In a way, it did, yes. We had politicians who prioritized “working with those across the aisle” over representing the interests of those they claimed to represent.The appearance of good government was more important than actual good government. “Appearing too liberal” was something to deny, be ashamed of, distance themselves from. Why not be unabashed in our positions? The other side does. They care little for how they sound or how they appear? Working well with others-they could care less.
Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023Liked by Toby Rogers
Much needed essay Toby. Liberalism just too broad and corruptible to be a viable world view label. I moved to sticking to simpler clearer principles so that no political party or change in cultural tone can adulterate and abuse them:
Freedom. Personal sovereignty with rights and boundaries we protect. National sovereignty with boundaries we protect. Embracing fully the American Constitution and Bill of rights. Anti-war. Pro-Diplomacy. Separation of Church and State. Separation of Corporations and Government. Limited Goverment. And so on.
Toby I always get a kick out of your brief and regular posts on X. Brutally candid observations about the realities we face and that are coming on down the pike. And often with dark humor.
Liberalism is flawed because conceiving of freedom as "the right not to be interfered with" invariably leads to private monopolies and the imposition of self-serving policies that exploit others. The free market only gives the benefits we associate with free markets when it is perfectly competitive. The answer I believe is for the public authority to regulate economic and political life in line with the natural law. We need Toryism, i.e., classical conservatism, to avoid the pitfalls of liberalism and the stakeholder fascism that grows out of it.
Ever heard of Douglas Social Credit? It's a monetary reform movement in favour of the individual in a way that decentralizes power to everyone. It's the solution we need and the answer to the liberal-fascist conundrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgVHlOVdcM&t=
Nov 3, 2023·edited Nov 3, 2023Liked by Toby Rogers
Please look at this critique. While most of your essay is correct, your
summary of the "Marxian critique" is completely inaccurate. You paint us Marxists as indistinguishable from right wing anti-monopolist populists who agree with Adam Smith that the problem comes from differences in "talent" (where did Marx talk about THAT?)?! Our theory of why capital concentrates in just a few eugenicist billionaires' hands is based on far more solid grounds, like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as the organic composition of capital rises. Your rendition of Marx sounds more like his rival Proudhon, against which Marx joked that P's belief that we can have capitalism without monopoly, is just like the belief that you can have Catholicism without the Pope. And this superficial dismissal of our critique leads you to falsely claim that all we need to do is to renew liberalism, in some form which you do not delineate, rather than socialism (which I believe our movement absolutely needs). https://bmccproftomsmith7.substack.com/p/yes-drs-malone-and-rogers-liberalism
Great! But does this mean you're actually going to READ Karl Marx's THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, rather than continue to confuse it with THE PHILOSOPHY OF POVERTY?
The two primary problems with liberalism are, well ... three major problems ... 1. Voting has been expanded to way too many people, people who are ignorant and have no business voting for leaders who can change our laws, 2. corporations, 3. global free trade.
I really enjoy your writing. Thank you. My curiosity has turned towards the idea/theory of Rule by Elites. I also have become aware of the theory of cyclic global catastrophism based on periodic interactions between the galactic center, our star and earths geomagnetic shield. Our shield appears to have entered into an exponential decline which puts us into the red zone for impending global catastrophe. My theory is that, there exists among the ruling elite, a core group that is aware of this cycle and has learned how to cultivate humanity in between the disasters. As we enter the red zone, they abscond (to where I'm not sure, underground?). They have learned the practice and habit of NOT worrying. They are the Original Preppers (OP). When all the chaos settles, they reemerge to have another go. The crazy we are experiencing now is the result of an ignorant, opportunistic poser class who have no clue or deny our cyclic nature. In the run up to the great reset, humanity suffers greatly, but enough survive to be re-cultivated when the Real Elite re-emerge with new stories to tell.
Liberty cannot coexist with rent-seeking. This is strange and counter-intuitive to capitalism and a “free” society. Of course Rent-seeking applies to many industries but the one it gets it’s namesake from - housing- is a good place to start. You should be free to own as many houses as you wish and rent them for profit right? Yet this is the single most destructive practice to wealth distribution. Laws can be passed that prevent corporations like Blackrock and Opendoor from owning homes altogether. Individuals can also be limited in number of homes owned. This would immediately dump housing prices and make owning a house (wealth) more accessible to a greater population.
