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I thought this country was founded on the principles of enlightenment. And the same principles made it a world leader. Now that enlightenment values are activel

I thought this country was founded on the principles of enlightenment. And the same principles made it a world leader. Now that enlightenment values are actively being dismantled what next can we expect?

starchild3001 2y ago
1) Dark enlightenment: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dark-enlightenment-elon-musk https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dark-enlightenment-elon... (Does this ring a bell -- as in Dark MAGA?) 2) The Interview Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in... 3) The philosophy behind Trump’s Dark Enlightenment An English magus of anti-democratic neoreaction has become a touchstone for the alt-right https://archive.is/SWAFE https://archive.is/SWAFE
mmooss 2y ago
I think it starts with undermining the values: Note the disparagement of freedom, of knowledge, science, and education as ways humans can make their world better - even the idea of making the world better and of truth itself; of the rule of law rather than the rule of power, and the embrace of violence, athletics, etc. Notice the contempt for the enlightenment and embrace of ancient Rome and other sub-democratic or dictatorial government. I don't think it's accidental; I think people have a plan to bring down institutions, and it's working so far.
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  It wasn’t the MAGA movement that started dismantling Western culture in the US. That’s been happening from Leftist criticism for generations.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > That’s been happening from Leftist criticism for generations. I'm talking about the principles: freedom, rights, and self-determination as self-evident, essential goods; progress as essential and good (real progress, not padding bank accounts); knowledge as the way humans can change their world; and knowledge provided by science and scholarship. The left has criticized many things as lacking in knowledge and threats to freedom and rights, and the institutions, but not these principles. > It wasn’t the MAGA movement that started dismantling Western culture in the US. It was a branch of conservatives before them, but MAGA has fully embraced it. Look at the denial of freedom and human rights, replaced by a naked, aggressive embrace of oppression and cruelty. Look at the contempt for those things and progress, in the name of power. Look at replacing science with ideological disinformation - at even aggressively destroying science - even when it costs millions of lives, such as during a pandemic. How much blood is on their hands - how many needless deaths? Nobody talks about it.
  - oblio 2y ago
    Do you mean academic Marxists or something? Their impact outside of minor student circles has been 0. And for sure none of those are MAGA or Le Pen or AfD voters...
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  I don't think it's accidental either but the way to understand why it's happening is to ask who benefits from it. In most cases it would seem to be, Putin. He benefits from diminishing US, from stopping US support for democracy all over the world. If the whole world is governed by say 3 dictators they can easily make peace with each other and share the spoils. But they won't because wars will increase their domestic support. Orwell wrote about this.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
luhsprwhk 2y ago
It wasn’t America's principles that made it the world leader at the time—it was the fact that, unlike other major powers, it emerged from the world wars largely unscathed. Both peace settlements following the wars were widely criticized as unstable and unlikely to last, and they didn't.
- starchild3001 2y ago
  I'd think peace after WWII lasted for 77 years (between 1945-2022 until the ukraine war broke out which appears to be the beginning of a new hot war).
  - luhsprwhk 2y ago
    I'd say war became hot again way back when with Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Korea. Proxy wars but wars nonetheless. A major war? Perhaps 2022 was the start of it like you said, that tracks. Hopefully not though.
    - OccamsMirror 2y ago
      I guess it depends how Europe responds to Greenland being invaded.
      - oblio 2y ago
        Europe will respond in 2 ways: 1. Short term: nothing major because it can't at the moment. 2. Long term: build up a military that is a credible military deterrent to the US, probably abandon NATO if the US doesn't, and form alliances with Canada and the UK.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      One difference is that Ukraine is an international, cross-border war of conquest - the kind that was outlawed after WWII and hardly happened since. Vietnam and Korea were civil wars where the US sought no territory. Afghanistan had a different motive, but no conquest was desired.
Barrin92 2y ago
>I thought this country was founded on the principles of enlightenment. I'm gonna be honest, the actual founding fathers as individuals aside, most of the people coming over where arguably running away from the Enlightenment rather than towards it, and a superstitious and fantastical isolationism was the norm, not the exception for most of America's history, while the post WWII leadership role was more of an accident. In some ways, this is old habits reasserting themselves
- wwweston 2y ago
  Reading _First Principles_ by Thomas Ricks a few years ago was an eye opener -- the founding fathers and national civic culture definitely drew deeply from enlightenment thinking and further back classical civics and philosophy. Towards the end of his book, Ricks notes the populist / religious backlash to enlightenment thinking that was already underway by the early 19th century. It's strange to realize the post WWII America most of us have lived may really be exceptional, and how many either don't understand how big a part the liberal order has played in making America great since FDR, or have a different vision of greatness that requires tearing much of what we've enjoyed down.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > may really be exceptional That's a claim of its enemies, who look for any rationalization to destroy the greatest success of its kind in human history - when there isn't even a crisis.
mychael 2y ago
[flagged]
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  How in the world does pardoning multiple fraudsters, kidnapping people for deportation based on their writings in newspapers, threatening to annex other sovereign nations, and threatening to forcibly depopulate an entire nation, at all reflect enlightenment values??
- starchild3001 2y ago
  Unlike Peter Thiel, I see democracy as an essential component of individual liberty. Because once totalitarinism takes root, the next victim is individual liberty -- just read some history. By this measure, the current government is the worst.
- cvz 2y ago
  Donald Trump is currently doing immense damage to the personal liberty of some and to the free expression of all. Every one of the numerous things listed in the article is something that actually happened. I don't know nor do I care whether you believe what you're saying. Donald Trump, a man petty enough to punish a news organization for not saying "gulf of America" and cruel enough to send people to a foreign prison without trial, clearly doesn't.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  Life-long classical liberal here. I don't know how you could arrive at these conclusions today.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mychael 2y ago
    I arrive at these conclusions the same way many of my classically liberal friends and fellow libertarians who support Trump do — by evaluating his actions through the lens of limited government, individual liberty, and fiscal restraint: • DOGE and Fiscal Discipline: The goal of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget, a major libertarian priority. • Freedom of Speech: Consistently opposes online censorship. Appointed FCC commissioners like Ajit Pai and Brendan Carr, both strong defenders of free expression. Signed executive orders aimed at ending federal involvement in censorship. • Deregulation: Slashed hundreds of federal regulations across multiple sectors, reducing government interference in markets and individual enterprise. • Judicial Restraint: Appointed constitutionalist judges committed to limiting federal overreach and upholding individual rights. • Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy: Opposed endless wars, pushed to bring troops home, and resisted entangling the U.S. in new conflicts. • Ross Ulbricht: Publicly pledged to commute the sentence of the Silk Road founder, a major symbolic and substantive gesture for civil liberties and criminal justice reform. How does one call themselves a classical liberal and not support this?
tayo42 2y ago
I was under the impression the US became a world leader mostly because of being in the right place after WW2. It wasn't really a leading country before that?
- starchild3001 2y ago
  Read some Adam Smith (1776 -- Wealth of Nations). How highly he talks about America back then. It was always leading economically.
gscott 2y ago
Dark age?
aredox 2y ago
Enlightenment - and slavery. And the ethnic cleansing of the natives. Americans from the very beginning started playing on words - "all men are equal, but women aren't men, natives aren't citizens, and negros aren't even humans"
- mmooss 2y ago
  Absolutely, but they reject those things now, by following the Enlightenment principles - except for the people attacking the Enlightenment institutions, who are embracing these old prejudices and hatred and oppression.

