A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the Constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. — Colo Millz

Thanks for posting this Burke quote. It's a good model for useful political debate. American conservatives salute the 1776 Revolution, however, at the time, it was a radical change. No one was more aware of that than the minutemen who empowered it.

The US constitution has continued to be radical through the centuries as most people readily acknowledge that some of its ideals are yet to be fully realized.

Limited republican government by the consent of the people in a capitalist economy - these were liberal ideas once. (This fact is lost on today’s extreme right - liberalism isn’t always emotional and destructive.) But today, they are conservative ideas.

The Amish don't use insurance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

it takes the burden of caring for the unfortunate away from the community and displaces it to the anonymous market. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Insurance displaces the burden from the whole community, that is true. (Although the reason insurance works is when the community all pay a small percentage in premium, pooling the money for big payment of claims.) But the anonymous market is a pool of resources too, often at a discount. And the whole community can fail us like the anonymous can fail us. And the Amish community that makes its own decisions, about insurance or no insurance on behalf of the whole community, is acting basically like any other free market community, permitting this and restricting that. (And insurance isn’t a great example for us, because insurance is a way of managing what used to be law suits in equity - chancery court - people’s court. It’s contract management of disputes. It’s private government in a sense. And the Amish are relatively about 7 or 8 total people to manage compared to most community sizes (350 mil Americans) and can gather into one community easily (God bless them for the sacrifices they make to keep things simple for themselves)).

You can see the displacement of community and institutions by the market in all areas of everyday life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aren’t these just choices we make, to engage the market in ways that displace the community? It is not a consequence of the free market that we no longer ask friends for rides or work as hard on communities. It’s a consequence of our decisions on how to spend our money and time. We choose to isolate ourselves and be seduced by products that enable community displacing activity.

One upshot of this is that it increases inequality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One question and one idea here. First, is inequality increased? Unequal on what scale, all scales, or just some? Second, actual inequality has as a corollary: possible mobility. This second one slightly answers the first question. Some inequality (which by nature is inevitable) even if increased, may be worth creating a world where upward mobility is possible. Capitalism facilitates this mobility.

There are more people since America was formed and today who begin life poor and end up in life financially secure, who bring spouses and children with them, than ever before. Capitalism is the platform that enabled this. Inequality financially is not a bad thing - never was. It’s a modern liberal idea to make economic goals governmental goals.

Those who can pay get all the benefits of community with none of the costs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are those who can’t pay, who live on the streets, are they absolutely inevitable in capitalism? Or are they still inevitable in any larger society and any economy? Again, why is this a feature of capitalism, and not a feature of human ignorance and greed and other badness in human hearts?

There are all kinds of communities. But here I think you are invoking the morality of capitalist people, which is a different measure than the possibility of freedom and political success of capitalism. This is why charity and humble gratitude and duty to others are necessary in a capitalist society. But they are necessary in any successful society, regardless of economy, from Amish to socialist to capitalist (unless we live in Orwell’s world where the government is everything).

Capitalism doesn’t create those who can’t pay. Capitalism creates the platform where there might be less people who can’t pay. Maybe there is a greater inequality between the richest and the poorest, but that is just one measurement. Another number is the number of people pulled themselves to a better overall standard of living before the US and after.

Is capitalism really only since the enlightenment and Adam Smith? It seems more basic than something developed in the Enlightenment - like republican government was Roman. Didn’t Thales buy up all the olive presses because he predicted a good year for olives and then get rich leasing them come harvest time? Taken to scale with banks and money and insuring agreements and credit, and owner profit and labor fees, all aimed at capital accumulation, under a laisse faire democratic republic - that is a fully formed adult capitalist, but the seeds of capitalism are in the trade that has always occurred and freely; capitalism’s seed and heart is the private agreement of this for that.

———

The Enlightenment got some things right. Free markets, axiomatic core political rights of life and liberty, limited government by consent of the governed, equality of due process before the law - these are products of human reason, and they are good.

