On Friday, George Will squared off against Sohrab Ahmari in the Munk debate on “the crisis of liberalism”. But the crisis didn’t come up.
Will is a prominent conservative commentator who writes for the Washington Post. Ahmari is an author, editor and publisher who has advocated “common good conservatism”. They debated whether ‘Liberalism gets the big questions right’ at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a British Conservative MP and the most dynamic speaker of the evening, joined Will to support the motion. Ash Sarkar, a writer and lecturer who called herself a libertarian communist (“I’m a tall short person”) argued alongside Ahmari to oppose it.
The proceedings missed the plot. The audience did not get a definition of liberalism, nor a clear sign of what the debaters believed the ‘big questions’ to be. Standard tropes littered the stage. Liberalism produces prosperity, said the Pro side, and has raised millions out of poverty across the world (true). But free trade with countries like China has decimated Western working classes, argued the Con side, who suffer from an epidemic of drug addictions and despair (also true). Sarkar turned out to be a plain old communist whose dogmatic drivel grated on the ears.
Even the quotes were predictable (Will from Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”). But the biggest problem was that the speakers equated liberalism with conditions in Western countries as they presently exist. The evening turned into a debate between champions of the current order (Will and Rees-Mogg) and those advocating for more government (Ahmari and Sarkar). Everyone seemed to agree that the West, even today, is liberal.
If only it were so. Liberalism is a political philosophy of individual freedom. The word ‘liberal’ derives from libertas, the Latin word for liberty. “Don’t tell me what to do” is the liberal mantra. Liberals – real liberals, not modern woke progressives, who are anything but liberal – believe that people own their own lives. They should buy and sell what they want, say what they think, have sex with and marry whom they please, worship as they wish, be responsible for themselves, and leave other people alone. And most importantly, they believe that the state should not interfere. Liberalism means that people are free to sail their own ships.
Non-liberal systems of government have one thing in common: some people rule over others. As Frederic Bastiat wrote, the legislator “bears the same relation to mankind as the potter does to the clay. Unfortunately, when this idea prevails, nobody wants to be the clay, and everyone wants to be the potter”. The alternative to liberalism is illiberalism.
For periods, political cultures in Western nations at least aspired to the liberal ideal. The purpose of government, says the American Declaration of Independence, is to secure individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If you live in a Western country today, you still have more freedom than most of the rest of the world at most other times in history.
But Western liberalism is fading. Over many decades, managerialism, not liberalism, has become the West’s prevailing ethos. An expansive welfare state regulates, supervises, subsidises, and controls modern life: markets and financial systems, public schools and universities, health care, media, food production, energy production, telecom services, the professions and even speech. Free market capitalism is in retreat, replaced by cooperation between governments and big business.
People are subject to the arbitrary discretion of Government agencies which pursue their own agendas. Identity politics reign and the surveillance state expands. Moreover, the public has been convinced that Government administration is necessary. Civilisation has become too complex, they believe, not to be managed by an expert bureaucracy.
Genuine individual autonomy has become so foreign to our expectations that the word ‘liberal’ now has a different meaning. To be called a liberal does not mean that you believe in liberty but in the nanny state. Today’s liberals are not individualists but ‘progressives’ seeking to shape society in their best judgement. They support higher taxes, social justice, wind turbines and non-gender pronouns.
During Covid, the erosion of real liberalism accelerated. Suddenly, in the name of an airborne virus, state authorities assumed unprecedented powers to control movement and behaviour. They imposed the most serious peacetime restrictions on civil liberties in modern history. Governments colluded with pharma companies to abbreviate established processes for developing and approving vaccines, and then to mandate their use.
In the Munk debate, none of this even came up. No one mentioned Covid restrictions. No one mentioned the decline of the rule of law and weaponisation of the legal system for political ends. No one mentioned Government censorship or media collusion. Will cited Covid vaccines – one of the most significant Government projects in Western history — as the triumph of a free market. Ahmari claimed them as the successful outcome of Government intervention. Ironically, no debate could have demonstrated better the West’s crisis of liberalism.
Bruce Pardy is Executive Director of Rights Probe and Professor of Law at Queen’s University. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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Bang on with that last paragraph, Will. The hypocrisy is off the charts. I wonder how many pro-Hamassholes will be arrested for antisemitism at the weekend. Talk about perspective…Poor Bridgen was well and truly shafted wasn’t he? Anyway, my money’s on white police arresting/warning white patriots for waving their British flags and generally being patriotic. Especially if they’re all cut from the same cloth as that godawful ”Lesbian Nana” horror.
And the BBC obviously only apologized due to getting shed-loads of complaints so I’m glad ‘people power’ is still effective to some extent.
I’m glad to see this article, because I complained to the BBC about what they did just to see what they would say. They didn’t address specifically what I wrote and just sent a general reply to everyone, because clearly a lot of people complained.
This is what they wrote…..“Thank you for getting in touch about the House of Commons Adjournment Debate ‘Trends in Excess Deaths’, broadcast on BBC Parliament on 20 October.
