Current review queue
Pearce: British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Deneen: The American Conservative
Chao-Reiss: Computing Reviews
In ancapistan, if you have no property, you have no rights
Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
I like the title, "Why Liberalism Failed".
ReplyDeleteIs there a prior book named "Did Liberalism Fail" that was written before?
The evidence of the failure is the stunning successes of fascism and socialism wherever they have been tried. North Korea for example, which has a sterling record on reducing wasteful consumption of all kinds: energy, minerals, food.
DeleteSo, Ken, you think if ideology A and B failed, that means ideology C must have succeeded?
DeleteBy the way, Deneen explicitly addresses fascism and communism, and how they failed first and more spectacularly than liberalism is (right this moment) failing.
They are all bound to fail, since all ideologies are dream worlds, and we can't live in a dream world.
The book has a very nice description.
Delete"As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history."
Thomas Fleming of Chronicles once neatly said that libertarians have not noticed that as free market and pro-business ideas have become more and more accepted, the state has grown larger and larger. In the name of creating openness for business, we have created the largest and most expansive state ever seen.
And it has a positive review from... Cornel West!? I am looking forward to the read.
Delete'Failure' is not the word that springs to my mind for hugely extending life spans, vastly increasing wealth, and fostering unprecedented peace. YMMV.
DeleteI don't think we generally judge success or failure against ideals. In 1920, which treatment was successful against syphilis, mercury, prayer, or salvarsan? My choice is salvarsan. Did it cure without side effects? no. Did it make you younger? No. So measured against an ideal maybe it was a failure.
The "unprecedented peace" has been thoroughly debunked Ken.
DeleteAnd mightn't we have said, circa late 1941, the 'failure' is not the word that springs to mind for a system that has united the German people, conquered half of Europe, etc. etc.
Liberalism is not a failure "judged against an ideal": it is a failure on its very own terms. It has produced a first world of wealthy, long-lived, *miserable* people!
And, by the way, it's not like Deneen or I are unaware that people are wealthy and living longer!
DeleteLiberalism: like a meth addict on the verge of burning out who points to how active he has been for the past year and just how slim he is getting to prove that nothing is wrong!
Is present progressive a past tense now?
DeleteI like how you kept a fourth book's cover hidden. Mysterious!
ReplyDelete