They allow one to master one’s own flourishing, and build a surplus for family and community. They allow many people to live together with the least governmental (laws, police and courts) obstacles to basic self-determination and pursuit of happiness.

But now we have things to conserve. This is what modern liberals don’t admit. The constitution can’t be a living document for it to be a document protecting our rights at all. It has to be fixed (like inalienable things are fixed). We have to hold the same fundamental rights up, over and over again and fight to keep them preserved. Today, these one liberal ideas are in danger mostly from liberal forces.

The US was formed in rejection of authoritarian types of government - a king, like a tyrant, like a fascist. Now there is a new conservative, who rejects kings as well as modern liberal forms of totalitarianism (leftism).

When will life and liberty in the face of government no longer be an issue? Never. The idea that each of us by default possesses our own life, and in this life, our own freedom - this idea, now 250 years old, is now a conservative idea. It’s no longer a question of reason and enlightenment spirit. It’s cannon. It’s natural political law. It’s self-evident, since around 1776 at least.

———

This is a goal of capitalism though. Everywhere becomes everywhere else, aided by the destruction of cultural barriers and the free flow of labor and goods across all borders. This standardization only helps growth, and it helps attain the liberal ideal of freedom by dislodging the individual from the "constriction" of tradition and culture — Count Timothy von Icarus

Destruction of cultural barriers is a goal within the notion of capitalism? Or is it a byproduct of individual choices and deals?

Standardization helps growth - but trading off one’s particular culture for some different standard helps that one particular person grow. It’s the particular implementation that you are bemoaning here, not the nature of capitalism. Capitalism can adapt to the non-standard better than any economy I know of.

consider minimum lot size requirements and minimum parking requirements, which have helped turn America's suburbs and strip malls into wholly unwalkable isolated islands of private dwellings and private businesses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree it’s often ugly, boring, and looks the same across whole continents. But isn’t part of this the fact that we can live further away from each other and use cars to still get along? We build our towns around cars because we live further spread out, because we can, and we want to. Isn’t this again our choices? Aren’t you more bemoaning technology and industrial advancement than you are the capitalist platform? There is no master planner called mister capitalism that is forcing all of the strip malls to look the same. Things will keep evolving too.

…it helps attain the liberal ideal of freedom by dislodging the individual from the "constriction" of tradition and culture — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the conservative impulse is to see that the type of freedom we should be concerned about as a community is the freedom to control our own government, and limit its ability to take away equally created free lives. It’s not a matter of freedom from sin and to flourish in development of virtue. This activity, moral activity, is not for government to regulate. We need to be free from government first, before we can build true freedom and flourish best. Conservatives get that. Leftists want government to constrict the means towards individual flourishing (as if the government wasn’t just another bunch of people who have no idea what rules are good or bad in every situation). The invisible hand of the free market is now a conservative ideal.

Finally, just consider how much people must move to keep up with the capitalist economy. That alone destroys community.
Maybe it is worth the benefits, but conducive to "conserving tradition" it is not. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That depends on the tradition.

We need some government regulation. We ought build some safety-net through government. But we need individual people to freely build virtuous consciences, and we need individual people to be able to take care of their own lives and their own families - capitalist republics are a worthy starting point.

If not liberal capitalism, (a conservative principle today). do you see a better way to manage billions of people (or, I should say, to allow millions of people to manage themselves)?

Hence, the champions of "small government" find themselves wed to the very process by which government must continually grow, such that it is now massively (on orders of magnitude) more invasive to the average person's life than at any prior point in history (when the norm was to hardly ever interact with anyone outside one's local officials). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. Capitalist republics implode in contradiction to their own principles. It remains to be seen if America can last another 50 years, 100 years or 1,000 years. And if it does, would it be recognizable at such point?

But if it was recognizable at all, it would continue to uphold values of limited government, free markets, and a few key natural rights. And it would be the conservative impulses that protected these institutions. Not the modern liberal impulses.