To allow us to reply promptly to your concerns, and to ensure we use our licence fee resources as efficiently as possible, we are sending this response to everyone. We are sorry not to reply individually, but we hope this will address the points you have raised.
It is normal practice for BBC Parliament to show what are known as ‘story astons’ (or captions) which put debates into context for viewers. They are not comments, but editorial context written by journalists working on the live output.
The first aston made clear to viewers that Reclaim MP Andrew Bridgen had tabled the debate.
In accordance with the BBC’s guidelines on due impartiality, the remaining astons reflected (and are attributed to) the majority medical and scientific view that vaccines are safe.
We’re sorry if you remain unhappy. We have included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback at the BBC, and help inform our future editorial judgements.
Thanks again for getting in touch.
Kind regards,
BBC Complaints Team”.
A complete batting away of the issue, but it seems they may have succumb to the volume of complaints.
I got that response initially, so I raised my complaint to the next level and then got the one reported in the article.
I’m still deciding whether I’ll pursue it to the next level. I suspect it would be batted away with a response that basically says “the BBC has admitted a mistake and apologised, so Eff Off” ….. but I still may do it.
It’s almost as if antisemitism had been a spectre of the past¹ until it was unearthed as weapon of choice against Jeremy Corbyn, presumably for want of real arguments. Since then, the powers-which-are have come to really like it and keep on antisemiting at every opportunity — after all, no one can think of a better way to argue about politics than claim the people on the other side are all Nazis or sort-of-Nazis.
¹ This is not strictly true. Governments of Israel have compiled yearly antisemites lists, usually including anyone who wasn’t a Jew and nevertheless critical of any of their policies, for a long time. But this used to be background noise until Corbyn.
While I suspect Corbyn, like many politicians, is more interested in strategy than harbouring any personal animosity towards Jewish people, he (like some others) has shown himself perfectly capable of hitching his wagon to a movement that is overtly, murderously anti-Semitic, presumably to bolster his support base. This mural has more than a few overtones of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
https://news.sky.com/story/senior-labour-figures-defend-jeremy-corbyn-over-anti-semitic-mural-row-11303966
It’s really useles to try to dump this story on me. Antisemitism was a political movement in Germany from the 19th to the early 20th century and that’s what the people controlling Israel are alluding to when they use the term. The large numbers of Arabs and muslims in general successive governments of Israel have – quite intentionally – alienated to the point where they’ve become their sworn enemies never had the power to do to Jews whatever they wanted to, hence, what they’d be doing if they ever had this power, something that’s exceedingly unlikely to happen, because Israel has unquestioning support of all greater powers of the world, is entirely unknown. In any case, this has no connection to what people have been trained to think of when they hear the term antisemitism namely Something like what the Nazis did!
This nazicalling in lieu of making an actual argument is childish and strongly suggests that the people who claim that the Holocaust was a singular event in human history don’t really believe this themselves. It can’t both be singular and ubiquitious.
Suggest you read the Quran if you think anti-semitism is a modern movement…
Anti-Zi*nism perhaps, but certainly not anti-sem*te. All people of the Levant are Semites.
Isn’t it nice to be an establishment corporation and to be able to get away with spurious attacks on people by simply issuing carefully worded apologies, months after the fact and that pretty much no one will read or report on (least of all, of course, the BBC itself).
Still continuing with the bias during their Kings Speech broadcast where the presenters condemned the Govt planned annual oil and gas licences.
You have to wonder about people still thinking you can power the 21st century by wind & solar power and that electric cars are feasible.
Nick was even more uninformed than Huw, and muddled the names of two officials, although one wore Army red & the other Navy blue.
The BBC have exclusive access to all, but I was finally able to move to GB News when they started their coverage and who manage better with far less resources.
Can anyone find this apology? Should it be publicly visible?
Well, it is actually buried away here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications
They should be regulated to make their apologies for these gaffs more open.
“We accept there was a lack of consistency in the use of our captions and that the number posted during the speech was not proportionate, nor always relevant which created the incorrect impression that there was an editorial approach in relation to the views expressed. We apologise for this and are reviewing the way we use such captions during proceedings.”
Twaddle!
>M1 and Clive; I am in complete agreement; this is as gaslighting in extremis.
That weasel phrase is more revealing than the admission they got it wrong – BUT THAT WAS INTENTIONAL!!!!!!
The BBC’s output is ALWAYS approached from an “editorial” pov; ffs they are an alleged news outlet!!!!! – if that is NOT (ever) the case, their content would contain a warning that, eg, “the views expressed are those of the author [ who would/must be named] and not the BBC…….” followed by the usual self absolving disclaimer of liability. I do not ever recall this being employed other than very rarely?
It is a sign of the mounting pressure that some of the UFLW within the BBC can make a disastrous editorial decision ( and the streamline banner content must have been prepared well in advance ) but STILL feel so bombproof they can issue an apology which is nothing of the sort.
