The Auron MacIntyre Show - Classical Liberalism’s Excremental Excuses ｜ 4⧸18⧸24

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00:00:30.000 According to recent reports, a gay Spanish politician who belongs to the country's left-wing governing party 0.99

00:00:36.080 has been forced to resign after pictures surface of the municipal councillor eating his own excrement. 0.99

00:00:42.440 While incredibly disgusting, the existence of yet another degenerate politician would be unremarkable 0.96

00:00:49.240 if not for the fact that he was defended by an unlikely ally, Peter Boghossian.

00:00:53.820 Boghossian has made a name for himself in the conservative sphere as a non-woke classical liberal

00:00:59.860 willing to stand against the corruption of academia.

00:01:03.100 The former professor of philosophy felt a bizarre compulsion to take to Twitter

00:01:06.860 and ward off those that would question the Spanish politician's behavior,

00:01:11.220 urging his followers to, quote,

00:01:12.640 mind your own business and leave the guy alone.

00:01:16.300 When Boghossian inevitably received pushback for his strange reaction, 0.96

00:01:20.580 he attacked his critics for their, quote,

00:01:22.920 pervasive normative rigidity that comes from Christian fear of judgment, end quote.

00:01:28.680 Many were confused at this absurd reaction from a man who had portrayed himself as a champion

00:01:34.900 of returning rational standards to the university system.

00:01:38.980 But Boghossian's outburst reveals an important contradiction that lies at the heart of liberalism 0.80

00:01:44.140 and makes it incompatible with those who seek to return order and civilization to the West.

00:01:50.240 Like many non-woke liberals of our era, Boghossian began his political journey 1.00

00:01:55.520 as a militant new atheist progressive who spent much of his academic career attacking religion.

00:02:01.860 The philosopher joined forces with prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer,

00:02:07.040 hosting debates with Christian apologists to drive out the last vestiges of religious dogma

00:02:12.000 from the Enlightened West.

00:02:14.200 As new atheism waned in popularity, many public intellectuals involved with the movement

00:02:18.960 discovered a new target for their acerbic deconstruction, wokeness.

00:02:23.440 The social justice warriors who dominated college campuses in the late 2000s had grown up and

00:02:30.140 taken positions as professors or administrators in the university system.

00:02:35.300 Woke dogma was threatening the liberal order in academia, and the new atheists framed the 0.95

00:02:40.400 successor ideology as the next in a long line of religions that needed to be defeated. 0.99

00:02:46.660 Boghossian's most famous salvo against wokeness in academia came in 2017 when he teamed up

00:02:53.240 with fellow new atheists James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose to submit a series of fake scholarly

00:02:58.880 papers to peer-reviewed journals.

00:03:02.100 The papers were filled with a jumble of critical theory jargon designed to draw the adoration

00:03:07.500 of woke academics despite saying nothing of substance.

00:03:11.320 Some of the papers drew praise from reviewers, and a few even got published before the hoax was

00:03:16.400 uncovered.

00:03:18.080 Peer review is the linchpin of legitimacy for modern academic expertise, and discrediting

00:03:23.360 the process threatened to deal a huge blow to the foundations underlying the power of our

00:03:28.280 managerial elite.

00:03:30.000 This revealing glimpse into the absurd system that has come to dominate many scholarly fields

00:03:34.840 won Boghossian a fair amount of credit among conservatives and classical liberals who

00:03:39.300 weren't interested in joining the woke revolution.

00:03:41.460 As I've spoken about in previous episodes, like my neocon cycle, one I'll put the card,

00:03:48.100 it should be popping up right now in the video, conservatives have a nasty habit of immediately

00:03:52.780 accepting and even elevating to leadership liberals who hate them simply because they agree on a few

00:03:58.820 issues.

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00:04:30.680 Many disgruntled liberal atheists have suddenly found themselves on the side of the very conservatives

00:04:35.840 that they loathed for decades in the fight against wokeness, but that doesn't mean that

00:04:39.880 they've had a change of heart.

00:04:41.960 I didn't leave the left, the left left me is the refrain most often uttered by these

00:04:47.020 liberal cast-offs, and they rarely take any responsibility for what their movement became.

