The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 18, 2024


Can We Return to Classical Liberalism？ ｜ Guest： Stelios Panagiotou ｜ 12⧸18⧸24


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 17 minutes

Words per minute

151.00624

Word count

11,698

Sentence count

601

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Stelios Panayano of The Lotus Eaters joins me on the show to talk about his views on classical liberalism and why he thinks it s time to roll back the clock and go back to the old days of classical liberalism.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.360 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:00:31.940 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:33.580 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:37.360 Before we get started, I just want to remind you that there is new merch in the merch store.
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00:01:03.900 All right, guys.
00:01:05.500 So classical liberalism, something that comes up all the time on this channel,
00:01:10.080 always talking about classical liberalism.
00:01:12.500 Most of the people who talk about it in the modern day tend to not know what they're talking about.
00:01:19.820 They tend to relate it to like 1990s Bill Clinton liberalism.
00:01:24.400 However, funny enough, I posted something to that effect on Twitter,
00:01:28.660 and the one person that people suggested I talk to about it
00:01:31.340 is probably someone who actually does know what classical liberalism is and actually defends it.
00:01:36.000 So I'm hoping to have a much more productive discussion with Stelios Panayano.
00:01:41.880 He's from the Lotus Eaters. 0.86
00:01:43.980 He's, I guess we call it a presenter over there across the pond instead of a host.
00:01:48.780 But Stelios, thank you so much for coming on.
00:01:51.300 Thank you very much, Oren, for the invitation.
00:01:53.700 And I'm sure we're going to have an excellent discussion.
00:01:56.900 And this is one of those topics that I think some people are afraid to discuss.
00:02:01.340 So I think it's going to be excellent.
00:02:04.180 Yeah, like I said, normally when I hear I'm a classical liberal,
00:02:06.820 it's from guys who believe liberalism from about five years ago.
00:02:11.160 And they're not really familiar with kind of the intellectual history of this actual form of moral inquiry.
00:02:18.300 So I'm really glad that we can kind of get a little deeper beyond just like,
00:02:22.640 oh, I really hope that we can roll back the clock for a few years and really get a grasp on this concept.
00:02:28.240 But before we dive into that, can you give people a little bit of your background,
00:02:32.040 how you came to Beyond the Lotus Eaters, kind of where you gained this belief system?
00:02:38.360 Yes. Okay, thank you.
00:02:39.480 So first of all, I come from Greece.
00:02:41.460 I was born in 1990 and I started following politics in 2010 where we had the Greek debt crisis.
00:02:50.220 And I think essentially my country is destroyed by the left.
00:02:54.120 So that's it in one succinct sentence.
00:03:00.560 So I studied economics, but also philosophy.
00:03:04.060 I did a PhD in the topic of free will and moral responsibility.
00:03:08.380 And I was an academic for several years, but I found out that I couldn't actually do my job
00:03:14.740 because I wanted to educate people.
00:03:17.820 And modern academia is set out in this way that you fail.
00:03:22.320 Because we are told to do what we know is impossible to achieve from a very early age,
00:03:29.300 to have everyone happy.
00:03:30.360 A lot of universities are competing with each other for student satisfaction.
00:03:35.980 Student satisfaction means let's just have everyone happy.
00:03:39.280 People are happy with very different things.
00:03:42.000 So I decided at some point that I don't want to live like that.
00:03:45.860 I don't want to be, in a sense, afraid of any crazy person waking up one day saying anything.
00:03:54.360 Completely, completely false and ruining my career.
00:03:57.220 So I said, I want to be vocal about these things.
00:04:00.940 I want to speak out about it.
00:04:02.600 And I found out Lotus Cedars and I just said, why the hell not?
00:04:08.040 Yeah, it's really interesting.
00:04:10.620 It's really interesting that so many people who are doing good academic work have to escape
00:04:16.600 academia at this point to do it.
00:04:19.160 You'll think of someone like Michael Millerman or others who are building these schools
00:04:22.700 outside the university, Nima Parvini.
00:04:24.960 These are people who obviously are incredibly qualified and have the passion that you're
00:04:29.420 talking about like yourself, but just found modern academia too constraining.
00:04:33.980 It's funny because the more I talk to academics now when I'm at different conferences and things,
00:04:39.020 they're always saying, oh, all the really interesting stuff is getting done out on the
00:04:42.800 internet somewhere.
00:04:43.800 That's really where it's happening.
00:04:45.220 And so I think you're at the head of a trend of a lot of academics who are recognizing that
00:04:50.560 actually academia is the worst place to do the type of work that I want to do.
00:04:54.860 So we're going to dive into the actual discussion itself on classical liberalism.
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00:05:55.660 All right, so like I said, most of the people I hear talking about classical liberalism are
00:06:03.800 people who are like along for the progressive revolution up until the point where kind of
00:06:10.100 they started screaming at people in academia and, you know, maybe mutilating children, right?
00:06:15.840 They're like, oh, well, you know, I'm a liberal, but I'm a classical liberal.
00:06:19.340 And by that they mean, you know, a liberal from 2005.
00:06:22.320 I think you're talking about a much different form of liberalism.
00:06:27.860 So could you lay out for people a little bit what you mean when you say classical liberalism?
00:06:32.120 Exactly.
00:06:32.680 So first of all, let me just say this, that when we're talking about terms and isms, especially
00:06:39.860 in politics, we frequently talk about umbrella terms.
00:06:44.120 And classical liberalism is an umbrella term.
00:06:47.420 It's a tradition that spans centuries.
00:06:50.540 I think there's a substantial amount of debate where it starts, but a lot of people know where
00:06:58.440 it starts from, you know, to a very large degree.
00:07:01.580 They say that it comes from the natural law theory that starts with, you could say, from
00:07:07.280 ancient Greece, then with Cicero, then with Aquinas, also Francisco Suarez afterwards, and
00:07:14.260 comes into the 17th century.
00:07:15.940 And to a very large extent, it says that there should be a sphere of activities within which
00:07:24.460 people should be free to engage in them or not free from state coercion.
00:07:32.560 And they are saying that this sphere of activities should be very big, in a sense, should be sufficient
00:07:41.820 to allow people to, in some ways, be masters of themselves.
00:07:46.120 Now, there are several challenges here.
00:07:48.520 Because on the one hand, if we have a very low, very restricted sphere, it seems like we're
00:07:55.940 living in a tyrannical state.
00:07:58.720 Maybe you would call it total state.
00:08:00.780 I don't know.
00:08:01.940 Some might say.
00:08:02.460 So, yeah, if we live without any kind of constraint, it's going to be anarchy, and I don't think
00:08:11.000 that this is going to last.
00:08:12.620 Sorry, anarchists.
00:08:13.560 I don't think that this is going to last.
00:08:15.260 So the challenge is to find principles according to which we're going to demarcate that sphere
00:08:22.380 of activities.
00:08:22.980 And here, I would say, is a very interesting way to generate all the different forms of
00:08:30.540 classical liberalism, and also distinguish between the, I would say, desirable ones, but
00:08:36.220 also the undesirable ones.
00:08:38.420 So I'll just give you, I would say, four examples.
00:08:43.060 One has to do with a completely rights-based view.
00:08:46.020 And that goes with saying, let us find self-evident truths and structure society according to
00:08:53.520 those truths, and somehow this is going to lead into a situation where there is going
00:08:59.100 to be universal harmony, and perhaps that harmony will be able to be exported to the
00:09:04.480 global scale.
00:09:05.480 I think that this is a problematic one.
00:09:08.500 It has been historically proven to be problematic.
00:09:11.840 I think a lot of people tie it with two things.