The BBC are under tremendous pressure – IMHO they have made a disastrous decision to make their complaints process the personal responsibility of Davie – he of the AWG/CC “settled science” self professed bias. He is a marketing man with not one shred of journalistic or editorial acumen or experience……..massive own goal ( a non BBC journalist/MSM editor – K.Mackenzie??? just joking – would have been a far better choice to out the fires out…)
At the risk of being off topic, I know I cannot as one individual tackle the whole BBC editorial apparatus. I could vent my spleen but where does that get me? Therefore I have waged a war against The BBC via their egregious and obvious editorial bias via BBC HYS topics – I have been blocked as a result, in the past (no warning, for at least 6 months) and my posts are now instantly monitored. A significant number have been removed but because I have chosen subjects and how I post very carefully a large number have been reinstated ( but not all ); reasons given for removal are illogical and demonstrably “wrong”. The BBC HYS censors are , now, so on the back foot ( which alludes to a degree of panic ); in the past they have allowed very extreme personal abuse by publishing posts against anyone who is pro Brexit, pro Tory ( I am NOT), anti AWGCC – tbf some were removed but by no means all and remained visible for hours after the fact. The BBC therefore tolerates abusive content when it is directed at subjects their bias is self evident but not when anyone of a different view counters that abuse with facts……BBS endemic editorial bias QED.
This is the guts of a recent “attack” by me on this very subject: I complained against my original post’s removal and very forcibly put the case against its removal – The BBC HYS censor moderators rolled over ( and this is the first tacit admission that their output is NOT editorially impartial ) – they have lost that argument for good with their last email to me which appears first – it was ostensibly comments on an article about CC and I stated that AWG/CC so called science is emphatically NOT settled and I mentioned the Oregon Declaration as “evidence” . I implore all to take The BBC biased editors on in this way if their time permits….the Bridgen apology is just one more example that they know they have lost the “impartiality” argument, “we” know it, they know we know it – so “keep going”?:
Dear BBC User,
Thank you for contacting the BBC.
In this instance, it appears your comment was removed in error so we have reinstated it.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention and please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Due to the volume of correspondence we receive, we are unable to discuss this matter further.
Regards,
BBC Moderation Services
http://www.bbc.co.uk/social/moderation
From: XXXXXX
Sent: 13 October 2023 17:46
To: Central Communities Team. <Central-communities-team@bbc.co.uk>
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Your comments: It is the case that the study of the earth’s climate ( and therefore weather systems ) is multi disciplinary , and in many cases little understood as has been stated by scientists many times the world over – eg the influence of the Sun in all its aspects. The BBC in recent days has made a massive play that it is editorially impartial [ viz. HAMAS atrocities] – anyone who has studied the BBC’s output knows this is abject rubbish as eloquently detailed by Robin Aitken ( ex BBC…he knows); the BBC has decided as far back as 2006 that the “science is settled” as far as AWG/CC is concerned , and has trotted out this editorially partial theme ever since despite thousands and thousands of scientists ( which The BBC is emphatically NOT and which employs biased reporters – Rowlatt for one – to constantly push AWG/CC ) signing the Oregon Declaration and others which The BBC habitually ignores. Similarly The BBC constantly pushes their “Anti-vaxxers” agenda in the face of decades long evidence documenting serious issues with certain ( many ) vaccines as well as the disaster of experimental mRNA gene editing drugs with a tsunami of evidence documenting fraudulent trials (Pfizer’s own documents attest to that), historically unique levels of adverse effects, premature death, massive levels of excess deaths that are caused by repeat doses ( I doubt The BBC will report on the massive meta analysis of southern hemisphere, official government data sourced, that – yet again – proves the scale of death and adverse harms caused by these highly dangerous drugs ) You cannot argue that The BBC has NOT remained editorially impartial as far as AWG/CC/SARS COV2 drugs – The BBC spouts their settled position constantly – and in so doing refutes their own mendacious statement that, as Mr Davie has tried to gaslight everybody, editorial impartiality remains a “raison d’etre” What utter self evident rubbish – “you ” have once again fallen into a trap which highlights the total lack of impartiality but illustrates the scale of corporate mendacity as far as your sanctimonius editorial position evident with the horror of the genocidal terrorist attacks in Israel by HAMAS – a legally proscribed terroist organisation. If you do not reinstate, I do not particularly care – I have proved my point multiple times – but this act of censorship in a week when the cowardice show by The BBC plumbs the deepest depths possible whilst trumpeting the one off switch of BBC “editorial impartiality” is the final straw – I will send this to Davie’s office and publish the exchange as I see fit.
“which created the incorrect impression that there was an editorial approach in relation to the views expressed”
Frustrating isn’t it – how those pesky word things just keep spontaneously appearing on the screen, by complete chance in exactly the right order to create an incorrect impression!
Happens all the time doesn’t it: I notice that petrol round our way is £1.59/litre, which I think is absurdly expensive; I must have been given the incorrect impression – you know, by those words and that!
“It’s almost as though the Tory leadership don’t actually care about antisemitism but just weaponising it against troublesome MPs.”
Parliamentarians, double standards – well blow me down…..