This belief that any critique of a thing must by necessity imply a desire to ban, outlaw or prevent the thing from taking place drives me nuts. And you're entirely right -- it's a fundamentally authoritarian impulse to believe that all things must either be above critique, or else they should be outlawed, i.e. that all things that I would wish people to stop doing, I "should" want to outlaw.
This would only be true for someone who placed ZERO value on human freedom and agency, and who therefore sees no downside to banning things left and right on even the flimsiest of evidence.
A good example that I run into pretty often, is people who claim that having a blanket policy of not wanting to date black women -- isn't racist but instead just "personal preference". And then if you point out that it might well be a preference, but no rule exists that says "preferences cannot be racist" -- and given most reasonable definitions of "racism", judging all members of a given group negatively on account of their race, is in fact racism, they'll invariably respond with: "So you're saying people should be forced to date someone they're not attracted to? Don't you respect consent?????"
But I wasn't saying any law should prevent this. Nor was I saying that people who engage in this form of racism should in some way be coerced into dating anyone in particular. All I was saying was that considering (for example) all black women to be automatically unsuitable as partners, is in fact racist. If that's someones preference, then that person has a racist preference.
I think you are, perhaps, projecting a more complicated/better counter-argument than actually exists on the post-liberal side - but that's a nitpick since it doesn't change anything of substance.
I won't argue that you're using "no true scottsman" I'll argue that Liberalism itself is inherently unstable and incapable of supporting the philosophical process. That liberalism cannot justify it's own moral foundation. To have a universally agreed upon moral foundation is to constrain a society, even attempting to constrain society to "open dialogue" is a constraint upon the individual. Constraints that are inherently inimical to the liberal ideal of "maximizing personal freedom." So it always attacks it's own moral foundation: Christianity, Lockianism, Whatever.
Fundamentally, liberalism attacks hierarchy and structure, but does not build anything to replace what it tears down. Liberalism therefore eventually attacks it's own moral substrate as social taboos and social structure are treated as impositions upon it's hyper-individualist worldview. Then without structure, liberalism decays into bigotry and totalitarianism as it has no moral foundation any more. Having rid itself of such a constraint. Eventually liberalism takes the form of "what's popular with the crowd right now," and will oscillate between wildly different positions: "the constitution is a racist document made by racist slave owners that must be abolished," to "the constitution is a cornerstone of the liberty we in this country possess."
Ultimately Liberalism boils down to power-dynamics. Whoever has the power to sway the crowd rules, regardless of what lies are told to maintain that power. The hyper-individualistic nature of liberalism and lack of a moral framework means the momentary will of the crowd becomes sacrosanct. "Good" becomes synonymous with "popular" in the liberal mind. These words are banned, now those words are banned, "you can't do that, it's unpopular!"
As a result, liberalism quickly decays to the most vicious, cruel, and vindictive sociopaths available to it, while it's philosophical core dissolves. It's an ideology doomed to it's own failure by it's own egalitarian and hyper-individualist nature. The history of liberalism is one of tragedy, decay, and blood. That's why you have libs in the street cheering for the murder of intellectual moderates like Charlie Kirk for the crime of attempting open dialogue. Liberalism is an ideology of hate: hate for the self, hate for others, hate for the exceptional.
In the end Liberalism represents only the ability of the sociopathic leaders to leverage the crowd for personal momentary advantage. An ideology that possesses its adherents and uses them as tools. An ideology that considers words merely to be tools useful for deceiving it's enemies. Excellent video on the topic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY8pAoSoBXo
Liberalism was a mistake, it devolves into Leftism. John Locke was wrong. Egalitarianism breeds hatred, resentment, and a murderous thirst for the blood of the exceptional. It’s an ideology of mediocrity. Liberalism is always one murder away from equality.
This is produced an ideology of blood lust with no foundation but social acceptance. It deserves to be crushed and wiped from the annals of history and philosophy. If it has brought us to the end of our civilization, it was a mistake from the very beginning.
