Open Letter to Woke Students

[Alexis Jacobi]

they can only be grounded in the belief in a society-transcending Authority.

And there you describe a problem that will not be surmounted unless a thought-régime, with universal power and influence, achieves universal terrestrial power.

[Consul]

Furthermore, classical liberalism affims equality of opportunity for all citizens, who may rise or fall socially in keeping with their particular choices, actions and contributions.

The problem with mere equality of opportunity is that…

"A society that satisfied the ideal of formal equality of opportunity might provide grim conditions of life for those who are unsuccessful in competitions for positions of advantage. Even a perfect meritocracy that satisfies the stringent Rawlsian fair equality of opportunity principle might impose the same grim conditions of life on those who lack marketable merit and skill. The class of competitive losers might include some who have adequate native talents but fail to make good use of them, but some of the losers will be those with the bad luck to be born without much by way of native talent. The question then arises whether any further substantive ideals of equality, beyond meritocratic ideals, should be affirmed."

Egalitarianism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egalitarianism/

The upshot: classical liberalism is far from being merely "negative liberty." Pure "negative liberty" would be more a Libertarian value, not a classical liberal one.

The idea of positive liberty was introduced and defended by New Liberalism (Modern, Social Liberalism) as represented by Thomas Green (1836-1882), and not by Old Liberalism (Classical, "Asocial" Liberalism):

"Like Mill, Green is committed to liberal essentials—a largely secular state, democratic political institutions in which the franchise is widespread, private property rights, market economies, equal opportunity, and a variety of personal and civic liberties. Also like Mill, Green is a perfectionist liberal, who thinks that the justification of liberal essentials is grounded in a conception of the common good that understands the good of each in terms of self-realization.

Green’s perfectionist liberalism was influential in the formation of a New Liberalism in late 19th century Britain (e.g., Richter 1964; Nicholson 1990; Brink 2003: §XXIV). The Old Liberalism was concerned with negative liberty and sought to undo state restrictions on liberties and opportunities and was expressed in the repeal of the Corn Laws, opposition to religious persecution, and several electoral reforms that extended the scope of the franchise to include the rural and urban poor. By contrast, the New Liberalism thought that the defense of liberty and opportunity had to be supplemented by social and economic reforms in labor, health, and education to address the effects of social and economic inequality (e.g., Freeden 1978; Nicholson 1990: ch. 5; Simhony and Weinstein 2001). Green was viewed by many as an important intellectual source for the New Liberals. He supported

1. regulation of labor contracts to limit workplace hours and factory conditions (Works II 515; III 365–69, 373),
2. measures to provide greater opportunities for agricultural workers to own land (Works II 515, 532–34; III 377–82),
3. public health and safety regulations (Works II 515; III 373–74),
4. education reforms, improving access to elementary, secondary, and higher education, regardless of socioeconomic status (Works II 515; III 369, 387–476; V 285–86, 326–28), and
5. the improvement of educational and economic opportunities for women (PE §267; Works V 326–28).

Green’s liberalism is a perfectionist liberalism in which the state aims to promote the self-realization of its citizens, and this gives the state a number of positive duties in relation to its citizens. But the importance of autonomy to self-realization means that the state’s positive role is restricted to enabling its citizens to perfect themselves."

Thomas Hill Green: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/green/
——————
"Positive freedom

The clearest break with early liberal thought came in the late nineteenth century with the work of the UK philosopher and social theorist T. H. Green (1836–82), whose writing influenced a generation of so-called ‘new liberals’ such as L. T. Hobhouse (1864–1929) and J. A. Hobson (1854–1940). Green believed that the unrestrained pursuit of profit, as advocated by classical liberalism, had given rise to new forms of poverty and injustice. The economic liberty of the few had blighted the life chances of the many. Following J. S. Mill, he rejected the early liberal conception of human beings as essentially self-seeking utility maximizers, and suggested a more optimistic view of human nature. Individuals, according to Green, have sympathy for one another; their egoism is therefore constrained by some degree of altruism. The individual possesses social responsibilities and not merely individual responsibilities, and is therefore linked to other individuals by ties of caring and empathy. Such a conception of human nature was clearly influenced by socialist ideas that emphasized the sociable and cooperative nature of humankind. As a result, Green’s ideas have been described as ‘socialist liberalism’.

Green also challenged the classical liberal notion of freedom. Negative freedom merely removes external constraints on the individual, giving the individual freedom of choice. In the case of the businesses that wish to maximize profits, negative freedom justifies their ability to hire the cheapest labour possible; for example, to employ children rather than adults, or women rather than men. Economic freedom can therefore lead to exploitation, even becoming the ‘freedom to starve’. Freedom of choice in the marketplace is therefore an inadequate conception of individual freedom.