The massive bureaucratic state arises because many people, like all children, don’t want to be responsible for their own livelihoods and decisions. We shoot each other when in a debate, and then do not come together to rebuke the shooter, for instance. We behave like spoiled brats.

Just because someone says they are champions of small government, and joins the republican party, doesn’t mean they have any deep understanding of the tradition the notion of small government came from. People are hypocrites. That doesn’t defeat logic of value they hypocritically contradict with their actions.

Government is too big, AND, with a smaller government people will surely abuse each other. The thing is, with a bigger government, we may fix certain abuses, but we build all new abuses that are much worse.

The abuses in a liberal democracy are specific and particular (and can be adjudicated in court). The abuses in a leftist big government are systematic oppression of whole nations.

So the conservative tradition is to accept that life is unfair and at times brutish and short - but that no solution for the adult person that might build a moments peace can come from outside that person, but must be built from within. And no government should interfere with our internal development of our own characters.

The massive bureaucratic state arises because many people, like all children, don’t want to be responsible for their own livelihoods and decisions. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, people like bankers, corporate bosses, and billionaires—the first in line for government handouts.

Childishness and irresponsibility cut across all income levels. Do we have to throw out the baby of capitalist self-determination with the bathwater of rich pigs?

This discussion is fascinating. The one thing that warrants the powerful to retain their power and the subservient to bask in the safety of their subservience. This... silly notion that, somehow, given the chance, given enough time, we wouldn't be worse than those we complain about. It's a timeless classic joke, between those who know the depths of human nature. Why, it never seems to get old. :smile:

For a bit of context.. no, no not at first. Everybody starts out as the noble savior. Here to vanquish those who have forgotten what it means to be human, blah blah blah. And they do so. For quite a time. Until... well, something happens, shall we put it for lack of better terms. Something changes within them. They start to think, perhaps, they were made to make decisions over others, be it by fate be it by the mere physical nature of this world, whatever their mind decides upon, the man or ego of the man calls it all the same: "destiny." And from there, rules, as we think we know them, no longer seem to apply. Consequence, merely an illusion. And so on and so forth. I won't be the one to spoil it. No, not here. Not now. :grin:

capitalist self-determination — Fire Ologist

An oxymoron.

Anyway, I'm happy to bow out and leave you to have the last word, since I'm probably way off-topic.

I'll repeat this here, since it seems apropos. to the discussion of "capitalist self-determination".

Its own ideology and mythology hold that capitalism is dominated by competition, the self-made, independent Man defeating his rivals.

However a business is only in competition with other business of the same type - with its competitors. Cooperation is at least as important. One must also deal both with suppliers and customers. The relation between a business and its supplier require long-term trust, shared information, and mutual adaptation - cooperation. And unless you are running a scam, you want your customers to come back again. A company that treats suppliers or customers as adversaries to be defeated rather than partners to work with will perform worse than one that builds collaborative relationships.

Capitalism is successful both because it enhances competition and cooperation.

The pretence that being selfish is amoral is inept. The claim that market-driven self-interest is somehow morally neutral - just a natural force like gravity - conveniently sidesteps the actual moral choices people and institutions make within capitalist systems. It's elevating that what you want to some sort of natural law. Pure selfishness actually tends to destroy the trust and cooperation on which complex social systems depend.

Selfishness destroys the market. — Banno

The massive bureaucratic state arises because many people, like all children, don’t want to be responsible for their own livelihoods and decisions. We shoot each other when in a debate, and then do not come together to rebuke the shooter, for instance. We behave like spoiled brats. — Fire Ologist

Deneen is next on my list I think his book is very a propos of this discussion as the Count mentioned.

Are those who can’t pay, who live on the streets, are they absolutely inevitable in capitalism? Or are they still inevitable in any larger society and any economy? Again, why is this a feature of capitalism, and not a feature of human ignorance and greed and other badness in human hearts? — Fire Ologist

Well, we might consider here that just because a problem is perennial does not mean that it cannot be better or worse in different eras and systems. "The poor you shall always have with you," (Matthew 26:11) but surely there is a difference between the worst excesses of the Gilded Age and the New Deal Era, where economic mobility (as well as equality) was vastly greater.