Why do humans deserve equal rights in your worldview?
"They just do" and "because they're PEOPLE!!!" and "well, I think they do" are all bad answers to that question. If you can't answer the foundational "why" of your moral philosophy, then it's not an effective moral philosophy for governing a society.
But of what? It’s a Gish Gallop conflating a lot of things. Way too many to address coherently and that’s the point. Liberalism doesn’t constrain people to open dialogue, just to take the first one. It protects the right not to express one’s views or listen to anybody else’s.
I agree that liberalism does not and should not compel participation in dialogue. However, this creates a structural vulnerability: a system that relies on open dialogue to test and refine its principles cannot guarantee that such dialogue will actually occur. When individuals or groups withdraw from engagement (whether through apathy, distrust, or strategic refusal) the process by which liberalism clarifies and defends its own concepts weakens.
In that environment, competing frameworks can redefine key terms like harm, coercion, and freedom without being effectively challenged. This is not because liberalism permits coercion, but because it cannot require the conditions under which its own principles are sustained. The liberal response, then, is not to accept this passively, but to actively cultivate and incentivize the norms and institutions that sustain good faith dialogue.
Liberalism is built on a small set of core principles, but those principles are always interpreted through language, culture and dialogue.
Because interpretation shifts over time, liberalism cannot rely on past formulations alone. But rather, it must continually clarify and defend what it means by its own principles in the present.
Postliberal and postmodern critiques gain traction not because they are correct, but because they exploit moments where liberalism fails to clearly articulate or defend those meanings.
A liberal system cannot assume its superiority, but rather it must continually justify and clarify its principles against competing frameworks that reinterpret or reject them.
Therefore, the task is not to abandon liberalism or return to a fixed past version, but to actively maintain and refine its conceptual foundations so they remain persuasive and coherent in current conditions.
Of course it can count on people participating. That’s why we need liberalism in the first place. Because people will always factionalise and fight over it. The open dialogue method of doing this is better than the bloodshed way.
The point about not constraining people to have open dialogue is the principle that not everybody wants to be an activist or enter debates and they have a right to be apolitical or just keep their views to themselves. There will always be way more people willing to argue for any position than can possibly all be heard.
I agree participation will always exist at some level. My concern is whether it remains effective for liberalism’s purposes. Not all participation sustains liberal norms equally. If engagement becomes more fragmented or adversarial, liberal arguments may still be present, but as one voice among many rather than meaningfully persuasive.
The issue is that "every one can do what they want" is a moral philosophy that fails to answer the most crucial underlying question in it's own system: "why?"
That in addition to the fact that failing to enforce reasonable social norms leads to the complete decay of social stability and cohesion. "People can speak whatever language they want whether they're understood or not" might be a pro-liberal position, but sure as shit doesn't make for a nation-state or an economic system that functions. Liberalism can only exist on the back of a more complete philosophical foundation, and will ALWAYS attack that foundation on the basis that it constrains individual behavior.
Do you have an actual point or are you just throwing out a large count of ridicolous claims with neither an attempt to justify any of them, nor a coherent overall point?
You haven't argued anything at all. You've made a lot of random largely unconnected claims but made no attempt to support any of them.
You are right in pointing out that liberalism in excess doesn’t result in illiberalism, as if it were an Aristotelian virtue that resides on an continuum between two vices. (Though thats largely because its as an inherent mechanism for self correction, its not a single value.
(you might find some phiosophical concepts that stilloperate that way, but thats beside the point).
Though the Pinkerian in me might want to nuance that statement a bit, as the four angels described in The better Nature of Our Narture that undergird liberal democracy CAN be taken to the excess, such as the moral instinct and empathy, unrestrained by reason and our institutions is the root of any religions and ideological moral panic. It is the environment that incentivise how these, in game theoretical terms, play out and right now in substackistan, podcastistan and x, the norms that has traditionally created a positive environment of expression are absent. As someone that love discussing the content of ideas this particular environment is fatigue inducing.
