andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> Ancient liberties are slipping through our finders
> like sand. Any more disquisitions here on the evil and
> reactionary nature of liberalism?
I won't fight over it, but it seems to me that the rights achieved and (sort of) maintained by liberalism are (unintentionally) designed to allow such slippage, in that they stand in air -- i.e., have no support but the beliefs in them of a judiciary.
And though I don't see how it can be argued either way in any text less lengthy than Gibbons Decline & Fall, I do believe that Liberalism as a substantive political position has been discredited by the same processes that discredited "Actually Existing Socialism" and the European Social Democracies: they failed. Liberalism has had a run of about 200 years, and only in spurts of 5 to 10 years here and there over that period even remotely approximated in practice its abstract principles.
Human freedom undoubtedly involves features not too different from some of the theoretical principles of liberalism, but I don't think _any_ of those features can exist long in a liberal society ruled by elected (and independent) representatives. I don't claim to have the least idea of what the alternatives will be.
This is not a disquistion on the reactionary nature of liberalism, any more than it is an attack on "actually existing socialism" or social democracies. Liberalism is not reactionary; it is merely a failure.
Carrol