00:09:16.560 The late Thomas Paine and the French Revolution, who was defending it before they tried to kill
00:09:21.700 him, but also a Cold War propaganda in which it was presented to people in the West that
00:09:29.920 we have the final battle, and it's going to be a battle between individualism on the one
00:09:35.460 hand and collectivism on the other hand.
00:09:37.820 So a lot of people started thinking that classical liberalism is this just like McGrealbrough kind
00:09:45.220 of theory, where magically speaking, people are going to retreat into their private sphere,
00:09:51.620 and somehow politics is not going to interfere with the private sphere.
00:09:55.440 I think that even if some people consider that you could say noble, I think that it's unrealistic.
00:10:01.040 I start with these two forms, because it seems to me that a lot of people who criticize classical
00:10:07.860 liberalism have these two forms in mind.
00:10:11.540 And if that is the case, you could say I'm almost an anti-liberal myself.
00:10:17.600 I don't think that this isn't going to work.
00:10:20.740 Yeah.
00:10:20.940 Sorry, not to interrupt you too badly here, but I just want to reiterate, that is important
00:10:26.420 because so much, the vast majority of people calling themselves classical liberalism and
00:10:32.060 what we call popular intellectuals today are doing exactly this, right?
00:10:36.780 This is exactly the form that they are defending.
00:10:39.860 And so you could be forgiven for attacking this form directly because this is, not to pick
00:10:47.360 an open wound, but this is a James Lindsay formulation of liberalism, right?
00:10:51.680 As where I think what you're going to be defending is something that's much more robust and difficult
00:10:56.840 to assail, but these people would call authoritarian or restrictive in many cases.
00:11:03.040 Well, there is always the problem of where we start with authoritarianism or not, because
00:11:09.360 there are some people, two anarchists, for instance, every state intervention, every instance
00:11:15.040 of state coercion or imposition of force by the state seems tyrannical.
00:11:20.720 So there needs to be a conversation about it, for instance, at least in the camp I'm defending,
00:11:27.760 about where to draw the line.
00:11:29.220 And I think that it is very realistic to not have an a priori or, you know, before the situation
00:11:39.580 approach to it and examine each case on its own merit.
00:11:43.940 Because, however, there is a strong universalistic tendency, not just in classical liberalism, but
00:11:50.980 in almost in most political traditions.
00:11:54.960 The problem with that is that it ignores facts about the human condition, but also facts about
00:12:00.000 history.
00:12:00.460 And it just is not going to work.
00:12:03.360 And to be very honest, I think that the kind of formulation that you mentioned as being
00:12:09.300 one that is popular, I think that it should be rejected.
00:12:13.200 And I would say it must be rejected because the very reasons that lead people to defend
00:12:19.840 it are also resting upon defending things that obviously don't belong to the majority of
00:12:28.420 the tradition, like something like multiculturalism, for instance, we'll get there in a bit, but
00:12:33.480 also create vast problems to the world of today.
00:12:36.100 Now, when it comes to James Lindsay's approach, I would have to say that I don't know exactly
00:12:44.420 his approach on classical liberalism.
00:12:46.620 I haven't heard a specific definition of him.
00:12:50.320 I've heard things about it.
00:12:51.480 I've also heard Peter Boghossian talking about it.
00:12:55.240 I haven't heard the definition coming from him.
00:12:59.040 And I've also heard from Helen Plackrose that she defends a kind of liberalism that is
00:13:05.020 sort of million or late million, where there's a lot of focus on a kind of autonomy that I
00:13:11.620 think that in some cases it can be a bit corrosive.
00:13:14.520 I'm sure we'll get there down in a bit.
00:13:16.620 So I can't say I know exactly how he defines classical liberalism.
00:13:20.980 But I'm sure maybe we'll talk about this down the line because...
00:13:25.980 Yeah, I didn't want to get tied up in that.
00:13:28.920 I've also discussed with Peter Boghossian, you know, and I think you're fairly framing
00:13:34.020 that understanding.
00:13:35.680 I was just giving an example, but sorry, I interrupted you initially.
00:13:39.080 You were giving the two kinds that you couldn't, that were bad.
00:13:42.380 Can you give them the remaining of that that you wanted to focus on?
00:13:45.500 Well, it's not the only kinds that are bad or undesirable.
00:13:49.860 I think there's another one, the very consequentialist, you could say almost utilitarian one, that
00:13:56.260 is associated with Jeremy Bentham and to an extent with the early mill, where we just
00:14:03.460 say, well, we don't care about any notion of rights.
00:14:06.640 We just care about the common good.
00:14:08.000 I think this gives a carte blanche to whatever administration to say, well, we have, we can
00:14:14.400 calculate the common good better than the, you know, the pros who don't know what it is.
00:14:19.560 And we're going to do anything we want in the name of liberty for this reason.
00:14:24.860 So there is another tradition that I think is really interesting.
00:14:28.780 And it's not immediately discernible to most people because they don't know, have a strong
00:14:36.140 background in ethics.
00:14:37.500 I think that classical liberalism in its, let's say, 18th century form, the one you'd see in,
00:14:44.720 for instance, Montesquieu in the US founding fathers, it has really strong classical Republican
00:14:51.260 leanings, where classical Republicans had a highlight of the importance of what they call
00:14:58.020 the common good.
00:14:58.780 Now, the notion of the common good strikes some people as utilitarian, but it isn't necessarily
00:15:05.540 utilitarian.
00:15:07.260 I think that if we examine history, and if we examine political theory across history, we
00:15:14.400 will see that the idea of the state that promotes the common good is essentially the most common
00:15:22.700 idea that there is.
00:15:24.780 And classical Republicans had a strong backing there.
00:15:27.920 They had a very rich tradition stretching back to antiquity.
00:15:32.540 And what classical liberalism in the 18th century and then in the 19th and the early 20th does
00:15:39.920 seems to me to be the good form I think is worth defending.
00:15:44.400 It's one that fuses and says, we can't be ideologues about it.
00:15:49.520 We have to examine each case on its own merit, but we also have to care about rights, but also
00:15:57.020 the common good.
00:15:57.920 If we don't care about the common good at all, we're going to have the strictly ideological
00:16:03.760 approach to it of just let me grill, bro.
00:16:07.120 I'm in my ranch.
00:16:08.340 I don't see Trent de Aragua killing people or occupying apartment blocks, so I don't care.
00:16:21.460 So if that's the road, that's unbelievably socially corrosive.
00:16:24.860 But I think that if there are people who approach it from a non-ideological, non-virtue signaling
00:16:32.580 perspective, and they say that, listen, in order for us to actually enjoy a substantial
00:16:37.980 degree of freedoms, we also need to care about the common good and we also need to examine
00:16:43.880 human history and to have a historical understanding of the society we speak in, but also human
00:16:51.400 history in order to see exactly how this can be achieved, if it can be achieved in any situation
00:16:58.220 we're speaking about.
00:16:59.140 So what do you think defines classical liberalism apart from previous understandings?
00:17:10.440 Because as you point out, there are several ways to grasp this.
00:17:14.160 Many people will point back to Hobbes or even Machiavelli as the beginning of this possibility.
00:17:21.380 A lot of people like to center on Locke, obviously others Rousseau, though they tend not to be the
00:17:26.860 ones that people favor on the right today.
00:17:30.080 But as you say, this is a larger tradition.
00:17:32.760 It's an umbrella term.
00:17:34.740 So for you, in the tradition you are attempting to defend, what do you think sets this apart
00:17:41.680 from previous regimes or understandings leading up to the classical liberal grasp?
00:17:49.520 Because as you point out, the tradition of understanding the common good reaches all the way back to
00:17:55.620 Aristotle before.
00:17:56.440 So that can't be the primary definer of classical liberalism.