We might consider here the pronounced nostalgia people have for the Soviet system in Eastern Europe despite its many infamies.

Part of the problem here is that liberalism is self-undermining in a sort of positive feedback loop. Income and particularly wealth follow a power law distribution, whole all evidence suggests that human ability is largely on a normal distribution. The cumulative exponential gains on capital make this somewhat inevitable without some sort of policy mechanism to redistribute wealth of a quite vast scale. And yet, in a system where wealth is convertible into cultural and political power, this means that there is always the risk of state capture, rent seeking, and moves by the elite to undermine liberalism so as to install themselves as a new sort of aristocracy.

It's worth nothing here that many economists and historians see the rise of strong, absolutist monarchs in the early modern period as precisely a dynamic whereby the poor and emerging middle class decided to align themselves with a push towards dictatorial power so as to have someone who could protect them from recalcitrant elites. I think you can see something very similar in the West right now, especially as legislatures have largely become too dysfunctional to govern, and power is transfered to the executive.

But the point here is that this sort of problem, positive feedback loops that destroy the system's equilibrium, are part of liberalism itself.

The massive bureaucratic state arises because many people, like all children, don’t want to be responsible for their own livelihoods and decisions. We shoot each other when in a debate, and then do not come together to rebuke the shooter, for instance. We behave like spoiled brats. — Fire Ologist

Well, the anthropology undergirding liberalism says that all people are free just so long as they avoid grave misfortune or disability. It's just a power all adult humans attain. This is probably the real crucial difference. Epicetus, the great philosopher-slave, said that most masters were slaves. Plato, Saint Thomas, Saint Maximus, etc. thought that freedom was hard to win. It required cultivation, ascetic labors, and training. Self-governance, at the individual and social level requires virtue and virtue must be won. As Plotinus has it, we must carve ourselves as a sculptor chisels marble.

But education in modern liberal states often wholly avoids philosophy and ethics. It's main role is to train future "workers and consumers." Freedom is assumed as a default, and so freedom to consume (wealth) becomes the main focus.

On the view that self-governance requires virtue, which requires positive formation and cultivation, this can be nothing but disastrous. Likewise, it is hardly fair to inculcate people in vice, indeed to give them a positive education in vice (which I would say our system does) and then to say that only problem with the system is that the citizens (the elites as much as the masses) are childish and vice-addled.

The traditionalist critique of conservative liberalism is precisely that it makes people unfree. Consumerist culture and secularism are not liberatory. What is required for freedom is not merely "small government," or as progressive liberals would have it "redistribution such that all have wealth." The path out of the cave is rather arduous and requires a virtuous society.

Yes, in modern liberalism, the end is freedom itself, conceived negatively (freedom from constraint), not positively (freedom for the good).

Without a substantive paradigm of the good, “freedom” devolves into the freedom to consume or to satisfy preference - what Plato or Augustine would call license, not liberty.

The liberal state produces slaves of appetite, not citizens of reason.

Yes, in modern liberalism, the end is freedom itself, conceived negatively (freedom from constraint), not positively (freedom for the good). — Colo Millz

Again, quite inaccurate. Liberalism uses - invented - strong notions of positive freedom.

There's a line from Kant and freedom as autonomy, through Rousseau and freedom as collective self-legislation, and Mill with freedom as self-development, and T.H. Green with freedom as the power to do or enjoy something worth doing or enjoying, to Rawls and freedom as the capacity for a conception of the good and the sense of justice and Nussbaum and the freedom to exhibit one's capabilities. These are positive in that what unites them is precisely the move beyond mere non-interference to autonomy, self-legislation, and self-realisation.

Without a substantive paradigm of the good... — Colo Millz

But which one? This question, asked multiple times, remains unaddressed.

And why ought we follow tradition? There's a naturalistic fallacy lurking here - "we've always done it this way, therefore we ought do it this way".

