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I think this generalizes further too. Any incumbent group that holds power (or its supporters) will assail newcomers as being [something bad]. For instance, tho

I think this generalizes further too. Any incumbent group that holds power (or its supporters) will assail newcomers as being [something bad]. For instance, those on the political left, which is supported in kind by big tech, might attack some new social media platform as a haven for white supremacists. The charge doesn’t have to be true - it just has to stick in order to scare everyone who fears that label away, and the damage is done. Users, advertisers, web hosts, app stores, and so on will all abandon the platform. It’s an effective way to keep power on the side of the incumbents.

kragen 5y ago
Right, of course. That's how most of civilization worked for 3000 years until we invented liberalism in the 01700s: if you pled for mercy for the heretics or argued that we should hear them out, you were a heretic too. It's a major reason progress was so slow. One of the charges against Socrates at his trial was that he claimed that the Sun was not actually divine, but merely natural matter such as a stone, a charge he denied. Hopefully we can find a way to preserve some sort of enclave of liberalism despite the US abandoning it.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I think what worries me most is how quickly those values can be abandoned. Maybe their demise has been building up silently for a few decades, but it feels like a near sudden collapse from a society that values diversity of speech and thought to one that is much more homogeneous and intolerant. Will classic liberalism always be so easy to dismantle and so difficult and lengthy to rebuild? Maybe historians have seen these cycles previously and have an answer.
  - kragen 5y ago
    No, this is the first time liberalism exists in the historical record. It's possible that the Mohists had developed liberalism before the Burning of the Books and the Burying of the Scholars (thus removing it from the historical record, along with most of the rest of the history of China up to that point) and of course the books that survive from before Gutenberg are relatively few in number. If the Vikings in Essex had a well-developed liberal theory, for example, we'd have no idea of it, because none of their writings survive. (There were lots of slave graves, though, so they probably didn't put it into practice any more than Jefferson did, if they did have it.) There are some less depressing archaeological finds like Çatal Höyük, whose setup suggests hunter-gatherer-like egalitarianism, but we really have no idea what their philosophy was or what kinds of freedoms they enjoyed or valued; by the time cuneiform was invented, Çatal Höyük had been abandoned for 2500 years, after 2200 years of prosperity. But there's really nothing resembling liberalism in classical Rome or Greece or medieval Islam or ancient Egypt or the Vedas, and it's quite a stretch to read liberalism into the Mozi or the Laozi. I don't think it's such a sudden collapse, though. Liberalism has always been just one ideological current among many in the US, and there has never been a time when the US fully lived up to its ideals. Indentured servitude, chattel slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Comstock Act, Prohibition, imprisoning people for pacifism, the Indian schools, J. Edgar Hoover's deep state, the draft, Jim Crow, the imperialist conquest of the Philippines, the Chinese Exclusion Act, mass imprisonment, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the plea-bargaining system, Obama's mass deportations, the Comics Code, civil forfeiture, the FCC granting local media oligopolies, and the MPAA ratings system are all incompatible with liberalism, as I see it. But I do think the last 25 years have seen a decisive turn to the Right in this sense; the main political debate in the US is no longer between liberalism and conservatism, but between progressivism and conservatism, both of which are opposed to liberalism.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Well, it certainly helps all the idiots procreate and survive against all odds. All they need to do is outnumber the smart.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Are you sure about that? In a liberal society, people can find information about birth control, move to the city, and escape bad marriages, three factors that seem to substantially cut down on procreation. Historically, liberalization has been closely associated with reductions in birth rates, though not exclusively so (Iran and PRC being two illiberal countries that achieved low birth rates recently.) And it's one where you can go BASE jumping, try to invent new kinds of flying machine, put a pulsejet on your bicycle, improvise your own shotgun, or take the medicines that you think will be best for you, all of which are pretty bad for survival if you make a lot of bad decisions. Like me. Moreover, it's not clear that liberalism is compatible with democracy; democracy might inevitably succumb to a Pisistratus or a Robespierre, which certainly isn't liberal. Ultimately, i think, liberalism cannot survive the existence of unlimited government power, even if it is democratic. Sooner or later it's two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. (Though, as the handling of the covid epidemic in the US demonstrates, sometimes all three vote to huff spray paint for dinner.) The Mozi begins: > To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed. Finally, most of idiocy is non-genetic. Idiots have always outnumbered the smart and always will, because humans are just sort of inherently pretty idiotic. So it doesn't matter that much who's doing the procreating.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      I am not sure whether I understand you correctly. But "idiots" isn't the main problem that liberalism faces. From historic accounts, many important enemies of liberalism were fairly intelligent chaps, only with a very different set of ideas. Khomeini, Trotsky or Goebbels do not strike one as being stupid or idiots.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