The liberal turned illiberal can indeed be said to not practice his liberalism, but the underlying motivations remain the same.
The whole post and the discourse that follows simply boils down to Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. Any social system needs to invoke some sort of repression or guard-rails to preserve its own existence, and liberalism is no different. Dissenters that dig at the liberal foundation must be squashed, and discourse by necessity needs to be prescribed to a certain list of subjects that do not infringe on core liberal principles.
Post-liberal stance will attack this as an inherent inconsistency, hence "paradox" of Popper. Another blindspot of liberalism is that it exists as an outgrowth of Christian-derived civil society created in Europe, hence it becomes a socially and historically contingent force, which through the process of continuous secularisation and erosion of any hierarchic principles and religious tolerance (which equates with absence of any moral prescriptions that might have religious roots), destroys the very implied premises that allow it to work in the first place. A pluralistic society is one which by definition cannot accommodate liberalism, as other moral systems and world views are absolute in their framing, and do not consider other views as legitimate, thus killing any option of a debate.
Social decay, devaluation of human life, principle of pleasure and utilitarianism begin to triumph, as liberal metaphysics is so barren and solipsistic as to not present anything worthwhile other than the material here and now, and where pretence of rational discourse strips out inherent meaning that is present in a non-liberal setting. Scientism, technocracy and ethnic pluralism emerge as new forces that shape the discourse, and liberalism, in its endeavour to appear as a neutral arbiter, admits its own enemies to the table, and surrenders the territory from which it sprung up.
No, liberalism protects the right to criticise liberalism. Popper was very clear that his paradox referred to illiberal actions - coercion - not to speech.
Please read what I wrote carefully, as your hasty reply shows you have not: I wrote "Christian-derived society" - it means it relies on sentiments and moral framework originating from it, and it quite clearly dispenses with the belief part. Your link is a non-sequitur.
If liberalism protects the right to have itself criticised, will it protect itself from being abolished, if the criticism happens to be correct? We keep running into a problem of speech being treated with ever-greater suspicion, and the reasoning that "calls to violence" are now equal to actual attacks, the limits of speech are being actively prescribed - please see Canada/US/UK/Australia/France/Germany/Finland?etc. Each country will have cases that point to this and the ever greater restrictions on speech.
If anything, last 30 years of liberalism has been a mission in enabling of immoral forces that clothe themselves in human freedom, but refuse to acknowledge the damage to the social structure that keeps it afloat. I doubt that discourse as proposed by liberals actually exists in reality, and the attempt to make reality fit are becoming ever more grotesque.
"a refusal to recognise the defining liberal distinction between criticism and coercion."
The conflict arises when people claim that they are being coerced to violate the free practice of their religion with regard to queer and transgender folk. For example, they maintain that having to acknowledge (which they mislabel as "celebrate") same-sex marriage is a violation of their freedom of religious belief/practice. On the other side, a person will claim dignitary harm if they are discriminated against because of their identity. The result is a face-off between harms, with one being borne, and the other alleviated.
Yes, liberalism protects against both of those. Nobody can be coerced to affirm same sex marriage as legitimate if they don’t think it is. Or opposite sex marriage if it comes to that.
So then liberalism does not protect against dignitary harm, since it allows it to occur in this instance--though it does not permit dignitary harm with regard to a person not affirming an interracial/inter-religious marriage, or a marriage with ethnic or age non-alignment.
That is correct, yes. There are no protections against having one's feelings hurt and that is very important. It enabled ideas once found appalling and deeply offensive like "Perhaps there is no God" and "It's OK to be gay" to be spoken and argued for. We remain free to think and say that anybody who does not respect someone else religion, marriage or competence is an arsehole, but they must be allowed to argue this. This is how such ideas are best defeated. The best book on this specifically is Jon Rauch's Kindly Inquisitors. He looks at how antisemiti and homophobic views were best reduced by allowing them to be spoken and responded to.