Again, the danger in looking only at the account of liberalism given by conservatives is that your thread become only an echo chamber.

The core here is that we can negotiate our differences rationally. If we so choose.

This reads as if reason was somehow exclusively the provence of progressives. In their rhetoric conservatives and progressives appeal to reason more or less equally, afaict. Both regard the other side as irrational . I reject the framing that reason is what separates liberalism and convervatism.

And I reject the notion that traditionalism is what defines conservatism. One only has to look to the American conservative of today to put the lie to this. What is actually being conserved is not tradition, but hierarchy and power. It was not the breaking of the traditions of slavery and women's lesser rights that was noisome to conservatives then, and is still today. It is that blacks and women occupied lower rungs in the social ladder then, and still should today. To claim and act otherwise is obnoxious to them, bullshit, "woke".

Against this progressives offer fundamentally a moral appeal, not a rational one, though it may come clothed in reason.

And why ought we follow tradition? There's a naturalistic fallacy lurking here - "we've always done it this way, therefore we ought do it this way". — Banno

Re: naturalistic fallacy:

The historical existence of a practice is evidence of its utility, not the source of a moral obligation in itself.

Given human fallibility and the difficulty of creating social institutions from scratch, the safest path is to follow practices that have been validated over centuries.

Tradition is not sacred because it is old; it is valuable because it is tested, functional, and morally formative.

It is that blacks and women occupied lower rungs in the social ladder then, and still should today. — hypericin

Please present evidence that American conservatives believe this.

I have a feeling this is the very definition of a "straw man".

just because a problem is perennial does not mean that it cannot be better or worse in different eras and systems. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but isn’t America evidence that the liberal capitalist system has been the best opportunity for the most poor people so far in history, across 250 years now? America, today, is literally sitting in the best position of anywhere on earth, maybe anytime in history if you factor in America is 350 million people. There are many millions of solid adults in America - seeking the virtuous for virtue’s sake. Let’s see if China’s poor can catch up to America’s poor (while the US continues to grow) before we conclude that wealth distribution/consolidation can be better managed by some sort of dictatorial government, or king, or leftist regime, or socialism, or pure democracy, or caliphate (which is equivalent to dictatorial regime), or something else. If China catches up, I would bet it will be because they free up their markets even more, and more importantly, free their people from government restraint.

Income and particularly wealth follow a power law distribution, whole all evidence suggests that human ability is largely on a normal distribution. The cumulative exponential gains on capital make this somewhat inevitable without some sort of policy mechanism to redistribute wealth of a quite vast scale. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you saying inherited wealth isn’t fair and “rigs the system?” Ok, but is that some sort flaw in the system or is the poisoning of the entire well?

Are you saying there could be “some sort of policy mechanism to redistribute wealth” that is more fair than what people have been doing for the past 250 years in America? I’m open to suggestions, because the only needed improvement I thought of is more charity and sacrifice for others (voluntarily of course). Certainly nothing a government can do.

The world is never going to be utopia, even if we could get 10 people to agree on what utopia might look like. That cannot be the goal.
There is a reason, I think, that Jesus had very little to say about economic systems and political systems and earthly governing of earth dwellers. This is all our problem.

I still don’t see any of these points about the badness in society as being rooted in the nature of capitalism. Rich people who don’t help the poor is the exact same evil as poor people who don’t help those that are even poorer still. All of us need to be more charitable. Some people learn this, and some people don’t. The economic, political environment surrounding this failure in charity has nothing to do with politics and economics. Knowing that (which maybe only I believe), capitalism, as evidenced by the last 250 years of human history and as it was employed by America, seems worth a little more consideration as a platform to build a sense of charity and other virtue.

And yet, in a system where wealth is convertible into cultural and political power, this means that there is always the risk of state capture, rent seeking, and moves by the elite to undermine liberalism so as to install themselves as a new sort of aristocracy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What system is there where wealth is not convertible into cultural and political power? That isn’t a problem, it’s a feature of wealth. It is what we do with our wealth that breeds our problems. Capitalist liberal democracy does make the conversion of wealth to political power much easier - but should we invent a mechanism to limit government influence and thereby limit the temptation and possibility to influence government, or should we invent some mechanism to make it more impossible to be wealthy?