starchild3001 2y ago

1) Dark enlightenment: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dark-enlightenment-elon-musk https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dark-enlightenment-elon... (Does this ring a bell -- as in Dark MAGA?) 2) The Interview Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in... 3) The philosophy behind Trump’s Dark Enlightenment An English magus of anti-democratic neoreaction has become a touchstone for the alt-right https://archive.is/SWAFE https://archive.is/SWAFE

mmooss 2y ago

I think it starts with undermining the values: Note the disparagement of freedom, of knowledge, science, and education as ways humans can make their world better - even the idea of making the world better and of truth itself; of the rule of law rather than the rule of power, and the embrace of violence, athletics, etc. Notice the contempt for the enlightenment and embrace of ancient Rome and other sub-democratic or dictatorial government. I don't think it's accidental; I think people have a plan to bring down institutions, and it's working so far.

zmgsabst 2y ago
It wasn’t the MAGA movement that started dismantling Western culture in the US. That’s been happening from Leftist criticism for generations.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > That’s been happening from Leftist criticism for generations. I'm talking about the principles: freedom, rights, and self-determination as self-evident, essential goods; progress as essential and good (real progress, not padding bank accounts); knowledge as the way humans can change their world; and knowledge provided by science and scholarship. The left has criticized many things as lacking in knowledge and threats to freedom and rights, and the institutions, but not these principles. > It wasn’t the MAGA movement that started dismantling Western culture in the US. It was a branch of conservatives before them, but MAGA has fully embraced it. Look at the denial of freedom and human rights, replaced by a naked, aggressive embrace of oppression and cruelty. Look at the contempt for those things and progress, in the name of power. Look at replacing science with ideological disinformation - at even aggressively destroying science - even when it costs millions of lives, such as during a pandemic. How much blood is on their hands - how many needless deaths? Nobody talks about it.
- oblio 2y ago
  Do you mean academic Marxists or something? Their impact outside of minor student circles has been 0. And for sure none of those are MAGA or Le Pen or AfD voters...
galaxyLogic 2y ago
I don't think it's accidental either but the way to understand why it's happening is to ask who benefits from it. In most cases it would seem to be, Putin. He benefits from diminishing US, from stopping US support for democracy all over the world. If the whole world is governed by say 3 dictators they can easily make peace with each other and share the spoils. But they won't because wars will increase their domestic support. Orwell wrote about this.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

luhsprwhk 2y ago

It wasn’t America's principles that made it the world leader at the time—it was the fact that, unlike other major powers, it emerged from the world wars largely unscathed. Both peace settlements following the wars were widely criticized as unstable and unlikely to last, and they didn't.