"The US (along with our liberal allies in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) won World War II because we were able to build tanks, boats, planes, and bombs faster and better than Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or Imperial Japan."
Wow! You are rewriting history and continuing the demonization of Russia! "Communist Russia" was one of our ALLIES in WW II. They, almost singlehandedly, defeated Nazi Germany. They lost 24 million people in that war which is why even today they have a severe mistrust and hatred of Nazi's, and is one of the reasons they invaded Ukraine.
I noticed that sentence, too, for a different reason. I have a feeling our British friends might not appreciate being relegated to the position of sidekick.
I've only now come across your excellent essay. I have a few quibbles with it, but your excoriation of progressivism is spot on. What I would add is that the Progressive Era began more than a century ago with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Without it we would not have seen the incredible debauching of the currency, and subseqent inflation, that ensued.
Somewhat related, I would argue, has been the dramatic expansion of the Surveillance State over the past several decades, propelled by the ubiquitous iPhone, and Android and other "smart" technologies which have served as 24/7 monitoring devices. (Even now we are unwitting, or at least unwilling, participants.) No development could be less "liberal" or more devastating to our personal freedom than this.
Also remember that the land farmed for Virginia tobacco was Indigenous peoples’ land claimed by the Virginia Company under the doctrine of ‘Christian Discovery’.
The founding fathers did a good job creating guard rails for 18th century government. But we are now in technological 21st century Wild West with inadequate guard rails.
The role of government should still be to create the rule book for society to flourish. Road rules to protect citizens from each other, from corporations, from foreign threats, etc. We need new founding fathers for the 21st century to create updated guard rails for Americans to pursue Life, Liberties, and Happiness.
Reflecting on recent history, we need to waste no time.
Thanks for your good work towards a more perfect union and brighter future.
So there's really this third branch of liberalism — liberal foreign policy — that has always been characterized by empire, conquest, and exploitation. Liberal foreign policy is the dominant and indispensable branch — it makes possible the other two branches of liberalism (political and economic). It fights the wars, secures the resources, and creates the markets. It's driven by the military, intelligence agencies, defense contractors, and the Rebuild & Exploit multinational corporations (Halliburton, BlackRock, et al.). And now that third branch has turned on the American people (and people throughout the developed world) and is colonizing our bodies, our cells, and our DNA — because that's where the most wealth can be extracted.
'I’ve got a feeling that it looks like a sort of Mennonite community with very modest incomes and standards of living.' Yes. All outlined and presented superbly in the late David Fleming's masterful, inspiring 'Lean Logic'. Thank you for your writing.
All systems are destined to fail because of the sinful human heart. We could all be happy even under communism if human beings really were unselfish. But we aren't, so communism is always a totalitarian nightmare. Because of the sinful human heart, we need freedom and a government that is LIMITED, and tied down by a Constitution and separation of powers that restrain each other. This type of government can only flourish when people rein in their sinful impulses, and this generally happens with the Christian (and its root, the Jewish) faith, which accurately diagnoses sin and the remedy. We need to know we are not God, and we need a large percentage of the population at least to accept that and try to live by the ten commandments. As John Adams wrote: "Our government is made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The more people in a civilization who live this way, the more it will flourish. It will never be perfect until Jesus returns. There will always be inequities and inequalities; what we want is opportunity and a people that are compassionate and care about their neighbors...voluntarily. We have no other choice. Either government and the humans in it are God, which consigns the rest of us to abuse and misery, or God is God, and we trust him to work righteousness and justice over the long term. This country is guilty of many sins, but we also have been self-correcting and improved our nation until the last decades when we threw away God. I don't think it's a coincidence that many if not most of the leaders of the COVID resistance and vaccine risk awareness movement are strong believers in God. It gives them courage and also makes them care about about others and this makes them unable to be quiet and willing to risk everything for the truth. Oh, and you have to believe there is truth that can be discovered that everyone can see because it is objective. When we get to make up our own "truth" we get nothing but lies.