Let’s say we turned the US into some form of socialist state tomorrow. And let’s say it is 1,000 years in the future and we are writing history. Historians would see the birth of a new nation around 1780 (a new structure of government and economics), and see poor people educating themselves and becoming presidents, senators, mayors, poor people becoming billionaires, all races and creeds flourishing, millions of “poor” people in America living better than middle class folks throughout all of history before them, the country becoming the lone world’s super power economically and politically, and then a whole bunch of whiney children who don’t know when enough is enough tearing it all down with no sense of what could replace it. It’s not a systemic issue we face, it’s user error. As it was in the garden of Eden. The rest of the world is struggling simply to survive, struggling to build any platform that might last beyond a charismatic leader, certainly more so than the US (save for all of the people who confuse an elected president with a fascist monarch).

Epictetus, the great philosopher-slave, said that most masters were slaves. Plato, Saint Thomas, Saint Maximus, etc. thought that freedom was hard to win. It required cultivation, ascetic labors, and training. Self-governance, at the individual and social level requires virtue and virtue must be won. As Plotinus has it, we must carve ourselves as a sculptor chisels marble. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all spot on. How does capitalist liberal democracy get in the way of any of that? How does any other system better guarantee the pursuits you outline for happiness? America is a place where, with very basic effort, one can devote oneself to pursue “freedom… hard to win…[that] require(s) cultivation, ascetic labors, and training. Self-governance, at the individual and social level requires virtue and virtue must be won…”.

Just because people don’t understand what remains their sole responsibility, doesn’t mean we need to scrap the system that they are failing to uphold. Government isn’t supposed to provide us with jobs, food, housing, wages - these are new leftist ideas, and liberalism perverting itself.

the anthropology undergirding liberalism says that all people are free just so long as they avoid grave misfortune or disability. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only undergirding liberalism? In what system is that not true? In communist systems you can be disabled and remain safe? In socialist systems? Monarchies? I don’t understand how these are points showing liberal capitalism is worse than anything else, or how it isn’t better than everything else. Or that capitalism is clearly not helpful to more people given the possibility (and reality) of misfortune and eventual disability for everyone in history.

education in modern liberal states often wholly avoids philosophy and ethics. It's main role is to train future "workers and consumers." Freedom is assumed as a default, and so freedom to consume (wealth) becomes the main focus. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’d rather every university be similar to Hillsdale College myself. Isn’t it illiberal, leftist forces that have torn down true liberal arts and the importance of philosophy and ethics? It’s not conservatism that objects or subverts a classical education.

And isn’t our assumed freedom the freedom to generate and consume wealth, not just consume it? Freedom to save money and protect your self in the uncertain future - and protect your family and community?

I’m not sure we are not seeing eye to eye simply because of semantics surrounding my likely less informed notions of liberalism and conservatism and classical education and leftism and tradition and capitalism. But I don’t buy into what sounds like a leftist/ postmodern critique of capitalism, mostly because I’ve never seen anything else that makes any sense at all. We don’t need to eliminate capitalism. We need to raise children that aren’t materialistic, who seek virtue and seek to do good.

I do see the point that liberalism unfettered devours itself. This happens in real time when various liberal factions try to resolve a dispute among themselves - that always ends badly for one or all factions. I think it is conservative forces, the adults in the room, that need to temper these often self-destructive impulses.

Conservatism is recognition of what is good enough to conserve. Good enough is as good as it gets when it comes to man-made institutions, which any government on earth is. We aren’t building the kingdom of God.

Liberalism tempers unfettered traditionalists who don’t realize what needs to change, and conservatism tempers unfettered liberals who don’t realize what needs to be saved. We needed the enlightenment to become truly responsible. As far as I can tell, only modern conservatives understand this. The progressives (and other less influential groups) seek to alleviate themselves of the burden of this new responsibility.

