democracy, freedom and so on, were radical socialist thinkers who did not see the contradictions as a flaw but as a feature. While obviously ridiculous, it is the inevitable outcome of liberalism; to tear itself apart at the seems as the system is tested to it's maximum. These thinkers have no rational explanation for fixing these problems and eschew the people who often do, the conservative thinkers, or those who bring up more rational and pragmatic solutions.
It's Illiberal they'll decry, to curtail democracy, but it's also necessary for democracy to even function as unlimited democracy does not work and only restricted democracy in the form of a Republic is functional. It's illiberal to restrict freedoms, even though in total anarchy we get warlords leading to us losing our freedoms again. And it's illiberal to have injustice in society, even though to have justice for victims of criminals our police must be allowed to act at all and therefore have the potential to, albeit rarely, act unjustly at times. None of these systems are perfect, and none of them can be perfectly maintained or implemented by society and people who are also imperfect. Naturally if men were angels there'd be no need for government (in the words of Alexander Hamilton), but that is obviously not the case. Granted we also do not need an Orwellian police state, either. But one must accept a necessary restriction and balance on some freedoms, some democracy, some justice and some tolerance or else society cannot continue to function. We cannot be infinitely tolerant, just, free or democratic or we risk losing all of it.
As stated before, we do not have "Democratic values" or "liberal values", we have empathy, morals and human values, such as fairness or justice, and this leads to the creation of a free or fair democracy. Liberalism when it runs it's natural course runs in to one of two problems; the necessary restriction of it's proposed components in order to function correctly, therefore becoming at least in part illiberal, or it becomes too weak and easily defeated, leading to the take over by an outside entity. To say liberalism by definition cannot lead to authoritarianism would be to imply that Hitler was not elected to power and liberalism has no bearings on democracy, or that one does not have the freedoms to get rid of their freedoms or that the justice system requires a system that will occasionally be unjust. And to proclaim that liberalism does have within it's ideology to curtail itself means that liberalism is by definition anti-democratic, anti-tolerance, and anti-freedom as much as it is in favor of those things, meaning the slow gradual decline of freedom, democracy, and tolerance in the name of protecting it can also occur. Yes it is totally possible for an actually truly free or democratic society to by these mechanisms lose those things. Democracy can vote itself out of existence, just as freedoms can allow people the freedom to get rid of their freedoms. In a truly free and democratic society this option is always on the table. Therefore to claim liberalism cannot be authoritarian or lead to it is silly; it has to be at some level in order to function, and this can always lead to someone else taking power fairly within that system that destroys it, the people themselves included.
Whether by weakness, stupidity, or a changing in values, liberal systems have and can lead to authoritarianism. And to simply wait and look back on how this happened an say "Well obviously this is illiberal" is a lazy and tired explanation. No, liberalism did fail here, and to refuse to ask how or why is why liberalism keeps failing, as it can't grow. Being a classical liberal and stuck to unchanging ideas from the 1600's with the inability to learn new lessons means you are doomed to repeat the same failures over and over again, as you have prevented yourself from learning from history (perhaps by declaring it is even over like Francis Fukuyama) and changing your ideas based on it, while at the same time modern liberals have no intellectual basis at all and therefore are always starting at ground zero when dealing with problems. Conservativism tends to work because it has ideas tested from time for thousands of years, which is why traditionalism is a thing and works, and while not perfect, it's ideas are borne out of ideas which were tested against the backdrop of reality and changed to fit a model that would work in the real world. While some traditions have no purpose, are out dated and no longer apply to the present day or aren't as valuable as they once were, they have had to stand the test of time to work in society, and so have a much stronger basis than academics with ideas that were never tested in real life and only seem to work "in theory". All leftist and liberal ideas tend to suffer in this way, and not just socialism. And while there is merit to new ideas and new concepts even in politics, and it is worth it to create and test new ideas on the small scale, perhaps based on past ideas or as gradual modifications of old ideas, that does not mean these ideas will be automatically good.
People with no real life experience, be it in battle, running a company or in government, essentially academics with pie-in-the-sky and head-in-the-cloud idealism like Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, are not good basis from which to run all of society. The American founding fathers made and implemented the constitution by 1789, 10-15 years after the American revolution, as their hard fought experience trying to run a government, from quashing multiple rebellions like Shayes Rebellion to discovering the folly of multiple currencies and voluntary tax systems, the articles of confederation were completely thrown out and the constitution was made to replace it, meant as a stronger more solid foundation to run a government. The Americans had to fight through trial and error to make America what it would later come to be and prove themselves as competent leaders through the crucible of war to earn their place in government, and this is something no liberal academic has ever had to do. Their ideas are based essentially on nothing, and people with no idea on how to lead society with laughable ideas on human nature at best should not form the basis for how to run things. Pragmatic, provable, tested ideas should form the basis of society, as lives depend upon us being correct, and we should not be so cavalier as to simply throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. We owe it to the average person to actually have grounded, practical ideas that have proven to work in the past implemented in society, rather than have society be the social experiment for some deranged academics. The problem with liberalism is as much a problem with the liberals who believe in it themselves; fundamentally in defining itself as right and refusing to see it's flaws. But just as importantly taking credit for things it never accomplished, and thus failing to understand how to implement these things in reality.
