3 ms·

I have a thing related to this. i firmly believe that people are not reading books. At least not the old books on important subjects. I rarely meet 'educated'

I have a thing related to this. i firmly believe that people are not reading books. At least not the old books on important subjects. I rarely meet 'educated' people who read books. I believe that the liberals in particular have lost their way intellectually post-World War II. There used to be Great Intellectuals and widespread public debates e.g. Isaiah Berlin. Today there is nothing. Maybe in place of that there is a smug contentment that we've the right answers, that probably is real. In my internet travels I've seen that people will vehemently defend the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yet they have not read it. It is a single page of text. It is easy to mythologize a text that you haven't read. I feel like modern Liberals are becoming like the folk who didn't know Latin but received audience from the priest. If you can't read a single page but stick up for Human Rights, then you are an idiot in the most literal sense (the original meaning of the word 'idiot' from the Greeks). These people certainly won't have read J.S Mill's On Liberty, or the counter arguments. tldr; Read more old books.

Aloha 9y ago
I don't think its just liberals - I've met as many conservatives who repeat whatever nostrums and slogans the talking heads tell them to - but cant justify or explain why they are the correct answer - and just like liberals, they're certain of the righteousness and justness of their cause. In my humble opinion, the problem is authoritarianism - left or right doesnt matter - its dangerous - the big concern I see, is historically liberals are rather effective at governing, so a left wing authoritarian movement has teeth, when a right wing one may not.
- observation 9y ago
  You're quite correct on the dogmatism, but I didn't mean 'Democrat' when I said 'Liberal'. I meant 'Liberal' in the old sense which is in a nutshell the politics of the upper middle class. In my view Authoritarian is something in demand because of poor rulership. People sense that cracks are opening up in society and then they become more authoritarian because they sense that aggressive actions may be required to reverse the trend or prevent cracks from widening. If we have good rulers, we have reduced demand for it. We don't, the governing of Europe and the United States is shockingly bad in comparison to the past. That's not a reference to Trump, it's been a slow rot and it's been systemic. Thiel has been talking about this in his videos on Youtube, there is a basic decline in the ability of government to, putting it bluntly: get shit done.

Aloha 9y ago

I don't think its just liberals - I've met as many conservatives who repeat whatever nostrums and slogans the talking heads tell them to - but cant justify or explain why they are the correct answer - and just like liberals, they're certain of the righteousness and justness of their cause. In my humble opinion, the problem is authoritarianism - left or right doesnt matter - its dangerous - the big concern I see, is historically liberals are rather effective at governing, so a left wing authoritarian movement has teeth, when a right wing one may not.

observation 9y ago
You're quite correct on the dogmatism, but I didn't mean 'Democrat' when I said 'Liberal'. I meant 'Liberal' in the old sense which is in a nutshell the politics of the upper middle class. In my view Authoritarian is something in demand because of poor rulership. People sense that cracks are opening up in society and then they become more authoritarian because they sense that aggressive actions may be required to reverse the trend or prevent cracks from widening. If we have good rulers, we have reduced demand for it. We don't, the governing of Europe and the United States is shockingly bad in comparison to the past. That's not a reference to Trump, it's been a slow rot and it's been systemic. Thiel has been talking about this in his videos on Youtube, there is a basic decline in the ability of government to, putting it bluntly: get shit done.