starchild3001 2y ago
I'd think peace after WWII lasted for 77 years (between 1945-2022 until the ukraine war broke out which appears to be the beginning of a new hot war).
- luhsprwhk 2y ago
  I'd say war became hot again way back when with Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Korea. Proxy wars but wars nonetheless. A major war? Perhaps 2022 was the start of it like you said, that tracks. Hopefully not though.
  - OccamsMirror 2y ago
    I guess it depends how Europe responds to Greenland being invaded.
    - oblio 2y ago
      Europe will respond in 2 ways: 1. Short term: nothing major because it can't at the moment. 2. Long term: build up a military that is a credible military deterrent to the US, probably abandon NATO if the US doesn't, and form alliances with Canada and the UK.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    One difference is that Ukraine is an international, cross-border war of conquest - the kind that was outlawed after WWII and hardly happened since. Vietnam and Korea were civil wars where the US sought no territory. Afghanistan had a different motive, but no conquest was desired.

Barrin92 2y ago

>I thought this country was founded on the principles of enlightenment. I'm gonna be honest, the actual founding fathers as individuals aside, most of the people coming over where arguably running away from the Enlightenment rather than towards it, and a superstitious and fantastical isolationism was the norm, not the exception for most of America's history, while the post WWII leadership role was more of an accident. In some ways, this is old habits reasserting themselves

wwweston 2y ago
Reading _First Principles_ by Thomas Ricks a few years ago was an eye opener -- the founding fathers and national civic culture definitely drew deeply from enlightenment thinking and further back classical civics and philosophy. Towards the end of his book, Ricks notes the populist / religious backlash to enlightenment thinking that was already underway by the early 19th century. It's strange to realize the post WWII America most of us have lived may really be exceptional, and how many either don't understand how big a part the liberal order has played in making America great since FDR, or have a different vision of greatness that requires tearing much of what we've enjoyed down.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > may really be exceptional That's a claim of its enemies, who look for any rationalization to destroy the greatest success of its kind in human history - when there isn't even a crisis.

mychael 2y ago

[flagged]

aprilthird2021 2y ago
How in the world does pardoning multiple fraudsters, kidnapping people for deportation based on their writings in newspapers, threatening to annex other sovereign nations, and threatening to forcibly depopulate an entire nation, at all reflect enlightenment values??
starchild3001 2y ago
Unlike Peter Thiel, I see democracy as an essential component of individual liberty. Because once totalitarinism takes root, the next victim is individual liberty -- just read some history. By this measure, the current government is the worst.
cvz 2y ago
Donald Trump is currently doing immense damage to the personal liberty of some and to the free expression of all. Every one of the numerous things listed in the article is something that actually happened. I don't know nor do I care whether you believe what you're saying. Donald Trump, a man petty enough to punish a news organization for not saying "gulf of America" and cruel enough to send people to a foreign prison without trial, clearly doesn't.
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
Life-long classical liberal here. I don't know how you could arrive at these conclusions today.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mychael 2y ago
  I arrive at these conclusions the same way many of my classically liberal friends and fellow libertarians who support Trump do — by evaluating his actions through the lens of limited government, individual liberty, and fiscal restraint: • DOGE and Fiscal Discipline: The goal of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget, a major libertarian priority. • Freedom of Speech: Consistently opposes online censorship. Appointed FCC commissioners like Ajit Pai and Brendan Carr, both strong defenders of free expression. Signed executive orders aimed at ending federal involvement in censorship. • Deregulation: Slashed hundreds of federal regulations across multiple sectors, reducing government interference in markets and individual enterprise. • Judicial Restraint: Appointed constitutionalist judges committed to limiting federal overreach and upholding individual rights. • Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy: Opposed endless wars, pushed to bring troops home, and resisted entangling the U.S. in new conflicts. • Ross Ulbricht: Publicly pledged to commute the sentence of the Silk Road founder, a major symbolic and substantive gesture for civil liberties and criminal justice reform. How does one call themselves a classical liberal and not support this?

tayo42 2y ago

I was under the impression the US became a world leader mostly because of being in the right place after WW2. It wasn't really a leading country before that?

starchild3001 2y ago
Read some Adam Smith (1776 -- Wealth of Nations). How highly he talks about America back then. It was always leading economically.

gscott 2y ago

Dark age?

aredox 2y ago

Enlightenment - and slavery. And the ethnic cleansing of the natives. Americans from the very beginning started playing on words - "all men are equal, but women aren't men, natives aren't citizens, and negros aren't even humans"

mmooss 2y ago
Absolutely, but they reject those things now, by following the Enlightenment principles - except for the people attacking the Enlightenment institutions, who are embracing these old prejudices and hatred and oppression.