In the place of a simple belief in negative freedom, Green proposed that freedom should also be understood in positive terms. In this light, freedom is the ability of the individual to develop and attain individuality; it involves people’s ability to realize their individual potential, attain skills and knowledge, and achieve fulfilment. Thus, whereas negative freedom acknowledges only legal and physical constraints on liberty, positive freedom recognizes that liberty may also be threatened by social disadvantage and inequality. This, in turn, implied a revised view of the state. By protecting individuals from the social evils that cripple their lives, the state can expand freedom, and not merely diminish it. In place of the minimal state of old, modern liberals therefore endorsed an enabling state, exercising an increasingly wide range of social and economic responsibilities.

While such ideas undoubtedly involved a revision of classical liberal theories, they did not amount to the abandonment of core liberal beliefs. Modern liberalism drew closer to socialism, but it did not place society before the individual. For Green, for example, freedom ultimately consisted in individuals acting morally. The state could not force people to be good; it could only provide the conditions in which they were able to make more responsible moral decisions. The central thrust of modern liberalism is therefore the desire to help individuals to help themselves."

(Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. 7th ed. London: Red Globe/Macmillan, 2021. pp. 37-8)

[Alexis Jacobi]

To be pulled together through a mood of antipathy will not, and cannot, be sufficient if the core issue is a much larger metaphysical issue : the erasure of a whole horizon.

Are you on meds? This is just babble.

Not if one had understood Nietzsche’s meaning when he described the erasure of our horizon: a universally agreed-on encompassing structure.

Some thing seem self-evident to me and one of them is just that: the erasure of that “horizon”.

The antipathy to Wokeness makes wonderful sense. But it cannot stop or reverse a larger, general metaphysical decomposition.

[Immanuel Can]

they can only be grounded in the belief in a society-transcending Authority.

And there you describe a problem that will not be surmounted unless a thought-régime, with universal power and influence, achieves universal terrestrial power.

That's simply the opposite of the truth.

The "terrestrial power" is utterly incapable of giving rights. It can violate them, or it can honour them: it cannot "alienate" them from the individual who possesses them.

Why is that so hard for you to understand? Even in secular terms, like in the case of the suffragettes or the freedom marchers of the Black rights movement, there was no dependency on "terrestrial authority" to grant the claimed "rights." Those rights were theirs already; and the secular power ranged against them was simply denying them an entitlement they already had by way of divine authorization. They were asserting their universal rights against the contingent injustices of the "terrestrial powers."

And they weren't all particularly academic people. But if even they could get the point and figure out that rights transcend "terrestrial power", how come you can't?

[Consul]

SOURCE: Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. 7th ed. London: Red Globe/Macmillan, 2021. p. 40

[Alexis Jacobi]

IC: The "terrestrial power" is utterly incapable of giving rights. It can violate them, or it can honour them: it cannot "alienate" them from the individual who possesses them.

Why is that so hard for you to understand?

It is not that I don’t understand the position you hold. It is that I incline away from the universal authority predicate.

How or why one might oppose or resist that authority structure is something that you cannot Grok. It is literally incomprehensible to you. Or threatening I suppose.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'd say he's a man on a spiritual journey, and not at the last station of that line yet.

As the Culture Wars rage, and as the metaphysical conflicts behind them manifest their wounded, their damaged, their desperate, and their innovating, all sorts of “positions” and assertions come to the fore.

Are you accusing Lindsay of being "wounded, damaged and desperate"? That's pretty amusing, if you really know anything about the man. He's pretty far from all of that, you'll find. He appears to me to be very capable, courageous, intelligent and formitable. If I were you, I'd be reluctant to take him on in any open forum...or in the fight ring, for that matter. He's a person with a strong sense of intellectual direction, you'll find.

You can’t do much else, Immanuel, but to misunderstand. And then repeat back your misunderstanding.

I am not accusing Lindsay or anyone in particular when I talk of the larger conditions that create the circumstances of conflict and discord.

[Immanuel Can]

Furthermore, classical liberalism affims equality of opportunity for all citizens, who may rise or fall socially in keeping with their particular choices, actions and contributions.

The problem with mere equality of opportunity is that…

"A society that satisfied the ideal of formal equality of opportunity might provide grim conditions of life for those who are unsuccessful in competitions for positions of advantage. Even a perfect meritocracy that satisfies the stringent Rawlsian fair equality of opportunity principle might impose the same grim conditions of life on those who lack marketable merit and skill. The class of competitive losers might include some who have adequate native talents but fail to make good use of them, but some of the losers will be those with the bad luck to be born without much by way of native talent. The question then arises whether any further substantive ideals of equality, beyond meritocratic ideals, should be affirmed."

And the answer is "No."