Dignitary harm is not equivalent to "having one's feelings hurt." Getting one's feelings hurt happens, and a person must deal with it, and try not to do it to others.
"they must be allowed to argue this"
Agreed. But they cannot inflict dignitary harm or emotional distress, which are steps beyond hurting a person's feelings.
Wonderful clarity of thought, as always Helen. Thank you. If I have understood your argument correctly, it follows that a tendency to link the rise in populism to ´liberal overreach’ (as, for example, here: https://cirsd.org/horizon-article/misinterpreting-1989-populism-and-liberal-overreach/) is grossly misleading, for the simple reason that as soon as liberalism ‘overreaches’ and begins to coerce for any reason other than to comply with the ‘harm principle’, it immediately cease to be liberal.
1) If Christians behaving as bad Christians, not loving, not charitable, not forgiving, gives rise to atheism,
2) If capitalists behaving as bad capitalists, instead of trying to compete on the free market, rather seek sweatheart deals with the government, seek monopolies, and that gives rise to socialism,
3) Then perhaps liberals behaving as bad liberals, give rise to illiberalism.
I have watched the first round of the whole 4chan phenomenon. 2012-ish. Basically they were a bunch of kids, and no one told them why exactly they should not call people all kinds of slurs. Their parents and teachers just went like "that word is forbidden".
This belief that any critique of a thing must by necessity imply a desire to ban, outlaw or prevent the thing from taking place drives me nuts. And you're entirely right -- it's a fundamentally authoritarian impulse to believe that all things must either be above critique, or else they should be outlawed, i.e. that all things that I would wish people to stop doing, I "should" want to outlaw.
This would only be true for someone who placed ZERO value on human freedom and agency, and who therefore sees no downside to banning things left and right on even the flimsiest of evidence.
A good example that I run into pretty often, is people who claim that having a blanket policy of not wanting to date black women -- isn't racist but instead just "personal preference". And then if you point out that it might well be a preference, but no rule exists that says "preferences cannot be racist" -- and given most reasonable definitions of "racism", judging all members of a given group negatively on account of their race, is in fact racism, they'll invariably respond with: "So you're saying people should be forced to date someone they're not attracted to? Don't you respect consent?????"
But I wasn't saying any law should prevent this. Nor was I saying that people who engage in this form of racism should in some way be coerced into dating anyone in particular. All I was saying was that considering (for example) all black women to be automatically unsuitable as partners, is in fact racist. If that's someones preference, then that person has a racist preference.
I think you are, perhaps, projecting a more complicated/better counter-argument than actually exists on the post-liberal side - but that's a nitpick since it doesn't change anything of substance.
I won't argue that you're using "no true scottsman" I'll argue that Liberalism itself is inherently unstable and incapable of supporting the philosophical process. That liberalism cannot justify it's own moral foundation. To have a universally agreed upon moral foundation is to constrain a society, even attempting to constrain society to "open dialogue" is a constraint upon the individual. Constraints that are inherently inimical to the liberal ideal of "maximizing personal freedom." So it always attacks it's own moral foundation: Christianity, Lockianism, Whatever.
Fundamentally, liberalism attacks hierarchy and structure, but does not build anything to replace what it tears down. Liberalism therefore eventually attacks it's own moral substrate as social taboos and social structure are treated as impositions upon it's hyper-individualist worldview. Then without structure, liberalism decays into bigotry and totalitarianism as it has no moral foundation any more. Having rid itself of such a constraint. Eventually liberalism takes the form of "what's popular with the crowd right now," and will oscillate between wildly different positions: "the constitution is a racist document made by racist slave owners that must be abolished," to "the constitution is a cornerstone of the liberty we in this country possess."