With the advancements in wealth brought on by the benefits of economic and political liberalism came the inevitable loss of respect for the limits of our needs. The buy-consume-discard mentality of the western nations has resulted not in enlightened liberalism, but merely stupid over-consumption and the expectation that we all should be able to live like millionaires, while the costs are borne by economic slaves in the developing world. I have always felt uncomfortable with this phenomenon because as a society we stood by while millions in other countries were being bombed, starved, worked like beasts of burden and oppressed by medieval religious strictures. We all cheered the USA on in all its invasions and 'wars for democracy' (which weren't). We have been complicit all our lives and have fed the machine that now turns its beady eyes on us for more of what it wants - obscene levels of profit. Too late now to start trying to drag the stupified masses into consciousness of the true purpose of their humanity and the possibility of agency in turning the political tide. Just look at election results in Australia, USA and Western European nations since 2020 - the more draconian the politician, the more popular they have proved to be. The masses are still always ready to drink the kool-aid that our problems are the result of some evil-doer overseas, not the direct consequence of our pathetic addiction to self-aggrandising spending patterns. Now that 'it' (economic and personal privation) has come to our doorstep, all we are able to dredge up is a wounded sense of entitlement - and this base reaction expresses itself in the ugliest of responses to those who are shouting in the desert that it is time to WAKE UP. In short, to the extent that 'liberalism' was tried, and implemented, the masses have taken it at face value, closing their eyes to the exploitation and evil it was hiding, without seeing it for the Trojan Horse that it necessarily had to have been all along. By comparison, whatever one says about the frugality of the Amish, the end result is that they are impervious to the powers of the ruling elite, since they haven't accepted their bribes. Humanity needs to evolve to a far greater sense of truly Christian 'community' before our economic existence can become clean and guilt-free. We have been manipulated like Pavlov's dogs by those that saw the temporary benefit in allowing us a longer leash to advance technological development. Now that it has been achieved, they no longer need us and like lab-rats we will be destroyed as the useless eaters most of us have let ourselves become. We have done ourselves and our progeny a great disservice by the unbridled greed with which we have eaten from the overlords' hands for the past 150 years.
In a way, it did, yes. We had politicians who prioritized “working with those across the aisle” over representing the interests of those they claimed to represent.The appearance of good government was more important than actual good government. “Appearing too liberal” was something to deny, be ashamed of, distance themselves from. Why not be unabashed in our positions? The other side does. They care little for how they sound or how they appear? Working well with others-they could care less.
Much needed essay Toby. Liberalism just too broad and corruptible to be a viable world view label. I moved to sticking to simpler clearer principles so that no political party or change in cultural tone can adulterate and abuse them:
Freedom. Personal sovereignty with rights and boundaries we protect. National sovereignty with boundaries we protect. Embracing fully the American Constitution and Bill of rights. Anti-war. Pro-Diplomacy. Separation of Church and State. Separation of Corporations and Government. Limited Goverment. And so on.
Toby I always get a kick out of your brief and regular posts on X. Brutally candid observations about the realities we face and that are coming on down the pike. And often with dark humor.
Liberalism is flawed because conceiving of freedom as "the right not to be interfered with" invariably leads to private monopolies and the imposition of self-serving policies that exploit others. The free market only gives the benefits we associate with free markets when it is perfectly competitive. The answer I believe is for the public authority to regulate economic and political life in line with the natural law. We need Toryism, i.e., classical conservatism, to avoid the pitfalls of liberalism and the stakeholder fascism that grows out of it.
Ever heard of Douglas Social Credit? It's a monetary reform movement in favour of the individual in a way that decentralizes power to everyone. It's the solution we need and the answer to the liberal-fascist conundrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgVHlOVdcM&t=
This article will also be of interest: https://www.socred.org/s-c-action/social-credit-views/free-market-follies
Please look at this critique. While most of your essay is correct, your
summary of the "Marxian critique" is completely inaccurate. You paint us Marxists as indistinguishable from right wing anti-monopolist populists who agree with Adam Smith that the problem comes from differences in "talent" (where did Marx talk about THAT?)?! Our theory of why capital concentrates in just a few eugenicist billionaires' hands is based on far more solid grounds, like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as the organic composition of capital rises. Your rendition of Marx sounds more like his rival Proudhon, against which Marx joked that P's belief that we can have capitalism without monopoly, is just like the belief that you can have Catholicism without the Pope. And this superficial dismissal of our critique leads you to falsely claim that all we need to do is to renew liberalism, in some form which you do not delineate, rather than socialism (which I believe our movement absolutely needs). https://bmccproftomsmith7.substack.com/p/yes-drs-malone-and-rogers-liberalism
All good points. Thank you for raising them.
