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This is a telling argument only if one believes that classical liberalism in general, and civil liberties in particular, are valuable only because they tend to lead to preferred policies. It is not so telling if one believes that civil liberties are intrinsically valuable.
That's a contradiction that just exposes classical liberalism as self-defeating.
If:
you believe that civil liberties are intrinsically valuable
and you are an individualist
but individualism loses the culture war and loses political power to groups that cooperate to achieve power
and losing in turn compromises the civil liberties you care about
How is the classical liberal going to respond? He could maintain faith that individualism will win, despite the fact that individualism is an asymmetrically-distributed personality trait predominantly held by the declining demographic of white men, and not a universal value. Or, he could just decide to lose gracefully. But there's no path to victory there.
If by "individualist" you mean complete loner who cannot work with and stand anyone else, you are right. There are such people, but they are few in number and do not tend to care about politics.
Actual classical liberals were, in their time, succesfully organizing on large scale and did not saw it as compromising of their principles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Corn_Law_League
Voluntary organization and the whole concept of a 'civil society' is actually central to classical liberal philosophy and practice.
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I think that's a false choice. Many people cherish free speech. Indeed, if we had true free speech, I suspect the right would notch a lot more cultural victories as there would be far more pushback on social media etc. Why are most of us even here to begin with? Censorship on major platforms like reddit.
So the issue isn't civil liberties. It's that classical liberalism has failed utterly to safeguard the principles that it wishes to uphold. In short, it's not enough to want something. You must also actively create the space for it. This is where the differences from the old, libertarian-leaning right that Cowen belongs to and the New Right begin to emerge.
Many on the New Right wouldn't even blink twice about using the state to force private companies to censor less, or to mandate viewpoint diversity in universities by using state power. But that would be sacrilege if you're a classical liberal. So you "lose beautifully" instead. Such an approach has been an utter failure for the past few decades and the New Right has drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Expecting this to cash out into culture war victories is rather optimistic.
As long as “true free speech” doesn’t supersede exit rights, people will quietly self-select away from the witches. Most of them will quite openly seek out the likeminded. The filter bubble doesn’t rely on top-down censorship, even though it can benefit from it.
China’s social credit is an attempt at the converse. Speech isn’t free at all, but interaction with the party line is mandatory. Participants are thus subjected to the filter. This is intolerable to the classical liberals, as well as the libertarians (and thus some of the New Right). Others among the neoreactionaries and traditionalists, not so much. Creating their own sphere is only worthwhile if they can keep people in it.
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Would it? It would certainly be sacrilege to a modern libertarian, who tend to not be overly concerned with threats to individual liberty from powerful non-state actors. But I am not sure if that is necessarily 100% true of classical liberals.
Edit: Eg, Mill wrote at length about the threat to liberty from non-state actors, esp society at large, and Adam Smith was far more friendly to the welfare state than are libertarians. So, libertarian beliefs are not entirely congruent with classical liberal beliefs.
Almost no one cherishes "free speech" -- most people cherish free speech for themselves, but not so much for those with whom they disagree. They cherish free speech instrumentally, not intrinsically. Which is really not cherishing free speech at all.
That's probably correct and a depressing thought.
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