Ultimately Liberalism boils down to power-dynamics. Whoever has the power to sway the crowd rules, regardless of what lies are told to maintain that power. The hyper-individualistic nature of liberalism and lack of a moral framework means the momentary will of the crowd becomes sacrosanct. "Good" becomes synonymous with "popular" in the liberal mind. These words are banned, now those words are banned, "you can't do that, it's unpopular!"
As a result, liberalism quickly decays to the most vicious, cruel, and vindictive sociopaths available to it, while it's philosophical core dissolves. It's an ideology doomed to it's own failure by it's own egalitarian and hyper-individualist nature. The history of liberalism is one of tragedy, decay, and blood. That's why you have libs in the street cheering for the murder of intellectual moderates like Charlie Kirk for the crime of attempting open dialogue. Liberalism is an ideology of hate: hate for the self, hate for others, hate for the exceptional.
In the end Liberalism represents only the ability of the sociopathic leaders to leverage the crowd for personal momentary advantage. An ideology that possesses its adherents and uses them as tools. An ideology that considers words merely to be tools useful for deceiving it's enemies. Excellent video on the topic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY8pAoSoBXo
Liberalism was a mistake, it devolves into Leftism. John Locke was wrong. Egalitarianism breeds hatred, resentment, and a murderous thirst for the blood of the exceptional. It’s an ideology of mediocrity. Liberalism is always one murder away from equality.
This is produced an ideology of blood lust with no foundation but social acceptance. It deserves to be crushed and wiped from the annals of history and philosophy. If it has brought us to the end of our civilization, it was a mistake from the very beginning.
I’m not sure what that philosophy you describe is. It seems to be a mishmash of things.
Liberalism is a mishmash of things.
Frogs don’t eat cookies and wardrobes are alligators.
Is this how your idea of communication works?
Why do humans deserve equal rights in your worldview?
"They just do" and "because they're PEOPLE!!!" and "well, I think they do" are all bad answers to that question. If you can't answer the foundational "why" of your moral philosophy, then it's not an effective moral philosophy for governing a society.
Because it has led to better outcomes than the alternative.
I disagree, but this is a well espoused refutation.
But of what? It’s a Gish Gallop conflating a lot of things. Way too many to address coherently and that’s the point. Liberalism doesn’t constrain people to open dialogue, just to take the first one. It protects the right not to express one’s views or listen to anybody else’s.
I agree that liberalism does not and should not compel participation in dialogue. However, this creates a structural vulnerability: a system that relies on open dialogue to test and refine its principles cannot guarantee that such dialogue will actually occur. When individuals or groups withdraw from engagement (whether through apathy, distrust, or strategic refusal) the process by which liberalism clarifies and defends its own concepts weakens.
In that environment, competing frameworks can redefine key terms like harm, coercion, and freedom without being effectively challenged. This is not because liberalism permits coercion, but because it cannot require the conditions under which its own principles are sustained. The liberal response, then, is not to accept this passively, but to actively cultivate and incentivize the norms and institutions that sustain good faith dialogue.
Liberalism is built on a small set of core principles, but those principles are always interpreted through language, culture and dialogue.
Because interpretation shifts over time, liberalism cannot rely on past formulations alone. But rather, it must continually clarify and defend what it means by its own principles in the present.
Postliberal and postmodern critiques gain traction not because they are correct, but because they exploit moments where liberalism fails to clearly articulate or defend those meanings.
A liberal system cannot assume its superiority, but rather it must continually justify and clarify its principles against competing frameworks that reinterpret or reject them.
Therefore, the task is not to abandon liberalism or return to a fixed past version, but to actively maintain and refine its conceptual foundations so they remain persuasive and coherent in current conditions.
Of course it can count on people participating. That’s why we need liberalism in the first place. Because people will always factionalise and fight over it. The open dialogue method of doing this is better than the bloodshed way.
The point about not constraining people to have open dialogue is the principle that not everybody wants to be an activist or enter debates and they have a right to be apolitical or just keep their views to themselves. There will always be way more people willing to argue for any position than can possibly all be heard.