Great! But does this mean you're actually going to READ Karl Marx's THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, rather than continue to confuse it with THE PHILOSOPHY OF POVERTY?
The problem is not the noble ideals of classical (NOT modern) liberalism – the problem is their institutional delivery system.
Argument from authority: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674240944
Argument from logic, with the alternative of kleristocracy described: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947660853
The two primary problems with liberalism are, well ... three major problems ... 1. Voting has been expanded to way too many people, people who are ignorant and have no business voting for leaders who can change our laws, 2. corporations, 3. global free trade.
I really enjoy your writing. Thank you. My curiosity has turned towards the idea/theory of Rule by Elites. I also have become aware of the theory of cyclic global catastrophism based on periodic interactions between the galactic center, our star and earths geomagnetic shield. Our shield appears to have entered into an exponential decline which puts us into the red zone for impending global catastrophe. My theory is that, there exists among the ruling elite, a core group that is aware of this cycle and has learned how to cultivate humanity in between the disasters. As we enter the red zone, they abscond (to where I'm not sure, underground?). They have learned the practice and habit of NOT worrying. They are the Original Preppers (OP). When all the chaos settles, they reemerge to have another go. The crazy we are experiencing now is the result of an ignorant, opportunistic poser class who have no clue or deny our cyclic nature. In the run up to the great reset, humanity suffers greatly, but enough survive to be re-cultivated when the Real Elite re-emerge with new stories to tell.
Liberty cannot coexist with rent-seeking. This is strange and counter-intuitive to capitalism and a “free” society. Of course Rent-seeking applies to many industries but the one it gets it’s namesake from - housing- is a good place to start. You should be free to own as many houses as you wish and rent them for profit right? Yet this is the single most destructive practice to wealth distribution. Laws can be passed that prevent corporations like Blackrock and Opendoor from owning homes altogether. Individuals can also be limited in number of homes owned. This would immediately dump housing prices and make owning a house (wealth) more accessible to a greater population.
"The US (along with our liberal allies in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) won World War II because we were able to build tanks, boats, planes, and bombs faster and better than Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or Imperial Japan."
Wow! You are rewriting history and continuing the demonization of Russia! "Communist Russia" was one of our ALLIES in WW II. They, almost singlehandedly, defeated Nazi Germany. They lost 24 million people in that war which is why even today they have a severe mistrust and hatred of Nazi's, and is one of the reasons they invaded Ukraine.
I noticed that sentence, too, for a different reason. I have a feeling our British friends might not appreciate being relegated to the position of sidekick.
I've only now come across your excellent essay. I have a few quibbles with it, but your excoriation of progressivism is spot on. What I would add is that the Progressive Era began more than a century ago with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Without it we would not have seen the incredible debauching of the currency, and subseqent inflation, that ensued.
Somewhat related, I would argue, has been the dramatic expansion of the Surveillance State over the past several decades, propelled by the ubiquitous iPhone, and Android and other "smart" technologies which have served as 24/7 monitoring devices. (Even now we are unwitting, or at least unwilling, participants.) No development could be less "liberal" or more devastating to our personal freedom than this.
Also remember that the land farmed for Virginia tobacco was Indigenous peoples’ land claimed by the Virginia Company under the doctrine of ‘Christian Discovery’.
See: https://peterderrico.substack.com/p/a-colonial-god-biblical-roots-of
The founding fathers did a good job creating guard rails for 18th century government. But we are now in technological 21st century Wild West with inadequate guard rails.
The role of government should still be to create the rule book for society to flourish. Road rules to protect citizens from each other, from corporations, from foreign threats, etc. We need new founding fathers for the 21st century to create updated guard rails for Americans to pursue Life, Liberties, and Happiness.
Reflecting on recent history, we need to waste no time.
Thanks for your good work towards a more perfect union and brighter future.
