"The real reason liberalism is susceptible to illiberalism is because liberalism tries to achieve both freedom and equity and ends up sacrificing the former to try to achieve the latter. "
Relative to the rest of your essay, this comes out of nowhere. And I don't agree with it. The weakness of liberalism is that the natural human inclination is "freedom for me, but not for thee." There is what I call FOOL (Fear Of Others' Liberty). In a liberal society, people with high status overcome their inner FOOL, and everybody else goes along. Liberals are losing out in contemporary America because too many Midwit FOOLs have obtained high status, especially in academia and media, and they are crowding out the liberals.
Thomas Sowell was sounding this exact alarm in the 80s. I was genuinely shocked when I saw that “Conflict of Visions” was written in the 80s. He basically laid out all of this nonsense at a time no one was aware of it
Came here from Arnold Kling's substack, so I'm not familiar with all of Torenberg's work. However, I must take vigorous exception to one aspect of this post, which appears to have occurred in others as well.
My complaint is with the casual use of the word "equity" as a synonym for "equality". "Equity" has to do with fairness and justice: per Oxford's definition, "the quality of being fair and impartial". Progressives have elected to redefine the word as meaning something like "equality of outcomes", without reference to the efforts, accomplishments, or deserts of the people harmed by or benefiting from the bringing about of that equality. That's understandable, because from their point of view, fairness and justice means equality of outcomes. But for those who don't embrace their philosophy, it's wrong and dangerous to accept their definition.
The case for and against Liberalism
"The real reason liberalism is susceptible to illiberalism is because liberalism tries to achieve both freedom and equity and ends up sacrificing the former to try to achieve the latter. "
Relative to the rest of your essay, this comes out of nowhere. And I don't agree with it. The weakness of liberalism is that the natural human inclination is "freedom for me, but not for thee." There is what I call FOOL (Fear Of Others' Liberty). In a liberal society, people with high status overcome their inner FOOL, and everybody else goes along. Liberals are losing out in contemporary America because too many Midwit FOOLs have obtained high status, especially in academia and media, and they are crowding out the liberals.
Thomas Sowell was sounding this exact alarm in the 80s. I was genuinely shocked when I saw that “Conflict of Visions” was written in the 80s. He basically laid out all of this nonsense at a time no one was aware of it
Came here from Arnold Kling's substack, so I'm not familiar with all of Torenberg's work. However, I must take vigorous exception to one aspect of this post, which appears to have occurred in others as well.
My complaint is with the casual use of the word "equity" as a synonym for "equality". "Equity" has to do with fairness and justice: per Oxford's definition, "the quality of being fair and impartial". Progressives have elected to redefine the word as meaning something like "equality of outcomes", without reference to the efforts, accomplishments, or deserts of the people harmed by or benefiting from the bringing about of that equality. That's understandable, because from their point of view, fairness and justice means equality of outcomes. But for those who don't embrace their philosophy, it's wrong and dangerous to accept their definition.