I agree participation will always exist at some level. My concern is whether it remains effective for liberalism’s purposes. Not all participation sustains liberal norms equally. If engagement becomes more fragmented or adversarial, liberal arguments may still be present, but as one voice among many rather than meaningfully persuasive.
Thank you!
I have an article on this phenomena that goes into more depth: https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/every-religion-is-haunted-by-the?r=43z8s4
The issue is that "every one can do what they want" is a moral philosophy that fails to answer the most crucial underlying question in it's own system: "why?"
That in addition to the fact that failing to enforce reasonable social norms leads to the complete decay of social stability and cohesion. "People can speak whatever language they want whether they're understood or not" might be a pro-liberal position, but sure as shit doesn't make for a nation-state or an economic system that functions. Liberalism can only exist on the back of a more complete philosophical foundation, and will ALWAYS attack that foundation on the basis that it constrains individual behavior.
Do you have an actual point or are you just throwing out a large count of ridicolous claims with neither an attempt to justify any of them, nor a coherent overall point?
You haven't argued anything at all. You've made a lot of random largely unconnected claims but made no attempt to support any of them.
"liberalism eventually turns into the opposite"
my brother in Christ, liberalism quite literally started by chopping heads , burning churches, slaughtering villages and destroying economies.
It has always been this.
You are right in pointing out that liberalism in excess doesn’t result in illiberalism, as if it were an Aristotelian virtue that resides on an continuum between two vices. (Though thats largely because its as an inherent mechanism for self correction, its not a single value.
(you might find some phiosophical concepts that stilloperate that way, but thats beside the point).
Though the Pinkerian in me might want to nuance that statement a bit, as the four angels described in The better Nature of Our Narture that undergird liberal democracy CAN be taken to the excess, such as the moral instinct and empathy, unrestrained by reason and our institutions is the root of any religions and ideological moral panic. It is the environment that incentivise how these, in game theoretical terms, play out and right now in substackistan, podcastistan and x, the norms that has traditionally created a positive environment of expression are absent. As someone that love discussing the content of ideas this particular environment is fatigue inducing.
The liberal turned illiberal can indeed be said to not practice his liberalism, but the underlying motivations remain the same.
The whole post and the discourse that follows simply boils down to Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. Any social system needs to invoke some sort of repression or guard-rails to preserve its own existence, and liberalism is no different. Dissenters that dig at the liberal foundation must be squashed, and discourse by necessity needs to be prescribed to a certain list of subjects that do not infringe on core liberal principles.
Post-liberal stance will attack this as an inherent inconsistency, hence "paradox" of Popper. Another blindspot of liberalism is that it exists as an outgrowth of Christian-derived civil society created in Europe, hence it becomes a socially and historically contingent force, which through the process of continuous secularisation and erosion of any hierarchic principles and religious tolerance (which equates with absence of any moral prescriptions that might have religious roots), destroys the very implied premises that allow it to work in the first place. A pluralistic society is one which by definition cannot accommodate liberalism, as other moral systems and world views are absolute in their framing, and do not consider other views as legitimate, thus killing any option of a debate.
Social decay, devaluation of human life, principle of pleasure and utilitarianism begin to triumph, as liberal metaphysics is so barren and solipsistic as to not present anything worthwhile other than the material here and now, and where pretence of rational discourse strips out inherent meaning that is present in a non-liberal setting. Scientism, technocracy and ethnic pluralism emerge as new forces that shape the discourse, and liberalism, in its endeavour to appear as a neutral arbiter, admits its own enemies to the table, and surrenders the territory from which it sprung up.
No, liberalism protects the right to criticise liberalism. Popper was very clear that his paradox referred to illiberal actions - coercion - not to speech.
No, liberalism is not an out growth of Christianity.https://www.skeptic.com/article/why-secularists-calling-for-a-christian-revival-are-wrong/
Please read what I wrote carefully, as your hasty reply shows you have not: I wrote "Christian-derived society" - it means it relies on sentiments and moral framework originating from it, and it quite clearly dispenses with the belief part. Your link is a non-sequitur.