kragen 5y ago

Right, of course. That's how most of civilization worked for 3000 years until we invented liberalism in the 01700s: if you pled for mercy for the heretics or argued that we should hear them out, you were a heretic too. It's a major reason progress was so slow. One of the charges against Socrates at his trial was that he claimed that the Sun was not actually divine, but merely natural matter such as a stone, a charge he denied. Hopefully we can find a way to preserve some sort of enclave of liberalism despite the US abandoning it.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I think what worries me most is how quickly those values can be abandoned. Maybe their demise has been building up silently for a few decades, but it feels like a near sudden collapse from a society that values diversity of speech and thought to one that is much more homogeneous and intolerant. Will classic liberalism always be so easy to dismantle and so difficult and lengthy to rebuild? Maybe historians have seen these cycles previously and have an answer.
- kragen 5y ago
  No, this is the first time liberalism exists in the historical record. It's possible that the Mohists had developed liberalism before the Burning of the Books and the Burying of the Scholars (thus removing it from the historical record, along with most of the rest of the history of China up to that point) and of course the books that survive from before Gutenberg are relatively few in number. If the Vikings in Essex had a well-developed liberal theory, for example, we'd have no idea of it, because none of their writings survive. (There were lots of slave graves, though, so they probably didn't put it into practice any more than Jefferson did, if they did have it.) There are some less depressing archaeological finds like Çatal Höyük, whose setup suggests hunter-gatherer-like egalitarianism, but we really have no idea what their philosophy was or what kinds of freedoms they enjoyed or valued; by the time cuneiform was invented, Çatal Höyük had been abandoned for 2500 years, after 2200 years of prosperity. But there's really nothing resembling liberalism in classical Rome or Greece or medieval Islam or ancient Egypt or the Vedas, and it's quite a stretch to read liberalism into the Mozi or the Laozi. I don't think it's such a sudden collapse, though. Liberalism has always been just one ideological current among many in the US, and there has never been a time when the US fully lived up to its ideals. Indentured servitude, chattel slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Comstock Act, Prohibition, imprisoning people for pacifism, the Indian schools, J. Edgar Hoover's deep state, the draft, Jim Crow, the imperialist conquest of the Philippines, the Chinese Exclusion Act, mass imprisonment, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the plea-bargaining system, Obama's mass deportations, the Comics Code, civil forfeiture, the FCC granting local media oligopolies, and the MPAA ratings system are all incompatible with liberalism, as I see it. But I do think the last 25 years have seen a decisive turn to the Right in this sense; the main political debate in the US is no longer between liberalism and conservatism, but between progressivism and conservatism, both of which are opposed to liberalism.
- bserge 5y ago
  Well, it certainly helps all the idiots procreate and survive against all odds. All they need to do is outnumber the smart.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Are you sure about that? In a liberal society, people can find information about birth control, move to the city, and escape bad marriages, three factors that seem to substantially cut down on procreation. Historically, liberalization has been closely associated with reductions in birth rates, though not exclusively so (Iran and PRC being two illiberal countries that achieved low birth rates recently.) And it's one where you can go BASE jumping, try to invent new kinds of flying machine, put a pulsejet on your bicycle, improvise your own shotgun, or take the medicines that you think will be best for you, all of which are pretty bad for survival if you make a lot of bad decisions. Like me. Moreover, it's not clear that liberalism is compatible with democracy; democracy might inevitably succumb to a Pisistratus or a Robespierre, which certainly isn't liberal. Ultimately, i think, liberalism cannot survive the existence of unlimited government power, even if it is democratic. Sooner or later it's two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. (Though, as the handling of the covid epidemic in the US demonstrates, sometimes all three vote to huff spray paint for dinner.) The Mozi begins: > To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed. Finally, most of idiocy is non-genetic. Idiots have always outnumbered the smart and always will, because humans are just sort of inherently pretty idiotic. So it doesn't matter that much who's doing the procreating.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    I am not sure whether I understand you correctly. But "idiots" isn't the main problem that liberalism faces. From historic accounts, many important enemies of liberalism were fairly intelligent chaps, only with a very different set of ideas. Khomeini, Trotsky or Goebbels do not strike one as being stupid or idiots.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]