00:04:52.540 Despite his temporary embarrassment with the pace at which progressivism accelerated,

00:04:57.880 Boghossian is still an unrepentant revolutionary who clings to every belief that inevitably led 1.00

00:05:03.940 to the very woke order he now claims to oppose.

00:05:08.060 As expectations for political leadership go, not eating excrement is a pretty low bar.

00:05:13.620 It would be nice if we could demand more from those who rule over us, but asking them not 0.97

00:05:18.160 to be so degenerate that they literally consume their own feces seems reasonable.

00:05:24.220 But this very mild request appears to be a bridge too far for Boghossian, who sees any standard 1.00

00:05:30.540 for sexual behavior as an absurd relic from our religious past.

00:05:34.480 Like most liberal atheists, Boghossian refuses to connect his purposeful deconstruction of 0.98

00:05:40.500 spiritual and moral sentiments with the dysfunctional world in which he finds himself.

00:05:45.880 The philosopher's radical commitment to individual freedom dissolved every barrier to wokeness,

00:05:51.780 but he simply refuses to own the consequences of his beliefs.

00:05:55.580 When asked to place even the slightest restrictions on personal freedom, Boghossian reflexively 1.00

00:06:01.300 strikes out at Christianity, which he still perceives as his true enemy.

00:06:06.460 And to be very clear, Boghossian is not ignorant of the fatal flaws residing in classical liberalism,

00:06:13.200 and to his credit, he's willing to discuss them at length.

00:06:16.520 I personally had a cordial discussion with the philosopher during which I laid out the reasons

00:06:22.560 why liberalism couldn't defend itself from hostile ideologies, and why a more robust

00:06:28.380 tradition was required to ground Western society.

00:06:32.200 I went in expecting a knock-down, drag-out fight, but to my surprise, Boghossian spent most 1.00

00:06:38.020 of the hour-long discussion conceding every one of my points.

00:06:42.060 But despite the posture of general retreat, Boghossian still insisted that liberalism remain

00:06:47.340 the only way forward.

00:06:48.700 Recent events have clearly shaken his faith, but ultimately the academic can't imagine a

00:06:54.260 world where liberalism does not reign supreme.

00:06:58.140 Although they often adopt the moniker of classical liberal, the leftists ejected from progressivism

00:07:04.680 share very little with the historical movement.

00:07:08.260 The father of classical liberalism, John Locke, famously wrote that atheism was immoral and that

00:07:14.480 its adherents could not be trusted, especially with political power.

00:07:19.660 In the face of overwhelming evidence that the lack of religious and moral conviction in

00:07:24.760 public life has destroyed Western civilization, liberal atheists like Boghossian simply can't 1.00

00:07:30.980 admit the failure of their ideology.

00:07:34.120 In theory, liberalism holds that rational discourse can resolve all issues in the public square.

00:07:41.080 In practice, the advocates of liberalism have proven impervious to that discourse.

00:07:46.980 The faith of the spurned liberal is, in fact, as dogmatic as the religious doctrines they sought

00:07:53.060 to undermine.

00:07:54.400 The unrepentant liberal can't take ownership over the consequences of his ideology and will

00:08:01.020 always return to his core hatred of the religious traditions it displaced.

00:08:06.660 The West must embrace a tradition that can make demands of its citizens and uphold standards

00:08:14.100 for its leaders.

00:08:15.400 If liberals can't even summon the moral fortitude to demand that their leaders refrain from literally 0.98

00:08:22.520 eating their own crap, then maybe they simply have no place in a conservative coalition. 0.97

00:08:29.980 If you'd like to follow me on Twitter or Gab or Substack or Instagram, if you'd like to watch 0.99

00:08:59.080 these videos on Rumble or Odyssey, the links to do all of that are down below in the description.

00:09:05.080 And if you'd like to pre-order my new book coming out, The Total State, you can do that on Amazon.

00:09:11.320 And of course, you can watch all of my videos and read all of my columns over at The Blaze.

00:09:16.220 Thanks for watching, guys.

00:09:17.180 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - April 18, 2024

Classical Liberalism’s Excremental Excuses ｜ 4⧸18⧸24

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