Libertarians are an interesting thing to characterize here. Libertarians take full responsibility for themselves - and that is good. But they also act like society will just take care of itself and so they take no responsibility for the needed power even limited government must wield. So libertarianism won’t work for our billions of people either.

On the view that self-governance requires virtue, which requires positive formation and cultivation, this can be nothing but disastrous. Likewise, it is hardly fair to inculcate people in vice, indeed to give them a positive education in vice (which I would say our system does) and then to say that only problem with the system is that the citizens (the elites as much as the masses) are childish and vice-addled. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you would say the liberal capitalist system is itself, the problem, or a system that exacerbates this problem? I know many, many people have versions of this argument, but none convince me - I find no evidence to support that. The charge is that liberal capitalism inculcates vice - like money is the root of all evil. But it is love of money that is the root of all evil, not just capitalism. We don’t need to eliminate money.

The answer is not new government. The answer is not new economics. Frankly, there is no answer, no hope, nor any reason to care if there is no God, but again, that is another conversation. We are left with the only best solution being the possibility that is inherent in capitalist liberal democracy.

The path out of the cave is rather arduous and requires a virtuous society. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree completely.

I think the analysis of liberal capitalism as an empty promise though is a bit overly simplified.

I would just say one of the many paving stones on that path out of the cave has to be government by consent, and the political right to life, liberty, and property, and another paver is a free marketplace.

But most of all, I can’t conceive of any other way. Certainly nothing conceived or tried in the past promised as much for as many as liberal capitalism.

But which one? This question, asked multiple times, remains unaddressed. — Banno

Your own, of course. By which I mean the one shaped by you, your family, your community, and your nation.

Or, if you prefer, we could discuss the pros and cons of various traditions.

But I have a feeling if I do that I'd just be accused of living in an echo chamber.

For now, I can safely say that I'm confident you would prefer to live in certain environments and would prefer not to live in others.

tradition? There's a naturalistic fallacy lurking here - "we've always done it this way, therefore we ought do it this way". — Banno

Tradition defined as "we've always done it this way, therefore we ought do it this way" is not accurate either.

Traditionalists simply look for the reason it has always been done this way. Traditionalists recognize that the way it’s been done for so long has led to this moment where I get to decide for myself what to do. Traditionalists don’t assume we would come up with something totally different if we had no recourse to tradition. Reasoning is all over the practice of tradition. Enlightenment reasoning is simply its narrow (at times) application when considering traditional ways. Enlightenment reasoning starts when one already seeks to change something to make it new, so it is biased against the tradition. But traditional reasoning isn’t biased against the new, it just takes more proof to convince that a tradition should be ended.

Tradition is not sacred because it is old; it is valuable because it is tested, functional, and morally formative. — Colo Millz

Yes, something like that.

A good argument, and one I have myself borrowed, after Austin, in defence of analytic approaches to language:

...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth making, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon — Austin

But let's look at what you have said, and take it seriously: "it is valuable because it is tested".

Ought we not continue to put it to the test? And continue thereby to demonstrate its worth? If its worth derives from its having been tested, then it seems so.

It's not as if there is but one worthy tradition. Which tradition are we to say has shown its worth by its longevity? If longevity is a mark of value, then The Dao and the Vedas ought have some weight...

So again, beyond the mere chauvinism of "my country right or wrong", what is the justification for adherence to a tradition? Has it been put to the test?

There is the additional problem, that the criteria used to test a tradition are themselves largely determined by that tradition - unless we have some rational, charitable way to test traditions one against the other.

So by all means, adhere to your tradition, but also, put it to the test, be open and honest, and perhaps even try to understand how your tradition is seen by others.

The naturalistic fallacy is of course the mistake of thinking that we can get an ought from an is - that because it is traditional, it is what we ought do; to fail to put one's tradition to the test.

But which one? — Banno

In a political and economic context, which moral good need not be at issue. (It can be, but need not be.)