00:18:01.640 Otherwise, it wouldn't be a distinct system or a distinct tradition.
00:18:06.140 Yes.
00:18:07.080 I think that what distinguishes classical liberalism from the previous traditions has to do with
00:18:14.420 a distinct focus on rights.
00:18:17.180 But that focus isn't necessarily...
00:18:19.420 That's what I'm trying to say.
00:18:20.680 Contrary to what a lot of people say online, that focus isn't necessarily a focus that is
00:18:28.480 contrary to the common good.
00:18:30.880 Because whenever we talk about the common good, it's an abstract notion.
00:18:34.640 We still have to talk about our conception of the common good.
00:18:39.380 So, you know, in different circles, there are different conceptions of the common good.
00:18:43.920 So I would say that what sets classical liberalism apart is the idea that...
00:18:50.920 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:18:55.520 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:19:00.360 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:19:03.020 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
00:19:06.300 People enjoying a substantial amount of liberties to engage in, to a large extent, forming their
00:19:30.460 own lives, but also in, you could say, economic activity, which is one of the major boosts in classical liberalism,
00:19:38.660 is that the common good requires voluntary action to a larger extent than it was previously thought.
00:19:49.360 Because you could say that one of the other really ancient ideas in the history of human thought
00:19:57.960 has to do with morality and the conditions of morality.
00:20:02.260 And a lot of people, even back to Aristotle, they say that morality and the ethical character of an action requires choice.
00:20:10.220 So what I think led to the adoption of classical liberalism was, to a very large extent, from an ideological standpoint,
00:20:19.260 a focus on individual rights as being important for an ethical population, let's say, or for the project of promoting the common good.
00:20:33.880 And that was from an ideological standpoint.
00:20:36.840 But I think that some of the main, I would say, forces that led to its more widespread adoption are multivariate.
00:20:48.340 So, for instance, we have the economic effect of the Black Plague.
00:20:52.300 A lot of people in Europe, a lot of people don't mention that the Black Plague in Europe was sort of a death.
00:21:00.640 Death was the final nail in the coffin for a long time for economic centralization in Europe.
00:21:07.440 Economic activity was far more decentralized afterwards because the lack of stock and grain led to the death of a thing about a third of the population of Europe.
00:21:16.460 So that was one thing.
00:21:19.020 The other thing was obviously the Protestant Reformation and the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation that led to lots of clashes between Catholics and Protestants in the northern and western Europe.
00:21:31.340 And I think that they sort of ended in a kind of stalemate because you could say that in some cases, you know, Protestants won, in others Catholics won, but there was a push towards saying that the state should be neutral, not morally neutral, as a lot of people say, but neutral with respect to enforcing the totality of a comprehensive view of the good life.
00:21:56.360 And there are really good debates about where it actually starts.
00:22:02.100 You mentioned, for instance, Machiavelli.
00:22:04.200 I'm not exactly certain that we can say Machiavelli was a classical liberal because...
00:22:09.980 I wouldn't say that either, but I would just say some...
00:22:12.360 Yeah, these are options.
00:22:13.140 Yes, but you could say that also he does give a sort of boost to the Republican tradition that was inherited afterwards by many people, especially in the English Civil War, but also afterwards in France and in the US.
00:22:30.980 I would say that what is particularly something that makes me say that Machiavelli wasn't, in an important respect, a precursor of the tradition was his skepticism of wealth.
00:22:44.680 He seems to me to be a very, you know, old Roman-type Republican where he says, if we have a wealthy population, they're going to be corrupted and they're not going to be willing to fight for the common good.
00:22:57.880 And that's where tyranny is going to come.
00:23:00.200 And that's where he also says something that has stuck with me that after Rome became a republic, there were lots of strikes against tyrants, but not against tyranny.
00:23:09.900 So I think that what classical liberals are trying to do afterwards is that they are trying to fuse sort of republicanism, more constitutional monarchy in a political sphere with a sort of economic expansion.
00:23:26.540 And the idea that we need to have a sort of commercial republic, as Montesquieu would say, or a sort of constitutional monarchy that recognizes a significant amount of economic rights.
00:23:42.040 But obviously there was the issue of mercantilism.
00:23:45.580 There's always the question of how extended are these rights?
00:23:49.360 All right, well, I want to dive deeper into the economic aspects.
00:23:54.380 I want to ask you also about the possibility of an epistemological shift inside the tradition.
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00:25:12.980 All right, so you mentioned several times that economics was tied up significantly.
00:25:18.520 The ability to create certain economic systems, maintain a mercantile republic, a commercial republic, to ease the ability of economic transactions was a critical part of this.
00:25:33.500 Could you go into a little more detail about what specifically about liberalism facilitated this?
00:25:38.780 Well, we need to bear in mind that Adam Smith, who is considered to be, in a sense, the father of economic liberalism, was writing his Wealth of Nations in the 1770s.
00:25:52.140 And he didn't think that he was living in an economically liberal society.
00:25:56.860 He was criticizing what he thought to be the economics of his age, that was the mercantilistic view that, from my understanding, it gives, you could say that it is sort of a form of state capitalism where a lot of people have preferential treatments.
00:26:19.000 You could say the old aristocrats, they had preferential treatments, and they could engage in trade agreements, and they had a sort of boost in economic activity, but also the state was trying to protect them from failing and also was trying to intervene to their favor.
00:26:37.360 And Adam Smith didn't think he was living in a society of his own.
00:26:41.980 Now, if you want to put forward the epistemological bit that you mentioned, Adam Smith gets a lot from what is called the Scottish Enlightenment.
00:26:53.160 And the Scottish Enlightenment is a tradition that was, is a very interesting tradition, and it is precisely the tradition that if someone reads, they'll understand that a lot of the portrayals of classical liberalism today are mainly misconception.
00:27:10.000 Because a lot of people say that classical liberalism pays zero attention to customs, to society, to social bonds, or to, or to culture itself.
00:27:21.680 The Scottish Enlightenment, particularly with Hume, Smith, and even people that they, that they influence who were necessarily Scottish, is all about customs.
00:27:31.260 They have an anthropology that I would say is a bit problematic, maybe we could go there later if we talk about the Enlightenment and some problems with it, at least the way I see it later.
00:27:46.060 But it seems to me that what happens is that the idea of having sort of expansion of economic liberties was something that was very slowly adapted.
00:27:58.280 What we know as classical liberalism in the 18th century was, started mainly as a political tradition, and it continued later on as an economic one.
00:28:09.220 So, again, the one thing I wanted to grasp, though, from that was what specific changes, or if you would like to draw the line between the political and economic there for me, what specific changes moved us into this space of what would be classical liberalism?
00:28:28.320 What is enabling this, what is its utility beyond the traditions that previously existed, that made it specific to, you know, this, this time, or, you know, this development?
00:28:41.620 Right. So, I would say that there are several answers here.
00:28:45.940 One is, I would say, a widespread dissatisfaction with what was perceived as absolutism in politics.
00:28:52.500 That was a major boost to having a class of, you could say, aristocracy or the bourgeois class a bit later on, that said, we don't want to live with absolutism, with a king that's going to do anything he wants to us.
00:29:08.840 We need to push for a sort of constitution or a sort of checks and balances.
00:29:15.840 In the English tradition, I think this was the refocusing on the tradition of the Magna Carta.
00:29:22.500 From dating back to 1215.
00:29:25.100 In other traditions, for instance, you could say that it has more classical liberal, classical republican leanings.
00:29:33.140 So, I would say that one of the major reasons for dissatisfaction for adoption of classical liberalism was dissatisfaction with political absolutism.
00:29:43.040 But also, there was, that was the era where Europe was sort of expanding and engaging in colonialism.
00:29:50.580 And there was rivalry between colonial powers that were mostly European.
