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Okay, but then he can't tell me that what the regime did is actually the fault of anti-liberals, he has to pick one!
Sure he can. A semi-liberal regime, by definition, has some illiberal elements. Why can't one blame those elements for illiberal things that the regime does?
Because the dynamics of our system aren't ones where some people are deliberately pushing for liberalism against the pressures of dedicated anti-liberals. When Olaf Scholz says "we have free speech, just not for the far-right", or when the European powers are schemeing to remove anonymity from the Internet, they're not an anti-liberal faction of the elites, they are the same people who made regime be about as close to liberalism as humanity has ever gotten so far.
No, they’re those people’s children. Not the same thing; sometimes wise or well-meaning parents end up raising children who are neither.
Then are we sure the regime is as close to liberalism as humanly possible, and wasn't a generation ago? Can I at least conclude that people who aren't objecting to this aren't liberals?
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