If liberalism protects the right to have itself criticised, will it protect itself from being abolished, if the criticism happens to be correct? We keep running into a problem of speech being treated with ever-greater suspicion, and the reasoning that "calls to violence" are now equal to actual attacks, the limits of speech are being actively prescribed - please see Canada/US/UK/Australia/France/Germany/Finland?etc. Each country will have cases that point to this and the ever greater restrictions on speech.
If anything, last 30 years of liberalism has been a mission in enabling of immoral forces that clothe themselves in human freedom, but refuse to acknowledge the damage to the social structure that keeps it afloat. I doubt that discourse as proposed by liberals actually exists in reality, and the attempt to make reality fit are becoming ever more grotesque.
"a refusal to recognise the defining liberal distinction between criticism and coercion."
The conflict arises when people claim that they are being coerced to violate the free practice of their religion with regard to queer and transgender folk. For example, they maintain that having to acknowledge (which they mislabel as "celebrate") same-sex marriage is a violation of their freedom of religious belief/practice. On the other side, a person will claim dignitary harm if they are discriminated against because of their identity. The result is a face-off between harms, with one being borne, and the other alleviated.
Yes, liberalism protects against both of those. Nobody can be coerced to affirm same sex marriage as legitimate if they don’t think it is. Or opposite sex marriage if it comes to that.
So then liberalism does not protect against dignitary harm, since it allows it to occur in this instance--though it does not permit dignitary harm with regard to a person not affirming an interracial/inter-religious marriage, or a marriage with ethnic or age non-alignment.
That is correct, yes. There are no protections against having one's feelings hurt and that is very important. It enabled ideas once found appalling and deeply offensive like "Perhaps there is no God" and "It's OK to be gay" to be spoken and argued for. We remain free to think and say that anybody who does not respect someone else religion, marriage or competence is an arsehole, but they must be allowed to argue this. This is how such ideas are best defeated. The best book on this specifically is Jon Rauch's Kindly Inquisitors. He looks at how antisemiti and homophobic views were best reduced by allowing them to be spoken and responded to.
Dignitary harm is not equivalent to "having one's feelings hurt." Getting one's feelings hurt happens, and a person must deal with it, and try not to do it to others.
"they must be allowed to argue this"
Agreed. But they cannot inflict dignitary harm or emotional distress, which are steps beyond hurting a person's feelings.
Wonderful clarity of thought, as always Helen. Thank you. If I have understood your argument correctly, it follows that a tendency to link the rise in populism to ´liberal overreach’ (as, for example, here: https://cirsd.org/horizon-article/misinterpreting-1989-populism-and-liberal-overreach/) is grossly misleading, for the simple reason that as soon as liberalism ‘overreaches’ and begins to coerce for any reason other than to comply with the ‘harm principle’, it immediately cease to be liberal.
Perhaps...
1) If Christians behaving as bad Christians, not loving, not charitable, not forgiving, gives rise to atheism,
2) If capitalists behaving as bad capitalists, instead of trying to compete on the free market, rather seek sweatheart deals with the government, seek monopolies, and that gives rise to socialism,
3) Then perhaps liberals behaving as bad liberals, give rise to illiberalism.
I have watched the first round of the whole 4chan phenomenon. 2012-ish. Basically they were a bunch of kids, and no one told them why exactly they should not call people all kinds of slurs. Their parents and teachers just went like "that word is forbidden".
"That word is forbidden!"
"Why?"
"Well, if you say it we'll beat you senseless, or ruin your reputation, or destroy your career"
"What about when they say words I don't like?"
"Well, they're allowed, you're not."
"That doesn't seem fair."
"Shut your mouth, right now, you bigot, or else."
I think we've gotten to the "or else" phase and those threats are starting to ring pretty hollow.