What "equality" means, when imposed by government fiat, is tyranny: it means the stripping of the achieving and deserving, the industrious and innovative, to serve the undeserving and unachieving, the indolent and foolish. It means a race to the bottom, a race to the lowest common denominator: because the foolish cannot be made smart, the undeserving cannot be made deserving, and the unexceptional cannot be made exceptional: therefore, the only alternative the Socialist tyrants have is to ram everybody down to the lowest level -- to make the strong weak, the smart foolish and the achieving the same as the non-contributing weasels at the bottom.

But your objector passage asks about what to do with those who are disadvantaged at the start, having "bad luck to be born" in some difficulty, or who "have adequate native talents by fail to make good use of them." Classical liberalism already has the answer to that: give them equal opportunity. The bad luck will go away, and those with adequate talents will use them -- unless they're lazy and refuse to, in which case it's nobody's fault that they fail. It's their own. And they have a right to fail if they want to.

Now, a separate question is what to do with those who are inherently unintelligent, or inherently incapable of achievement. And the answer to that is simple: firstly, the higher-ranking owe it to the lower ranks to treat them with basic human dignity, and to be merciful to them. But they do not owe it to them to BECOME them. That is self-destructive, and damaging to society.

Socialism makes a huge mistake in regard to hierarchy, as Jordan Peterson has so astutely pointed out: it assumes that hierarchies can be of only one type -- hierarchies of power, or tyrannies. And some are. But to think that those are the only hierarchies -- or even the primary reason for hierarchy -- -- is a very foolish and destructive mistake on the part of Socialist theorists. Hierarchies are actually inevitable, in all matters in which excellence is involved. "Excellence" means somebody does something great, something elite, in some area of human endeavour: and the minute they do, it creates hierarchy. And the benefits of excellents are very socially-significant: they don't just benefit the person who is excellent, but everybody else in society who comes to benefit from that excellence, or who uses it as an index for creating their own excellence.

It could be in athleticism, aesthetics, business, intellection, innovation, creativity, courage, or any other dimension of human achievement, but hierarchies develop whenever somebody does something excellent, by definition. So most actual hierarchies are not tyrannies: they are ranks of competence.

That's why Socialism hates competence. And it's an extremely foolish and society-destructive antipathy they harbour, when they denigrate hierarchies.

[Immanuel Can]

To be pulled together through a mood of antipathy will not, and cannot, be sufficient if the core issue is a much larger metaphysical issue : the erasure of a whole horizon.

Are you on meds? This is just babble.

Not if one had understood Nietzsche’s meaning...

I understand Nietzsche. One thing he was never was obscurantist. You are. You squirt words when you have nothing to say, and hope that you'll lose your reader in the verbiage, and he'll say, "Gosh, this AJ is smart; cuz I ain't got no clue what he just said."

Bad luck for you: people on a board like this can read. You're not making sense. And no, we don't mistake that for profundity.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Bad luck for you: people on a board like this can read. You're not making sense. And no, we don't mistake that for profundity.

Here you are — again — using that we-plural and speaking for the group. You revert to that when aspects of your position are challenged or threatened.

Just speak for yourself.

[Immanuel Can]

SOURCE: Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. 7th ed. London: Red Globe/Macmillan, 2021. p. 40

You keep citing a single high-school-level textbook, it seems: do you have anybody other than Heywood?

[Immanuel Can]

Bad luck for you: people on a board like this can read. You're not making sense. And no, we don't mistake that for profundity.

Here you are — again — using that we-plural and speaking for the group. You revert to that when aspects of your position are challenged or threatened.

Just speak for yourself.

I'm telling you what anybody with a brain can see. And yes, "we" know.

I'm going to speak directly to you, and tell you the truth. Do with it what you will. Right now, you're self-presenting (whether you are or not) as what has been wryly called a "mid-wit" -- somebody with just enough erudition to be verbose, but not enough to track straight through the ideas he's trying to present. Why do you want to self-present that way?

Don't do that to yourself. Take a page from Orwell: simplify your diction and just say what you mean, instead of squirting polysyllabic obscurantist rhetoric. The verbosity is getting very, very tedious, and it's not making anybody think you're smart. It's certainly "threatening" nobody, and the only "challenge" you're giving us is that of making any sense out of the senseless.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Bad luck for you:

I do not believe in *luck*. I am in God’s hands alone!

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm going to speak directly to you, and tell you the truth. Do with it what you will.

I’ve seen you try to work this angle before, dearest Immanuel. It is transparent.

You need to listen to what people say to you and take in their whole argument. It is a basic principle of good faith. You hardly ever do that.

And you then revert to other tactics to cover over your unwillingness to listen, consider, and respond.

Whether you do that or don’t is not highly relevant to me ultimately. I find you most useful in your present state.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm going to speak directly to you, and tell you the truth.

Here is your *core problem* and one you cannot ever quite see. It is that your notion of what is true, and your certainty that you can reveal it, is generally questioned.

Talking directly is always a good road to take though. Good for you.