KIWIKERRY
So there's really this third branch of liberalism — liberal foreign policy — that has always been characterized by empire, conquest, and exploitation. Liberal foreign policy is the dominant and indispensable branch — it makes possible the other two branches of liberalism (political and economic). It fights the wars, secures the resources, and creates the markets. It's driven by the military, intelligence agencies, defense contractors, and the Rebuild & Exploit multinational corporations (Halliburton, BlackRock, et al.). And now that third branch has turned on the American people (and people throughout the developed world) and is colonizing our bodies, our cells, and our DNA — because that's where the most wealth can be extracted.
'I’ve got a feeling that it looks like a sort of Mennonite community with very modest incomes and standards of living.' Yes. All outlined and presented superbly in the late David Fleming's masterful, inspiring 'Lean Logic'. Thank you for your writing.
All systems are destined to fail because of the sinful human heart. We could all be happy even under communism if human beings really were unselfish. But we aren't, so communism is always a totalitarian nightmare. Because of the sinful human heart, we need freedom and a government that is LIMITED, and tied down by a Constitution and separation of powers that restrain each other. This type of government can only flourish when people rein in their sinful impulses, and this generally happens with the Christian (and its root, the Jewish) faith, which accurately diagnoses sin and the remedy. We need to know we are not God, and we need a large percentage of the population at least to accept that and try to live by the ten commandments. As John Adams wrote: "Our government is made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The more people in a civilization who live this way, the more it will flourish. It will never be perfect until Jesus returns. There will always be inequities and inequalities; what we want is opportunity and a people that are compassionate and care about their neighbors...voluntarily. We have no other choice. Either government and the humans in it are God, which consigns the rest of us to abuse and misery, or God is God, and we trust him to work righteousness and justice over the long term. This country is guilty of many sins, but we also have been self-correcting and improved our nation until the last decades when we threw away God. I don't think it's a coincidence that many if not most of the leaders of the COVID resistance and vaccine risk awareness movement are strong believers in God. It gives them courage and also makes them care about about others and this makes them unable to be quiet and willing to risk everything for the truth. Oh, and you have to believe there is truth that can be discovered that everyone can see because it is objective. When we get to make up our own "truth" we get nothing but lies.
Nutter.
With the advancements in wealth brought on by the benefits of economic and political liberalism came the inevitable loss of respect for the limits of our needs. The buy-consume-discard mentality of the western nations has resulted not in enlightened liberalism, but merely stupid over-consumption and the expectation that we all should be able to live like millionaires, while the costs are borne by economic slaves in the developing world. I have always felt uncomfortable with this phenomenon because as a society we stood by while millions in other countries were being bombed, starved, worked like beasts of burden and oppressed by medieval religious strictures. We all cheered the USA on in all its invasions and 'wars for democracy' (which weren't). We have been complicit all our lives and have fed the machine that now turns its beady eyes on us for more of what it wants - obscene levels of profit. Too late now to start trying to drag the stupified masses into consciousness of the true purpose of their humanity and the possibility of agency in turning the political tide. Just look at election results in Australia, USA and Western European nations since 2020 - the more draconian the politician, the more popular they have proved to be. The masses are still always ready to drink the kool-aid that our problems are the result of some evil-doer overseas, not the direct consequence of our pathetic addiction to self-aggrandising spending patterns. Now that 'it' (economic and personal privation) has come to our doorstep, all we are able to dredge up is a wounded sense of entitlement - and this base reaction expresses itself in the ugliest of responses to those who are shouting in the desert that it is time to WAKE UP. In short, to the extent that 'liberalism' was tried, and implemented, the masses have taken it at face value, closing their eyes to the exploitation and evil it was hiding, without seeing it for the Trojan Horse that it necessarily had to have been all along. By comparison, whatever one says about the frugality of the Amish, the end result is that they are impervious to the powers of the ruling elite, since they haven't accepted their bribes. Humanity needs to evolve to a far greater sense of truly Christian 'community' before our economic existence can become clean and guilt-free. We have been manipulated like Pavlov's dogs by those that saw the temporary benefit in allowing us a longer leash to advance technological development. Now that it has been achieved, they no longer need us and like lab-rats we will be destroyed as the useless eaters most of us have let ourselves become. We have done ourselves and our progeny a great disservice by the unbridled greed with which we have eaten from the overlords' hands for the past 150 years.