Progressivism and conservatism can be contrasted for practicality and historical success. Which one fosters sins and which doesn’t need not be the issue. What works?

Clearly the 1776 liberal progressives in Philadelphia made something that works really well. Now 250 years later, clearly there are some traditions that are most reasonable absent significant convincing evidence.

Your own, of course. — Colo Millz

But why? Why not test Zionism against Mohism? How do you move from "This is what we do" to "this is what we ought do?" without falling to the Naturalistic fallacy?

It's not as if there is but one worthy tradition. Which tradition are we to say has shown its worth by its longevity? If longevity is a mark of value, then The Dao and the Vedas ought have some weight...

So again, beyond the mere chauvinism of "my country right or wrong", what is the justification for adherence to a tradition? Has it been put to the test? — Banno

Hey, I'll take the Vedas and Upanishads any day, for sure.

I used to be quite a serious student of a Swami in the line of Sri Swami Dayananda Saraswati.

I don't have the words to describe how highly I regard that body of literature and learning.

To be honest, I almost answered your question "which one?" with this:

At this point I'll take any one.

I literally think Enlightenment liberalism has produced so many abortions at this point that following any of the world's ancient teachings would be better.

But then, extreme examples come to mind, and I don't want to mention them, because I don't want to disturb anyone or ruffle any feathers.

How do you move from "This is what we do" to "this is what we ought do?" — Banno

Is this the question here?

And Vedanta and Toasim are in consideration. There is a ton of wisdom in those traditions. But they are less political and less economic, no?

Modern conservatism and traditionalism versus progressive liberalism - this is politics before morality. So Ancient Greece and Rome might be instructive (although I think the enlightenment thinkers extracted and distilled the fruits of those political systems fairly thoroughly.)

But why? Why not test Zionism against Mohism? How do you move from "This is what we do" to "this is what we ought do?" without falling to the Naturalistic fallacy? — Banno

Why do we have to choose just one? The idea of a state (at least an imperial one) is that it can contain and include many nations thriving within it.

Anyway, all of this remains mere speculation.

The fact remains that I believe that we cannot become un-situated outside of our family, tribe, congregation, community, nation.

We are unable to achieve an Enlightenment "view from nowhere" or u-topos, "no-place".

We have to work with what we have been given.

The interplay between traditions remains unaddressed. Reason or violence?

From over here, it looks as if the problems had in the USA at present are a result not of the breakdown of liberalism, but of it's murder.

"view from nowhere" — Colo Millz

Again, this is not what liberalism calls for. Rather, we can look for that on which we have agreement - the view not from nowhere, but from anywhere.

I literally think Enlightenment liberalism has produced so many abortions at this point that following any of the world's ancient teachings would be better. — Colo Millz

I don’t think we needed any more instruction since the New Testament myself.

But life is proceeding. We need to learn these things all anew in each age. We need to leave something for our children to take up. Enlightenment liberalism contributed some goods.

For those who have the time:

Well that's the first time I've encountered someone presenting a book including "spiritual" exercises in order to become more liberal.

Anyway I'd point out the obvious which is that his "17 reasons to be liberal" are mostly all modern updates of the Christian virtues. He even includes "gratitude", "avoidance of hypocrisy", "humility", "gracefulness" and "redemption"!

So instead of trying to be a liberal Ignatius de Loyola and convert us all to "liberalism", the real question is why is he not literate enough to convert himself to Christianity?

Well that's the first time I've encountered someone presenting a book including "spiritual" exercises in order to become more liberal. — Colo Millz

Then maybe you might benefit from reading more widely on liberalism? There's a strong liberalism in many forms of christianity, for a start, and a liberal tradition in Islam that gets little attention.

Those "Christian" virtues were borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, especially from Stoicism. Christianity might arguably have introduced "charity" as a virtue. That's about it. And his argument isn't aimed at conversion, but at encouraging folk to noticing that their core values are liberal.

Back to what I take as the main question here: How are we to decide between conflicting traditions?

Violence or conversation?