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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33243 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Outside of what DOGE has been up to, how are "things moving very fast"?

There is at least the cluster of things that amount to a rapid shredding of the previous arrangement where the US has a network of allied nations that enthusiastically follow it as a Big Good/moral leader - see the tariff tussles, and the public snubbing of Ukraine and especially the EU over the Ukraine war. All the German papers have spent the past few days apoplectic about Vance's comments at the Munich security conference, ranging from NO Uing Europe with accusations of democratic backsliding and comparisons to the Soviet Union to declaring that they will not have a seat at the table in upcoming negotiations over Ukraine. As much as I get a "you tell them, bro" feeling about those remarks, this does amount to kicking the lapdog for no good reason.

In terms of internal politics, there are also the ICE deportation raids and the drama about Adams discussed downthread.

I feel sorry for OP. Classical liberals have already left the running decades ago, when they failed to formulate a response to the logic of fear-driven engagement bait from either side.

None of the points you listed strike me as particularly momentous. It all just seems like another flavor of business as usual (“ICE deportation raids” in particular could be rephrased as “enforcing existing laws”).

My position that “nothing ever happens” is falsifiable. If Trump were to, say:

  • cancel the midterms or the next presidential election and declare that he (or his appointed successor) would stay in power indefinitely,

  • or immediately halt all legal immigration to the US,

  • or even just implement any of the more hardline social policies from Project 2025, like making pornography illegal,

then I would say that yes, things are happening and maybe things really will be different this time. But nothing Trump has done so far meets that threshold for me. His gestures seem largely performative at this point.

I mean, if Trump does bring about a hybrid regime, you wouldn't expect him to do any of those things. I'm far from convinced he will, I'm also not very upset at the possibility.

I agree, literally nothing has happened yet.

There is at least the cluster of things that amount to a rapid shredding of the previous arrangement where the US has a network of allied nations that enthusiastically follow it as a Big Good/moral leader

Was that why? Or was it because the US was the strong horse?

Classical Liberalism was doomed from the start. It’s basically unilateral disarmament in the face of opposition and therefore fails in the face of resistance. The ideology is that everyone lays down together and has debates, but don’t try to take power to claim victory. This just means you aren’t seeking power, and says nothing about your enemies. To the contrary, they will seek power, and they will use that power once they have it.

The kinds of liberalism we’ve been used to in the past only worked on gentleman’s agreements, and that only works as long as both gentlemen are in broad agreement on the issues. Once it becomes clear they disagree on substance, the power game begins in earnest.

I'm wondering why it got off the ground then. Few remember but it was very explicitly a banned ideology in continental Europe before it won.

I'm wondering why it got off the ground then.

The argument I usually see, including from some defenders of liberalism, is that it's due to the Thirty Years' War. Specifically, that the Peace of Westphalia was a pragmatic decision, rather than a principled one, motivated by the massive bloodshed and destruction producing only stalemate. Further, cuius regio, eius religio only ended the religious wars as external, interstate conflicts. There was still plenty of religious conflict within many states — albeit less bloody, due to smaller scale; and much shorter, due to the (increasingly centralized) state being on one side. These conflicts, in turn, became a problem due to the economic changes Europe was undergoing, with mercantilism evolving toward capitalism (intolerance of Catholic or Protestant minorities is bad for business).

When it comes to choosing or building ideologies, people tend to find ways to justify and rationalize the things they're already doing. Thus, the need to find an ideology that justified not invading your heretic neighbors to impose the true faith, not oppressing minority denominations too hard; as well as all the changes in the structure of government (driven in turn by changes in military technology — the end of castles was the end of feudalism proper, and states with labor-intensive militaries are generally more democratic than those with more capital-intensive ones) and economics. Liberalism provided just that. (Limited) religious tolerance went from an unprincipled, pragmatic accommodation with the realities on the ground to a clear application of moral and political principles.

(Of course, it then turns out that the kind of religious pluralism envisioned has ultimately proved unworkable in more than one way.)

Classical liberalism emerged out of centuries of vicious religious conflict as a truce between warring parties that had just beaten each other to a bloody pulp and were too tired to continue, and functioned so long as a cultural memory of that struggle endured that was strong enough to put down any would-be challengers. Now that those lessons have been forgotten (because [the other side] violated the truce first, everyone says) they will have to be re-learned the hard way.

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