That's Not Classical Liberalism ｜ 5⧸29⧸25
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.33763
Summary
As woke mobs were throwing guest speakers off college campuses, and renowned scientists were getting fired over minor transgressions against the gender jihad, a section of moderate progressives realized that their days at the top of the ruling class were numbered. Figures like Sam Harris, Barry Weiss, and Michael Shermer were very far from conservative. In fact, they would have qualified as progressives in the era of George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But they were no longer able to keep pace with the more radical leftists.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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As woke mobs started throwing guest speakers off college campuses
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and renowned scientists started to get fired over minor transgressions against the gender jihad,
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a section of moderate progressives realized that their days at the top of the ruling class were numbered.
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Figures like Sam Harris, Barry Weiss, and Michael Shermer were very far from conservative.
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In fact, they would have qualified as progressives in the era of George Bush or Barack Obama.
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But they were no longer able to keep pace with the more radical leftists.
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These disillusioned progressives needed a new title for themselves,
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but obviously they weren't going to sully their good name by slumming it with the backward-hit conservatives.
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Weiss attempted to brand them as the intellectual dark web,
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but most of them settled on the moniker of classical liberal to describe their current political orientation.
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If you need to rebrand your Obama-era progressive liberalism into something that is distinct from conservatism
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but won't immediately scare Republicans, classical liberalism is a very good choice.
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Not only does it sound rather moderate compared to wokeness,
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but it also sounds like the ideology of the American founding fathers.
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If you want to endear yourself to conservatives while shoring yourself up against attacks from your right,
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identifying with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams is a pretty good strategy.
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It's unclear how much this strategy played into the selection of the term classical liberal,
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but what is clear is how much its adoption warped the understanding of what classical liberals actually believe.
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While some of the members of the intellectual dark web did take genuine steps to the right,
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almost all of them started with and maintained progressive sentiments.
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Most of the members were atheists, and some of them had even been part of the new atheist movement,
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writing books which attacked Christianity while debating apologists for sport.
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Several members were gay, and most were fervent supporters of gay marriage.
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They had spent most of their lives attacking traditional values and were happy to redefine marriage,
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but drew the line at redefining gender for some reason.
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These were not people who opposed the revolution.
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They had, in fact, led the revolution until the mob came for what they held sacred, like feminism or science.
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When the IDW crowd adopted the classical liberal label,
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they did so to rally around one issue, free speech.
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Many of these disgruntled progressives had been canceled in one way or another
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for not adopting the newest standards around pronouns or racial oppression,
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and they wanted to return to the last passage of leftism,
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and these new radical progressives didn't get to dictate the terms of the discussion.
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This was the shelling point for coordination between conservatives and anti-woke progressives,
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but classical liberalism was far more than some loose assertion around the idea of free speech.
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Some will claim that Niccoli Machiavelli or Thomas Hobbes was the father of liberalism,
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but in the American tradition, the original classical liberal was John Locke.
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Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson paraphrasing Locke,
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right down to life, liberty, and property being slightly altered to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
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the philosopher laid out the classical liberal position on religious toleration between Christian denominations.
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He even left open the possibility of tolerating Catholics if they could renounce their political allegiance to the Pope.
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There was, however, one group that Locke didn't think was worthy of toleration.
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Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a god.
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Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.
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The taking away of a god, though but even in thought, dissolves all.
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Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion
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can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of toleration.
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As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error,
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if they do not tend to establish domination over others or civil impunity to the church in which they are taught,
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there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.
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For John Locke, the founder of classical liberalism,
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atheism was a universal acid that destroyed any nation which embraced it.
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If an atheist could keep his unbelief to himself and not attack the church
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or undermine the faith of others, they could be tolerated.
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But obviously, they still could not be trusted to hold any position of authority.
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Atheism was a civilizational cancer to be contained,
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and the kind of new atheism which attacked the church and the personal faith of believers
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The fact that many of the people calling themselves classical liberals
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were involved in exactly that kind of secular jihad against the Christian faith
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shows how silly, or possibly malicious, the adoption of that title was.
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At times, it can be a mistake to present the beliefs of the founders as one unified whole.
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many of which were reflected in the Federalist Papers.
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One thing that we can be sure of is that the values of free speech
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and free exercise of religion had a very different connotation
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Even after writing the Constitution and Bill of Rights,
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several U.S. states maintained official state churches.
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Circuit courts upheld Christian blasphemy laws regularly until the 1940s,
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and some state supreme courts were even defending them in the 1970s.
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Blue laws banning certain types of commerce to encourage observation of the Sabbath
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were incredibly common in the United States until just a few decades ago.
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John Adams famously stated that the Constitution was only fit to govern a moral and religious people,
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It's very clear that both the leaders and citizens of early America
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expected to live an explicitly Christian nation,
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and expected the free exercise of religion to take place inside that framework.
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The common claim made by non-woke leftists that classical liberalism
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demands an entirely secular or neutral government is absurd on its face.
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The Constitution wasn't meant to govern new atheists,
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The argument that's generally made after these historical and ideological inconsistencies are pointed out
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is that America has advanced morally since the time of the founders.
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Toleration for non-Christian religions has increased.
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And marriage has been redefined to include homosexuals.
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All of these changes have brought America closer to realizing its true values of freedom and equality.
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And if you believe that all these redefinitions of liberal values have constituted social progress,
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There's already a term that describes that ideology.
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Classical liberalism is a real historical phenomenon
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that was an important part of the founding of this great nation.
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And frankly, I'm tired of watching it be abused by people who in no way believe in it.
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If John Locke or John Adams could see the progressive leftist atheists
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The progressive, secular liberalism of the 1990s and 2000s
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is not classical liberalism, nor is it the ally of conservatism.
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The non-woke left were a useful co-belligerence against the woke radicals,
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and they certainly shouldn't be handed positions of leadership
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Some of these individuals, like Carl Benjamin or Jordan Peterson,
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have taken significant steps towards the right,
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But we should be wary of those that continue to operate
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under a moniker whose values they don't actually hold.
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Disgruntled progressives are not classically liberal or conservative,
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and they shouldn't get to dictate what the right wing is
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