00:29:55.280 And there was a sort of competition.
00:29:59.160 And one of the major problems that kings had was financing.
00:30:04.780 For instance, if we read the history of the English Civil War, one of the major problems that Charles the, I think it was the first, yeah, Charles the first had was with financing England.
00:30:18.040 Also, the French Revolution, Louis XVI had tremendous problems for financing the French state.
00:30:28.140 The French Revolution didn't solve that, I think, later.
00:30:31.380 So, I think that these are all factors that push towards viewing the expansion, decentralization in politics, but also in economics, as sort of necessary if people wanted to keep a substantial amount of their privileges.
00:30:51.820 So, a lot of people that I've read have argued that absolutism kind of directly leads you to this because you have a scenario in which many of the nobles are, you know, very concerned about their loss of rights, as you point out, right?
00:31:11.240 And this is why you kind of create the situations in which the state is needing to be more and more centralized, the funding is more and more necessary to compete with the authority of rival monarchs and rival states.
00:31:23.840 And so, you create a situation in which you regularly have to draw on the resources and therefore kind of beg for the certain level of, what's the word I'm looking for here?
00:31:37.280 Not acquiescence, but you need the approval of these people on a regular basis in a way that was not necessarily there previously.
00:31:45.460 And this means that you have to regularly make certain allowances, grant certain permissions, these kind of things.
00:31:51.400 And the way that these rights usually worked is they're granted to the aristocracy first, and then they trickle down, right?
00:31:57.660 So, you know, you get the original English suing for rights. 0.99
00:32:02.280 They're not talking for every Englishman, they're talking for nobles, and then once the nobles have these rights, then the idea that these things might be necessary for others kind of trickle down from there.
00:32:12.020 And so, this constant need for the king to kind of draw that funding, draw that centralization, the more the Leviathan grows, ironically, the more it has to grant certain rights and protections to the general populace in order to kind of draw the centralization money necessary to kind of create that opposing power.
00:32:31.440 Okay, so I think I would largely agree, because it seems to me to be a sort of pattern we see in history.
00:32:46.700 But I don't know if there aren't any exceptions, but even if there are, I think that it is a sufficiently repeated pattern, let's say, that makes us, that gives us good reasons to form probabilistic judgments about how society will evolve.
00:33:07.580 So, I wouldn't say necessarily that I think that this is a necessary cycle, but I think that there are very strong forces, that the reality of politics leads to very strong forces that lead towards that direction.
00:33:24.380 I would say, what you said reminds me of an old classical republican trope, it's the theory of the anasyclosis of forms of governments by Polybius, I think you have heard of it, where he is talking about the cycle where he says that initially, in conditions of anarchy, people gather around a chief, initially that chief governs for the common good.
00:33:54.380 Then at some point, then at some point, then at some point, that chief or their sons become a bit tyrannical when they forget the common good, and then we have aristocracy, then the same happens with aristocracy, we go to oligarchy, oligarchy goes to democracy, and democracy goes to anarchy, and then yet again.
00:34:11.300 I think that this is a good way to look at it, but I think that Polybius was talking about a cycle of unmixed form of governments, and he was saying that, look at why Rome achieved its greatness, it achieved its greatness because it became a mixed form of government, and hence he was arguing for the republic.
00:34:33.600 So, but still, I don't know to what extent we can stretch this to extract statements about necessity with confidence, but I can definitely see that there is value in thinking about it, but I think that there is also value in being open to the empirical method.
00:34:57.820 Because I'm reminded of something that Aristotle says in politics in book five, he is giving the example of how some democracies are really stupid.
00:35:06.480 He said that there were some people in an ancient Greek city-state where they were democrats, and they exiled so many people that these people formed an army, and they came back, they defeated the democrats, and established an oligarchy there.
00:35:21.840 So, that's a different way of going in the cycle, that's taking a step back.
00:35:26.000 But I would say that, generally speaking, I wouldn't say it's a necessary thing, but it seems to be a pattern that is repeating itself to a significant degree.
00:35:39.180 So I wouldn't say just because there are exceptions, I'm not listening to it.
00:35:43.160 Speaking of Aristotle and the politics, one of the things that he says is basically the citizens are those that are armed, right?
00:35:53.720 Like, that's a critical part of specifically republican understanding.
00:35:58.040 This is also how Machiavelli understood the definition of citizenship and virtue.
00:36:03.220 You know, this is one of his main points is that you have to, you need a citizen militia.
00:36:08.140 It's bad to have a standing army, it's bad to have mercenaries, you need to have a virtuous population who's willing to take up arms and fight on behalf of the republic, and that's one of the definitions of their citizenship.
00:36:21.400 The Founding Fathers of the United States also understood this.
00:36:23.880 Most people, you know, to combat the left's attack on the Second Amendment in the United States, a lot of people on the right tend to excise the part about the militia in there.
00:36:35.820 But if you read the Federalist Papers, it's very clear that most of the states were worried about standing armies, and to sell the Constitution, you know, Hamilton basically had to promise them, like, oh, no, you should give the U.S. control of your militias so we don't have to have a standing army.
00:36:51.520 So it was understood that kind of the citizen soldier was the key to kind of this classically liberal Republican identity.
00:36:59.780 But one of the things we look at in the modern state is the idea that every citizen would be an armed member of the state is just mind-blowing to almost everybody, right?
00:37:10.040 Like, this is just not something anyone can really conceive of.
00:37:13.640 And so since the ultimate question, we're not skipping to the end here, but since the ultimate question of this stream is can we return to classical liberalism, has scale defeated the ability to operate a classically liberal republic?
00:37:27.560 Because in the modern world, most people couldn't imagine operating a large competitive state without a standing army with, you know, and not having citizen soldiers, a citizen militia as the basis of your republic.
00:37:42.500 And if that's a key to classical liberalism, then it seems like that's something that you would have to radically alter in order to return to it.
00:37:51.440 Well, I think that this is something that definitely plays a part.
00:37:59.040 So having a standing army doesn't mean that you cannot have an armed citizenry, the way I see it.
00:38:06.560 Also, it doesn't mean that an armed populace cannot guard against, you could say, an overreaching government.
00:38:18.080 Obviously, the more powerful the army becomes, there seems to be a complete imbalance of power there.
00:38:25.620 So, yes, it's definitely, if we're talking about a state that tries to use the army to just kill its population, I think that that's going to be a disaster.
00:38:38.600 But we're not talking about any kind of good state in that case.
00:38:43.880 So I want to understand exactly what it is that we're talking about here, because it seems to me that going back to classical liberalism could imply, for instance, in my mind, not necessarily going back to the caricature of just somehow, let me grill, bro.
00:39:06.820 So I'm going to outsource everything to the government, including my protection to everything, and just let me grill and somehow this is magically going to work.
00:39:15.340 It's not going to work.
00:39:16.520 So if you're asking me whether I think we can go back to something like that, I think whether we can or not is a bit irrelevant.
00:39:26.160 It's undesirable to go there.
00:39:29.480 But something that seems to me to be possible is to sort of roll back the state progressively.
00:39:37.360 So I would say just as I started in the beginning, I said that to me, I don't approach it ideologically, you know, just I don't care about where I'm at without looking at the country I'm talking about.
00:39:50.240 I would say it's more an issue of the degree of civil, political and economic liberties and try to say that right now, the woke belt, which you could say is the Trudeau, Biden, Harris, Starmer, Macron, EU belt, is restricting Westerners' liberties to a significant extent.
00:40:12.680 I would say that going back to classical liberalism would imply trying to offset that tendency and try to go back to greater extents of liberties without that meaning that what I have in mind is the just let me grill and somehow it's magically going to work.
