Matthew Crawford, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, has written another brilliant essay for UnHerd, this one about the internal contradictions in the liberal project that were thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. Crawford, more than any other intellectual, has really got to grips with why our highly educated, apparently rational, left-of-centre elites are so vulnerable to being captured by quasi-religious, secular cults, whether it’s the woke mind virus, climate alarmism or Covidian ‘science’. Here is the opening section:
Throughout history, there have been crises that could be resolved only by suspending the normal rule of law and constitutional principles. A “state of exception” is declared until the emergency passes – it could be a foreign invasion, an earthquake or a plague. During this period, the legislative function is typically relocated from a parliamentary body to the executive, suspending the basic charter of government, and in particular the separation of powers.
The Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben points out that, in fact, the “state of exception” has almost become the rule rather than the exception in the Western liberal democracies over the last century. The language of war is invoked to pursue ordinary domestic politics. Over the past 60 years in the United States, we have had the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on Covid, the war on disinformation, and the war on domestic extremism.
A variation on this theme is the utility of moral panics – spiritual warfare – for pursuing top-down projects of social transformation, typically by administrative fiat. The principle of equality under the law, which would seem to be indispensable to a liberal society, must make way for a system of privileges for protected classes, corresponding to a moral typology of citizens along the axis of victim and oppressor. Victim dramas serve as a permanent moral emergency, justifying an ever-deeper penetration of society by bureaucratic authority in both the public and private sectors.
Once this pattern of government by emergency snaps into focus, one experiences a Gestalt shift. The self-image of the liberal West – as based on the rule of law and representative government – is in need of revision. Our society’s response to Covid brought this anachronism to mass awareness.
The pandemic brought liberalism’s deeper contradictions into plain view. On the one hand, it accelerated what had previously been a slow-motion desertion of liberal principles of government. On the other hand, Covid culture has brought to the surface the usually subterranean core of the liberal project, which is not merely political but anthropological: to remake man. That project can come to fruition, it seems, only with a highly illiberal form of government, paradoxically enough. If we can understand this, it might explain why our embrace of illiberal politics has met with so little resistance. It seems the anthropological project is a more powerful commitment for us than allegiance to the forms and procedures of liberal government.
Worth reading in full.
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It also requires a certain human type which, fittingly enough, looks like a caricature of the medieval personality: a credulous, fearful person. This brings us to the Hobbesian anthropological program.
No. This describes the ‘Enlightenment’ largely irrational and un-enlightened. ‘Scientism’ comes from the ‘Age of Reason’ itself entirely unreasonable. Better Burke than Locke. Better constitutional division of powers than the Atheist Chuch of Reason of 1789 in Paris.
Everyone misses the obvious. No faith, no real education, no understanding of the past, no critical thinking. Mass formation, mass beliefs. This is how you get Rona fascism. From Thomas Paine, Comte, Robespierre, Darwin, Freud, to Anthon Fauci. A straight bloody line.
Very hard to see how the writer can justify claiming lockdown is a specifically liberal response, when the most severe lockdown happened in an aggressively non liberal country – China.
Whereas a country usually regarded as hyper liberal – Sweden – is taken as a hero for its hands off approach.
In fact there isn’t much of a correlation between nature of government and covid response. (Except perhaps for a slight trend for populist leaders with autocratic tendencies to resist lockdown – eg Bolsinaro, Erdogan, Trump and Modi.)
The article is all theory with insufficient connection to what actually happened.
Anything written by Matthew Crawford is a mandatory read.
Probably one of the most boring threads ever.
“Why Did Self-Described ‘Liberals’ Become Cheer Leaders for the Rise of Covid Totalitarianism?”
Because they’re herd thinkers who enjoy Telling Other People What To Do.
the man in the pic above looks like he’s saying “cmon, lets av it”
They aren’t liberals they are progressive globalists, they are at the other end of the political spectrum to an actual genuine liberal.
