Image credit.
I find the below attempt at classifying the political camps of the US, especially the 'right', interesting, though I have slight doubts as to the competence of the author, considering that he presents Murray Rothbard as an aficionado of the night-watchman state, which the confessed anarchist certainly was not.
What strikes me most though is the ease, even facileness with which many proponents of (libertarian-leaning) freedom like to play God by pontificating about the mix of creed they would like to prevail in the country. Freedom is all about admitting, generating, tolerating and accommodating people who think differently from the way you and I do.
There is something deeply illiberal about visions of the right kind of attitudinal landscape, because freedom is not only a civilizatory stage that tolerates plurality, she is actually an engine of diversity and change.
At times, one might get lost in reveries of a society strictly and comprehensively conforming to one's own preferences. But once we wake up again from such dreams, it is to be hoped, our awareness returns that it is the right of all mature citizens to compete for and jointly effect the society we live in, which as a result of such pluralism will tend to be rather eclectic and heterogeneous.
Of course, I may be picking a vantage point that is not entirely fair to the author, who, my misgivings notwithstanding, has a right to ponder an ideal state and to argue, oddly in my view:
Perhaps an ideal ‘state’ would be akin to United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which have capitalism and some degree of personal autonomy but also religious and cultural homogeneity. But even those countries, as culturally conservative as they are, have a lot of foreign laborers, which racialists on the ‘alt right’ would not condone. But it’s probably too late for the United States to reverse its course, being that it’s already too diverse, too entrenched in the ‘status quo’, and too populous.
The entire article.
See also Freedom - A Force of Creative Destruction in the Moral Realm.
Comments