00:40:33.620 I guess the biggest problem that is being addressed in a microcosm in the armed citizenry debate, but is much larger for what you're talking about there, is virtue.
00:40:47.460 You can't conduct any of these good societies, but specifically a classically liberal society, without taking on a certain amount of responsibility.
00:40:57.040 And for most of these formulations of classical liberalism, the armed citizen was the height of virtue in the sense that they would take responsibility not for their own safety, but for the safety of the state as well.
00:41:09.780 And a lot of people from Machiavelli to Bertrand de Juvenal have warned that the standing army also encourages basically military adventurism.
00:41:20.640 It creates a situation in which your military is always looking for something else to conquer, something else to do, because this is where it gets its money, where it gets time.
00:41:29.600 And the United States is in large part motivated by its military industrial complex.
00:41:34.420 Like these are factors that were seen back in the 1500s, but are manifesting themselves today in the way in which we operate these theoretical republics.
00:41:47.020 I don't think the United States is a republic in any sense at this point, but these are issues not just in the military realm, but they exist throughout all of our different aspects, from our education of our children to the care for the poor.
00:42:02.220 A lot of the libertarian solutions, often things heard from liberals, classical liberals, is we just need to roll back the state.
00:42:10.040 But I think this misses a large amount of the point, which is the reason the state was allowed to grow in this manner is so many of these duties were handed over.
00:42:19.320 The virtue of the public was hand in hand, right?
00:42:23.340 The virtue of the public diminished.
00:42:24.860 The state crept in to kind of take over these public spheres that would have restricted the actions of the state.
00:42:31.520 So by, you know, increasing the dependency on the state, they also increase their power.
00:42:35.920 And this also makes it far less likely that the individual would resist against the state because they've handed so much of their, you know, they no longer have the virtue to be self-sufficient.
00:42:44.500 A lot of people would like the total state to disappear, but if it did tomorrow, they wouldn't be able to educate the children.
00:42:49.820 They wouldn't be able to take care of their parents.
00:42:51.180 They wouldn't be able to defend themselves.
00:42:52.740 They wouldn't be able to care for the poor in their community.
00:42:54.560 And so, you know, the just let's just reduce the government, bro, kind of version of liberalism has or libertarianism more often in this case has significant problems because there's no emphasis on ways in which the populace could retake those responsibilities in any meaningful way.
00:43:13.640 I'm in substantial agreement with the overwhelming amount of what you said there.
00:43:21.420 And I would say when I say roll back the state and I meant expand civil political and economic liberties.
00:43:32.040 When I said expand the sphere of liberties, I didn't mean that there is zero, nothing for the state to do.
00:43:38.680 And I completely agree with you when you say about the notion of virtue.
00:43:43.600 And this is a major theme.
00:43:45.880 It isn't just the, that's a commonplace in the tradition.
00:43:51.060 So, for instance, Montesquieu says the very same thing.
00:43:54.060 The principle of republics is virtue.
00:43:56.340 And also the kind of republics get destroyed when the equality they go after is administrative equality, where every, any notion of hierarchy gets, is seen as tyrannical.
00:44:09.160 So what I would say is that we can simultaneously expand the sphere of liberties we have while also trying to use the state in some areas in order to, you could say,
00:44:26.120 cultivate patriotism because it seems to me that what you're talking about leads to how we can sort of generate in a population that has been so much used to outsourcing all its responsibilities for maintaining a healthy society and guarding the republic or any kind of social organization.
00:44:49.260 How are we going to reinvigorate the moral timber of that population?
00:44:55.060 I think that this can be done by, you could say, by trying to see how to instill a healthy dose of patriotism.
00:45:05.420 So I wouldn't necessarily, I don't think that I would drastically disagree with something you said there.
00:45:12.040 So, yeah, I do think that the rollback of the state to a significant extent is necessary, but I wouldn't say it's sufficient.
00:45:23.400 Right.
00:45:24.040 You have to do it simultaneously.
00:45:26.000 You need, if the state is still there holding everyone's hand, they can't cultivate virtue.
00:45:32.120 But if no one is cultivating virtue, then the removal of the state just ends in something terrible.
00:45:38.040 Right.
00:45:38.240 So you need this kind of working in tandem, which, by the way, is what Machiavelli also pointed to.
00:45:46.200 But sorry, go ahead.
00:45:46.700 No, it actually leads to the kind of people we talked about, the apolitical people who think that somehow they're just going to engage in economic activity and the state is not going to somehow develop in such a way that is going to tyrannize them.
00:46:06.360 And this reminds me of, you know, Lenin and he was saying that, you know, some bourgeois, the bourgeois class are going to sell you the rope with which you're going to hang them.
00:46:15.840 I don't think that this applies to the entirety of the bourgeois class, but some of those people tend to think that way.
00:46:24.300 So you mentioned a few times.
00:46:26.240 Oh, sorry.
00:46:26.620 Go ahead.
00:46:26.940 Did you have more to say?
00:46:27.480 I just wanted to remind people of the quote by Pericles that people may think that politics is not going to, that they don't want to deal with politics, but politics will find a way to deal with them.
00:46:40.180 It's not an option.
00:46:42.720 So you mentioned a couple of times the Enlightenment.
00:46:45.900 And before we run out of time, I certainly want to get to that because that's pretty important.
00:46:50.240 I'll just frame an argument for you here and let you kind of respond to it.
00:46:53.880 But Alistair MacIntyre in After Virtue makes the argument that the huge problem with the Enlightenment is its epistemological shift.
00:47:04.280 It moves away from recognizing telos or tradition or revelation as relevant and tries to isolate rationality as the, if not the only, at least the dominant understanding mode of acquiring knowledge and reason.
00:47:24.980 And in doing this, it unmoors the cultures from the traditions that make them particular.
00:47:32.580 It makes it very difficult for you to maintain an idea of cultural particularity once you've made rationality the only acceptable form of knowledge.
00:47:44.500 And we can see this pretty heavily kind of moved into our current day where we have kind of this devastating effect of you can't believe your eyes and ears.
00:47:55.240 You can't believe your lived experience.
00:47:56.820 You can't believe the wisdom and knowledge of your ancestors.
00:48:00.120 The only thing that matters is our institutions full of scientists with degrees, right?
00:48:05.280 Like this is the only thing in ways in which we can really understand truth.
00:48:09.080 And that is terrible for all kinds of reasons.
00:48:12.000 But most importantly, because it fractures the ability of people to have any kind of shared moral understanding.
00:48:18.680 And so what we end up in is this situation where liberalism ultimately creates a overarching state, which is only there to be the final arbiter of competing moral visions, right?
00:48:29.700 There's no, there's no agreed upon tradition.
00:48:32.380 There's no agreed upon, you know, traditional moral inquiry.
00:48:36.760 It's simply, okay, there's a plethora of unresolvable moral clashes.
00:48:43.260 And so therefore the Leviathan state has to come in and kind of, you know, the total state has to administer solutions in every one of these scenarios because no one can come to an agreed upon understanding because we've kind of isolated this is the only way to grasp things.
00:48:59.560 What do you think about that?
00:49:00.800 How would you address that?
00:49:01.680 Right, so this is an excellent topic and thank you for steering the conversation that way.
00:49:06.360 So I'll start with the final bit so we can just end with a political bit and stop caring about liberalism for a bit and go to the enlightenment.
00:49:16.140 Right, so I would say that the kind of where it all goes wrong is with a particular conception of the notion of autonomy.
00:49:25.320 So autonomy is by and large the idea of positive freedom and the idea of being the master of our own life, in a sense, the captain of a ship.
00:49:37.000 So it's self-government, self-realization, self-growth.
00:49:42.400 It has the self clause.