A liberal says live and let live, these progressive globalists say do as I say not as I do, juct look at the fat drunk Boris and his parties.
I don’t recognize the appellation ‘liberal’. I vehemently defy their argot and specious argument, inveterate liars they cannot help themselves. In all of their spiel the truth is creased up in the gutter and as the left do – spat at and urinated on.
I do understand very well what the ambitions are of the Alinskyites, cultural Marxists, critical theorists, the victimhood pedlars of this poisonous dogma. Laying bogus claim to the moral high ground as they shoot down from the salient on all those who and rightly do seek to pick argument in their flimsy, unable to withstand the merest critique of their baleful credo. Now reference here, Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” – its basic but it works, repetition, changing the goalposts and yakking non sequiturs. For sure, not many people can withstand the onslaught – in avalanche of shouty lies, deforming the argument and insinuating pus filled half truths of the left mantras. Oh sure they know how to argue and beat down. If they’re not succeeding in shutting down the argument. Out comes the old shiv under the ribs – perennials, waycist, denier, white boy, alt right – whatever. The <s>liberals</s> left are decent?
Their greatest lie, ‘we must have a debate’, unless the left can frame the… Read more »
Liberal is the wrong label for them.
The real liberals have more in common with conservatives and are not cheerleaders for the new world order.
Those referred to in the article are not liberals. They’re progressives, and have always been inclined towards authoritarianism.
“We want total freedom to be who we want to be, and we will beat you into submission if you don’t agree with us.”
Or: inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
Progressive is also a bad term, as progress generally has positive connotations. In reality they are deeply regressive, as in wishing to create a feudal-like state where higher authorities (formerly the Church, now state-church) dictate to its child-like loyal subjects how they may or may not behave.
In the photo at the top of the article, I reckon the only person who thinks for himself is the guy with his fist raised.
Attempt at answering the question: That’s because these US liberals are anything but liberal. They’re just misgendered as liberal because they think it’s an inalienable human right to have sex with everyone and anything one could conceivably have sex with. This makes them more liberal in this respect than traditional Christians who believe that sex is principally amoral and verboten, except between a single man and the single woman he’s married to with the intent of begetting children. Or claim to believe that.
In all other matters, the principal individual virtue of so-called US liberals is cowardice. Hence, they’re obviously keen to protected by a powerful state from everything which could conceivable harm them in the slightest. Eg, ordinary bad weather or people expressing uncommon opinions.
The true tragedy is that there seems to be no demand for classical liberalism any more – only two opposing camps of progressive authoritarians and conservative authoritarians, the fight between which occurs on the grounds which you described (i.e. societal norms) while they both agree that authoritarianism and suppression of opposing views is the way to go forward.
I don’t think there is a simple explanation for this. My own theory is twofold, firstly that what we know as political liberalism somehow became co-opted by the globalists. The second observation is borne out from what I was seeing in the days of New Labour with the insidious rise of political correctness, which can best be described as a function creep in so far as where our public institutions were concerned. I witnessed then that liberals didn’t like losing the argument, a view that was further reinforced by the intolerance shown towards leave voters in the EU Referendum of 2016. The liberal classes like to be seen as occupying the moral high ground, which I believe would account for most of the virtue signalling pantomime we have witnessed over the past two years.
It is all about ‘The Greater Good’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8vd_YNbTw
They may self describe as liberals, in business I think I would describe them as smarmy bas***ds.
Short version: Another ‘murican blissfully unaware of anything outside of the USA who believes that states are an evil conspiracy to be overcome writes the usual load of tosh.
Hobbes background was the Thirty Years War in central Europe, were civil society pretty much broke down and was replaced with a brutal anarchy of marauding bands of armed men nominally serving this or that local noble. To avoid such a state, he advocates in favour of an absolutist monarchy were some souvereign, by virtue of being the most powerful noble, violently suppresses all other would-be military actors and relatively poweless citizens who can’t raise armies of their own can thus live their lives in peace and security, instead of being tortured to death to make them hand over their valuables. That was about a real situation and not some idle, theoretical speculation about the nature of man.
Someone who is capable of writing Hobbes was a liberal without realizing how nonsensical this is (presumably along the following rationale: I’m ignorant about European history. Hobbes advocated for a strong state for some reason I don’t understant and don’t want to know. I have states [because I hate paying taxes]. I hate… Read more »
Well the opening passage is drivel, so no need to read the rest.
That project can come to fruition, it seems, only with a highly illiberal form of government, paradoxically enough.
Much like a comment I remember from Monty Python. As I recall, it was the Pope saying:
“If you are in charge of a religion based on tolerance and love, you need to be a vicious authoritarian bastard to get anything done…”
Anyone who has worked with these liberals at a university or similar will know that these people are only nice when everything is going their way.
Once we understand that ‘liberal’ (in its current sense) is just a cover-word for Communist, everything is explained. Communism found a ready market among intellectuals – Cambridge Five of the Cold War era – and ‘On the other hand, Covid culture has brought to the surface the usually subterranean core of the liberal project, which is not merely political but anthropological: to remake man. ‘
That is Marx’s take on Humanity, that because of false consciousness – brainwashing by the capitalists to consume, and consider personal material well-being to be a measure of self-worth – Mankind needs to be re-educated to put the collective of individuals of intrinsic equal worth, before his own selfish needs.
What has changed is our institutions, particularly the political class, have been colonised by people who think this way… covert Communists (who do not self-identify as such, but by nature that is surely what they are) and there is no competition from those for whom rule of law, individualism, limited government, democratic accountability, self-responsibility, self-reliance is inbred.
We have a uni-party State = tyranny. Only one way to fix that.
The keyword here is “self-described”. For the linguistically challenged, the current policies have as much to do with liberalism as Hitler’s policies had to do with socialism. But paradoxically it has become fashion among (dumb) political opponents – like those who frequent this site – to blame “liberalism” for extremely non-liberal (i.e. authoritarian) policies, pouring oil into the fire.
“to blame “liberalism” for extremely non-liberal (i.e. authoritarian) policies”
See comments above about the distinct meanings of the term liberal in modern American/English. Eg:
noun
The former has nothing to with being non-authoritarian, but being non-authoritarian is the essence of the latter.
Sadly like many words the meaning has been corrupted by the Left for their own self-aggrandisement.
Number 2 is the correct definition of liberal. Number 1 is the corruption by the delusional for self -congratulatory purposes particularly in the US.
See my reply to rayc on this.
As far as my own experience and recollection goes, it origjnates mostly in being used as a descriptive term for both leftists and true liberals in the US, by non-liberals/leftists.
Yes, and this deliberate hijacking and skewing of an original meaning of a word to mean the opposite is the whole trick here. We’ve seen exactly this same method applied many times during the past two years.
This goes back decades at least, in the US where it seems to originate. Americans were abusing both leftists and true liberals as “liberals” back in the sixties and probably before that.
In the UK we had a Liberal Party that was distinct from the socialist Labour Party, which tended to militate against it for a while, but the American usage was creeping into British usage by at least the late C20th, by my own experience.
Very interesting but surely what has taken place in this country is very simple.
The public sector, including a para-statal prime contractor commercial sector, has captured the government.
The only way back is to shrink the size of government, massively reduce regulation, to allow smaller companies to thrive.
A great deal of the size of government is there simply to interface and comply with undemocratic impositions from supranational organisations: WHO, OECD, IMF and so on.
In short the remedy we need is a strong and reforming Prime Minister of free market liberal conviction.
Instead we have had Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Bunter.
And there is nothing better on the horizon.
Ultimately weak government leads to war…….
Very well put.
“The public sector, including a para-statal prime contractor commercial sector, has captured the government.
The only way back is to shrink the size of government, massively reduce regulation, to allow smaller companies to thrive.”