00:49:43.800 Now, from a, you could say, a traditional perspective, you would say, and a classical liberal perspective from the 18th century and the early 19th, you would say a lot of people would say that this contains irreducibly individual elements there in the sense that you have to choose.
00:50:05.320 You have to govern yourself to be self-governed.
00:50:09.420 The state cannot self-govern you.
00:50:11.580 The state cannot self-grow you.
00:50:14.620 The state cannot self-realize you.
00:50:17.160 This is precisely where it all goes wrong because we have a lot of people.
00:50:21.480 Some may call themselves, I would say, I don't know, some call themselves liberal socialists.
00:50:25.960 They try to have, they say, I want autonomy.
00:50:30.680 And they say, okay, the state needs, the liberal state needs to ensure autonomy.
00:50:36.220 And how am I going to understand autonomy?
00:50:38.700 And they have an idea of a society that sometimes they call inclusive, where people aren't responsible for their actions.
00:50:48.520 So it ends up being, well, the state needs to ensure self-governance.
00:50:54.060 But somehow I'm going to make you govern yourself, which is a contradiction in terms, but it's good in terms of rhetoric.
00:51:01.540 And a lot of people fall for it.
00:51:03.560 And I think that the later meal and a lot of the people coming afterwards fall into that tradition.
00:51:09.260 And I'd say that this is where it goes completely wrong.
00:51:11.540 And this kind of leads towards the total state that you are mentioning.
00:51:17.780 And also Isaiah Berlin in 1958 in Two Concepts of Liberty speaks precisely about how the rhetoric of positive freedom can become incredibly totalitarian and justify any kind of totalitarianism, even communism, in the name of positive freedom.
00:51:35.840 Going back to the Enlightenment and Alasdair MacIntyre, I think this is a very good criticism. 0.93
00:51:42.500 And it's important to understand why I think it, why it is a good criticism.
00:51:48.160 I believe in the values of the Enlightenment, but I believe that they are much better framed within a traditionalist framework.
00:51:59.540 So, do I think the Logos is important?
00:52:03.500 Absolutely.
00:52:04.680 But not the Logos as it is understood in the late Enlightenment.
00:52:08.960 The major problem, I think, with the Enlightenment is that it leads to what Hume said, the is or distinction.
00:52:20.400 I wouldn't say all the Enlightenment leads there because there are several strands.
00:52:25.560 Again, there is American, there is Scottish, there is English, there is French, there is German.
00:52:30.780 But there are significant tendencies that are ontological, they're materialistic.
00:52:35.440 And they lead to creating a worldview that is dominant, unfortunately, since I would say the 17th century or a bit later, where morality just can't be part of it.
00:52:48.160 I don't think it makes people into moral monsters, but I think that people who are moral or frequent, who call themselves materialists, are moral despite their materialism.
00:53:01.120 So, I would say that the kind of rationality of the materialistic strand of the Enlightenment is just a complex sensory mechanism.
00:53:11.840 It's just a complex calculation of the senses.
00:53:14.460 It has zero necessary connection with morality, with value, with the transcendent, nothing of a sort.
00:53:22.780 All of that becomes redundant.
00:53:24.860 And I think that that's actually problematizing people because the knee-jerk reaction of someone who says,
00:53:32.360 well, I want to learn about stuff, I want to absorb conventional wisdom, I want to improve my life by thinking, is to go to what is considered conventional wisdom and popular.
00:53:47.400 If the popular people of the time are scientists, in other words, advocates of scientists, they're going to tell people, essentially, you're a meat machine, value is an illusion, it's all an illusion conjured up by the brain that, because it has evolutionary advantages for natural selection.
00:54:07.800 I think that this is a very destructive way to view the world, and it leads to a conception of rationality that is completely immoral, and that's where, for instance, the value of materialistic rationality, when it comes to just having a materialistic state that calculates outcomes, has zero connection to morality.
00:54:33.180 So we have lots of corrupt people who just say, in the name of reason, I'm going to just do what I want, and I'm going to be immoral.
00:54:44.300 So could we say in this instance, then, that classical liberalism is a set of political preferences, a way in which to understand the political tradition inside a specific people, inside a specific tradition,
00:54:59.580 that doesn't really universally apply outside of maybe a few nations or peoples?
00:55:06.640 So, the question of how universalism features in the tradition and the degree to which it does is one of the most important ones.
00:55:15.940 I would say that those who approach it from a completely ideological standpoint and ignore culture, the specific character of a nation, are essentially leading us towards the bad forms of it, the undesirable and the ultimately indefensible ones.
00:55:36.400 I think that there can be no political theorist worth the result that doesn't focus on particularities and their importance.
00:55:46.960 So, we cannot say that this is something that is going to work.
00:55:54.720 But let me just give you an example, because I say this to a lot of people who are of the just open borders type and whatever.
00:56:05.300 I'm telling you, you can't say, for instance, that you can't read Montesquieu.
00:56:10.960 I'm asking them, have you read Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws?
00:56:14.740 They tell me, no, it was boring.
00:56:16.200 I say, why is it boring?
00:56:17.880 I say, I couldn't get past the center.
00:56:21.840 I just don't find it interesting.
00:56:23.960 And why do they don't find it interesting?
00:56:25.980 Because it talks about particularities.
00:56:27.300 It's 700 pages, for instance, where he's talking about how climate, nationhood, the character of people, all of these situational factors affect legislation.
00:56:43.680 And he ends up with saying, essentially, you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach.
00:56:52.840 The people who have it, I would say, are basically globalists who are doing it for completely immoral reasons.
00:56:58.800 And they say, my side is right now dominant.
00:57:02.040 And we are going to say that we're going to expand this philosophy to the entire world.
00:57:06.500 I agree with you 100%, but I think that the position you just staked would make you the woke right for most of the people who are themselves calling themselves classical liberal in today's political discourse.
00:57:19.780 I know that this is a terrible characterization that they're placing, but practically in our political sphere and our discussion today, if you gave that formulation to most of the people calling themselves classical liberal,
00:57:31.360 they would say, oh, that's postmodern, that's fascist, this is the woke right.
00:57:38.760 The very core of key classical liberal thinkers that you're talking about would be rejected by those wearing the label in our modern political discourse.
00:57:48.800 Right.
00:57:49.380 So I have a false response to this that is, I would say, I consider it a bit tragic because I think that on the one hand,
00:57:56.480 people who have done so are unfair, but one of the reasons why they have done so is because they're, for instance, unaware of fascism.
00:58:07.760 And it seems to me that the work right controversy right now has essentially span out of control.
00:58:15.720 And the initial motivation, or at least the stated motivation is to try to find a way to demarcate between, you could say, acceptable and non-acceptable views.
00:58:27.940 I think that personally, I think that there are stuff that Lindsay and Kissin have to say, but I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss people as they are.
00:58:40.920 Personally, I have written something about it.
00:58:44.000 I think that the term can have sense in some minute cases, but essentially we should just basically read history.
00:58:53.720 And it's better if we stop using the term.
00:58:57.940 It's much better if we actually, yeah.
00:59:00.300 Sorry, go ahead.
00:59:00.820 It's much better if we actually use all terms so we can ground our conversation and we can into a historical, into a setting where history is much more prevalent.
00:59:18.740 Yeah, I think that this is a bit unfortunate because I see Lindsay has a beef with Carl. 0.97
00:59:25.720 I want to hear from both of them.
00:59:28.920 I think Lindsay is unfair with Carl, but I would also like to hear stuff that Lindsay has to say.
00:59:35.340 But as I said again, I think that sometimes he and people who follow him dismiss way too many people, more people than they should.
00:59:46.400 So before we go, I want to do like a lightning round just to kind of give us a, what is classically liberal and what isn't?
00:59:53.980 What would it actually allow?