Sadly, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. What you refer to as “para-statal prime contractor commercial sector” seems based on our recent experience to be the inevitable result of partially reducing regulations in a generally state-dominated society, which is basically what Margaret Thatcher’s governments mostly did (and I voted for her party and have no regrets in doing so, given the situation and alternatives at the time).
I think there needs to be active advantaging of small businesses,along with other sources of independent-minded self-reliance (family, community, farms, faith etc) against big business as well as the big state.
Not sure how to achieve it, but that kind of decentralisation of power and authority and promotion of self-confidence and self-reliance (and hopefully common sense) seem to me to be what’s needed.
In other words, I agree with what you state as the goal here, but doubt the proposed means will work.
“Her analysis suggests liberal individualism has latent in it a tendency to totalitarianism”
Bollocks!
Collectivism is totalitarian, not individualism.
The entire article is pretentious balderdash.
The response to Covid was the result of mediaevalist philosophy reviving the ancient mediaeval superstition of lockdown, environmentalism is mediaevalist philosophy.
They refer to themselves as ‘Elite’. Nuff said.
And they use warm and fluffy language. But it’s not about what they say, but what they do.
Some people want power and control over the rest of us. They’ll use existing philosophies, political movements, organized religions, clubs, groups, anything as long as it helps them establish themselves.
That’s why the tradition in Britain is to simply limit anyone’s power over anyone else, then it doesn’t matter if a Tony Blair pretends to be a Labour man. Or if the Conservative Party is full of woke dreamers.
We are lost because we keep expecting others to solve our problems. We need a movement to reestablish individual freedom and the associated responsibilities that go with it. I don’t care what illiberal liberals think. I just want to be left in peace like most people.
This is an excellent article. Long and certainly no light read, but very informative.
A very good essay. As a political philosophy liberalism becomes incoherent. An absolutist liberal will become illiberal. A consistent liberal must at the same time allow those who would practice totalitarianism. Liberalism was once concern with protecting religious freedoms, but now religious freedoms are being suppressed for the sake of sexual liberalism. Some voices must be silenced because it might hurt someone’s feelings.
We should just not use the word “black” to designate “white”, that’s all. But it’s funny how simpletons fall for it and essentially stage attacks against themselves in the process.
Because ‘Liberal’now mean’ “Liberal Fascist ‘- a term first coined by eugenecist H G Wells
Ref: “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg which everyone really ought to have read years ago, as it tells us exactly where we are going (wrong) and how we got here.
Child shoots hand up, is it because they became irrelevant a long, long time ago and now realise that they are never going to have any super powers and so instead they’ve become really annoying?
Maybe you don’t need a conspiracy of hostile elites to explain this, but it helps, and given the plethora of evidence penned by their own organisations, it’s pretty clear one exists. We ignore it at our peril.
What the author describes is the morality of altruism, the morality behind every totalitarian ideology.
I switched over to Talk TV last night to mike graham and Ian Collins smearing people who are worried about the WHO and the WEF as conspiracy nutters. As you say, we ignore these psychopaths at our peril.
The WEF could write a whole magazine-worth of articles, set up an entire website of information, put out a video montage of politicians and princes, write a book, etc, etc, and the likes of Collins and Graham, both of whom should know better, will still deny any of it’s true.T
Talk about having your head up your own rear end…
Everything is in the public domain for the WEF plans. All the treatments for covid were in medical publications, obscure ones admittedly, but all readily available. They rely on the rest of us to not notice until it’s too late, so that they can get away with the implementation, aided & abetted by useful idiots in the MSM.
Those worried about the WHO includes Julia Hartley Brewer and Matt Ridley. I wonder if Mike Graham is going to tell JHB that she’s a conspiracy nutter?
We need a new phrase instead of “conspiracy theory.” How about “spoiler alert”?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SjwWtQ-OoCw
Julia Hartley-Brewer slams ‘terrifying’ WHO Pandemic Pact
Because they are not really liberals?
They’re most very illiberal.