00:59:55.180 What would it actually restrict?
00:59:56.200 So I'm just going to kind of ask you, you know, and I know that there might be more specific answers.
01:00:01.040 So, you know, I, I, I understand that, but I'm trying, I'm trying to just give a, a general understanding for people so they could grasp.
01:00:08.520 Would it be consistent with classical liberalism to ban gamer?
01:00:12.680 To ban gamer?
01:00:14.160 Yes.
01:00:14.640 I, I, I, I, I can't give you an answer because I don't know exactly the specific of the case, of the case.
01:00:25.940 Would you, would it, would it clash with a classical liberal, liberal understanding of the state and its spheres of sovereignty if they did not allow for a union of homosexuals? 0.99
01:00:40.920 Would that be against classical liberalism?
01:00:42.640 Oh, you mean gays, not gamers?
01:00:44.660 Yes, yes, yes.
01:00:46.200 Okay.
01:00:46.560 So I heard gamer.
01:00:48.360 The gamer marriage.
01:00:49.900 The great gamer marriage question.
01:00:51.620 Yes.
01:00:51.800 Well, I would say, I would say that when it comes to, to marriage, I would say that it, it probably wouldn't be consistent, but with a caveat, it would have to be political marriage.
01:01:06.420 Because if, for, you, you can't force a priest, according to the way I see it, you can't force a priest who doesn't want to do it, to do it.
01:01:18.680 Does it, doesn't that kind of clash with most of your understanding of the founding fathers or many of the people you've drawn on as authorities inside the classical liberal tradition?
01:01:28.300 Well, why would it?
01:01:32.120 But you're talking to me about something that wasn't so much an issue.
01:01:36.560 I don't know to what extent it was an issue back then.
01:01:39.160 And I don't know whether the, if we are to talk about the particularities of a case, the world in the 17, say, 80s US and early 1800s is different to the world as it is now in 2024.
01:01:54.200 And you would say, for instance, that, which is a bit weird if you see this, but Trump and a lot of the Republicans right now seem to be, in some cases, a bit less conservative than some Democrats of the 90s.
01:02:09.120 Oh, most surely, yes.
01:02:10.460 Yeah.
01:02:10.800 Yeah.
01:02:11.340 So, yeah, sticking with the lightning round nature, I don't want to debate any of these things.
01:02:15.000 I'm just trying to get the lay of the land on these issues.
01:02:18.080 So what about a restriction of sovereignty?
01:02:21.040 Would it push against a classical liberal tradition to have any limitation on sovereignty beyond just obviously like being a citizen, being a technically legal citizen because you – like, could you say only people who have served in the military, only men, only heads of households?
01:02:44.520 Would any of those restrictions be consistent with classical liberalism or would it drive this out?
01:02:49.820 Question, are you talking about national sovereignty or individual sovereignty?
01:02:54.880 I'm sorry, the franchise itself.
01:02:58.600 Would they – would it be not consistent or consistent with classical liberalism to restrict the franchise for those voting?
01:03:08.780 I mean, if we look at the tradition, the tradition had very limited franchise, especially in the early 19th century.
01:03:16.640 So it had.
01:03:18.540 When it comes to franchise right now, I would say that any kind of person who tries to do politics should focus on the specifics of the case and I would say have a clear-cut plan.
01:03:31.760 Something that I think is something that probably could be seen as important would be to examine whether there should be restrictions in the franchise when it comes to people who haven't grown up in a country.
01:03:50.920 For instance, let's just – let me just say a lot of people are just now migrating into the UK.
01:03:58.040 They – some do it illegally.
01:04:00.960 I don't think that if the state, for instance, Kiyostama tomorrow said, I'm going to give you the vote, I don't think that, A, it would be inconsistent to take that vote, that voting right back if – for the next government.
01:04:16.980 Okay.
01:04:17.380 Okay.
01:04:17.580 Okay.
01:04:18.540 So it's not that I would say restricting franchise in itself is inconsistent.
01:04:23.640 Personally, I'd be hesitant depending on when it comes to the native population.
01:04:29.820 I'd be a bit more steadfast with the case I just mentioned.
01:04:35.160 If a community wanted to – because they shared a tradition and cultural understanding and a preference for a particular religious understanding – wanted to pass a blasphemy law, would that be inconsistent with political – with classical liberalism or could it exist inside of it?
01:04:55.260 Well, okay, so when it comes to the community and the blasphemy law, I think – I don't know to what extent – this, for instance, reminds me of Islam right now.
01:05:07.860 It wants to pass blasphemy laws. 0.98
01:05:09.560 I think that this is – I don't think that this is a good thing because in the present situation, for instance, the push towards saying that we're going to have blasphemy laws for Islam is going to lead to constantly listening to the word Islamophobia.
01:05:31.500 Anything, almost everything is going to count as Islamophobia and it's going to be used completely arbitrarily.
01:05:37.420 So I would say, in principle, having blasphemy laws would be a bit problematic. 0.98
01:05:46.860 It would have bad consequences.
01:05:48.900 All right, my last one here for you.
01:05:51.240 Would it be inconsistent with classical liberalism or could it exist inside of it to acknowledge a particular religious tradition as dominant and, if not declaring it as the national church or something like that,
01:06:03.140 still favorite when it comes to education or the celebration of holidays, these kinds of things in the public square?
01:06:11.540 I'm inclined to say yes.
01:06:13.400 I'm inclined to say yes.
01:06:15.080 I think that what classical liberal would say no to is to use the state to impose that on – that totalistically on people.
01:06:26.720 But I don't think, for instance, that saying that England is an Anglican state would imply that it cannot be somehow classically liberal.
01:06:39.240 And I think it's a good way of trying to ensure, you could say, a sort of patriotism.
01:06:47.740 But there are also some links there because you have people who say, should we give priority to the nation or should we give priority to the church?
01:06:57.520 But generally speaking, if it were a kind of dominant religion while allowing other religions to exist, I'd say it's absolutely consistent.
01:07:11.920 All right.
01:07:12.720 Well, I have a few questions from the audience.
01:07:16.240 It's been great talking to you.
01:07:17.640 I've really enjoyed this.
01:07:18.660 I think this is definitely clarifying for people, and I'm glad that we were able to kind of get to better definitions than we normally get from, like, random spats on Twitter.
01:07:30.220 So I'm definitely glad we were able to do that.
01:07:32.480 Before we move to the questions of the people, do you want to send people anywhere, recommend, you know, Lotus Eaters or your Twitter or anything like that?
01:07:40.380 Yeah, they should definitely watch Lotus Eaters, the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
01:07:45.140 You can subscribe on the internet on our Lotus Eaters channel, and you can also check our lotuseaters.com.
01:07:54.640 We are a really good team, and I'm sure people are going to like our content.
01:08:02.320 We speak about politics across the West and basically across the world, but we focus mostly on the UK, US, and the EU.
01:08:12.120 We talk about a lot of the problems of the current day.
01:08:16.660 We talk about mass migration.
01:08:18.200 We're talking about, you know, Keir Starmer and wokeness, and I'm sure people are going to like it.
01:08:26.160 Yeah, definitely a lot of – sorry, go ahead.
01:08:29.120 They could definitely check Carl Benjamin's Twitter.
01:08:33.840 You can find him, Carl Benjamin.
01:08:35.380 We have Harry Robinson, Connor Tomlinson.
01:08:40.860 We have Bo Dade, Josh Firm, Dan Tubb, and myself.
01:08:46.340 Yeah, lots of good, sharp people over there.
01:08:48.740 My goal is to eventually collect all of the Lotus Eaters. 0.99
01:08:51.440 I'm about halfway through, you know, having you guys all on, so we'll just continue the rotation here.
01:08:56.520 All right, so let's go to our questions real quick.
01:08:59.380 Darth Amalgamation says, what is your definition of the common good?
01:09:04.340 Just a small question, an easy one, no problem, right?
01:09:06.580 A very easy one, yes, for a rabid response.
01:09:10.420 Right, so when it comes to the common good, it's not that I have a definition.
01:09:14.840 I have a conception.
01:09:16.120 So I'll give flesh and blood to the – or structure to what I think is the common good.
01:09:22.280 I think that the common good is essentially tied to the common good of a people in politics.
01:09:29.320 Some universalists are talking about the common good of humanity.
01:09:32.360 I'll talk about the common good of the people because this is how politics has always been done.
01:09:37.220 And I have zero – I have zero evidence that it won't be done like that in the future.
01:09:43.180 So when we're talking about a people, I think the common good is to be understood both in terms of outcomes, but secondarily in terms of outcomes.
01:09:56.600 But I would say most of it has to do with character and personal flourishing.
01:10:01.180 So I would say that the individual common good has to do with the flourishing of the individual character in terms of, you know, Aristotelian terms.
01:10:10.280 And when it comes to the common good, I would say that it is that which you could say is the maximum possible, the maximally virtuous organization of these people.
01:10:24.500 And I consider – and one of the reasons why I think it is important from an ethical perspective to advocate for a broadly liberal view is because I think that, as Aristotle says, and as most theorists afterwards say, Augustine, for instance, St. Augustine of HIPAA, virtue requires choice.
01:10:48.280 So I would say that the common good is to be understood in terms of a maximally virtuous form of a population and how they flourish in a particular setting.
01:11:00.260 Now, I know that this is a bit abstract, but this is a very fast question.
01:11:04.900 Well, and it has to be because I appreciate your focus on particularity there.
01:11:08.980 You cannot understand the common good unless you have lived among the people until you have understood what it is to be a part of that community.
01:11:16.200 Once you are – this is why subsidiary is so critical.
01:11:19.360 This is why particularity is so critical.
01:11:21.620 What is the common good for someone living in Florida in the United States is not even the same as the common good for someone living in Arizona in the United States, much less in the U.K. or in, you know, China or these things.
01:11:34.940 These are very embodied notions.
01:11:37.840 And so, you know, the ordered liberty is the what you're looking for there is the liberty, but it is ordered towards the good, like you said, the maximum virtue inside those systems.
01:11:49.200 But you can only – you can't give a universal definition because it is very particular to the way of life of those peoples.
01:11:55.620 Richard – Johan Richardson says, classical liberalism is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, a civilized nation, a system of English laws, the voice of justice and consanguity – I'm not sure.
01:12:10.860 I'm probably reading that wrong – and against bringing on the merciless, savage frontier inhabitants.
01:12:17.620 Richard – It requires a high-trust society.
01:12:22.380 Richard – I'm sorry?
01:12:23.660 Richard – It requires a high-trust society.
01:12:25.980 Richard – Yes.
01:12:26.860 Richard – Very true.
01:12:28.320 Richard – And also, basically, any kind of society requires to not collapse.
01:12:33.100 So, we are talking about – yeah.
01:12:36.680 I think that's uncontroversial.
01:12:39.160 Richard – George W. Hayduke says, honest definition of woke right equals anything that challenges liberalism's claim to the null hypothesis.
01:12:45.660 Richard – Epithet gets pinned on the pre- and post-modern.
01:12:49.520 Richard – I do think that is fair in general, but as Stelios has already said, this is mostly a useless term, you know, even if there are corners in which it gets applied properly, ultimately.
01:13:04.200 I think it's a polemical term.
01:13:06.160 I don't think it's one that is particularly helpful in categorizing and understanding – helping us reach a level of understanding.
01:13:12.980 Richard – And then, Fountainhead Forum says, Javier Mele has – was a lead singer in the band.
01:13:24.880 Instead of classical liberalism, let's call it rock star liberalism, my show has 36 shows about Mele.
01:13:30.800 I know many people are a big fan of what he's doing over there.
01:13:34.240 I was not familiar with his rock star past, but, you know, that is excellent.
01:13:38.600 You know, maybe he's exploring metal.
01:13:40.460 I don't know.
01:13:40.840 If so, then I'm certainly a fan.
01:13:42.660 I have to check out his musical work.
01:13:45.020 Sorry, I have a soft spot for him because the video with the chainsaw where he's on top of the car and he's using the – it's just my favorite video in politics.
01:13:54.820 Yeah, no, no, he's easy to love, though it was funny that he had a showdown with Hoppe out of nowhere.
01:14:00.600 I like that.
01:14:01.060 He started calling out – it's like, what is this?
01:14:03.600 Yeah, the libertarians stop fighting challenge.
01:14:06.480 Impossible, to be sure.
01:14:09.060 Let's see here.
01:14:09.840 And last one here.
01:14:10.740 Life of Brian says, modern classical liberalism sees the state as a neutral arbiter between individualized metaphysics.
01:14:17.660 This being impossible makes Lindsay crazy.
01:14:19.680 Yeah, again, I would largely agree with that understanding there, but I don't know if you have any reaction.
01:14:26.180 Well, when it comes to –
01:14:27.420 I just brought it up so you can see it again.
01:14:30.740 Yeah, I think when it comes to metaphysics, it's a bit more esoteric.
01:14:35.420 I can definitely see a sort of political organization and society working with people having different metaphysics.
01:14:44.400 But, yeah, when it comes to the state – when I see their modern classical liberalism, I don't know exactly what to understand.
01:14:54.640 Fair enough, yeah.
01:14:56.040 Because a lot of what is called modern liberalism, if what that is is the male Rawls type, I'm not a fan.
01:15:06.060 I can't speak for that.
01:15:07.760 Yeah, I was going to ask you about Rawls, and I forgot to get to that, so I'm glad you managed to get that in there.
01:15:11.700 Yeah, yeah.
01:15:14.320 Do you want me to give you a very fast response?
01:15:16.400 Yeah, yeah, sure.
01:15:17.120 Go ahead.
01:15:17.980 Well, I think Rawls is – the main problem with Rawls is Rawlsians. 1.00
01:15:22.480 Rawls is so abstract.
01:15:23.920 Yeah.
01:15:24.840 Rawls is so abstract that he sort of doesn't give particular directions.
01:15:34.680 Anyone could come and say, well, in the original condition, these are the principles that I would pick.
01:15:41.700 And this is the kind of formal structure I would pick.
01:15:47.160 So I don't – I'm not particularly a fan of Rawls.
01:15:50.700 But also there are some shady aspects of Rawls because some people are saying that the two forms of government he thought were proper were sort of like something like property-owning democracy, which he didn't particularly flesh out.
01:16:05.620 And every person I hear about it just says something to the effect that business should turn to collectives, which I don't particularly think is a good idea.
01:16:17.280 And then he says something like a liberal socialism, but not the welfare state.
01:16:22.580 Rawls was criticizing the welfare state for not being welfarist enough.
01:16:27.540 So he's very abstract.
01:16:31.960 And where he isn't that abstract, I think, is wrong.
01:16:34.760 So that's my –
01:16:35.700 It's never a great quality of a philosopher, but yeah.
01:16:39.100 Yes.
01:16:39.680 Fair enough.
01:16:40.720 All right, guys.
01:16:41.380 We're going to go ahead and wrap this up.
01:16:42.720 But I want to say again how much I enjoy talking with Stelios.
01:16:45.580 Make sure that you are checking out him, his Twitter, and the rest of the Lotus Eaters when they're doing their great work.
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01:17:24.440 Thank you, everybody, for watching.
01:17:25.740 And as always, I will talk to you next time.