Just as a personal matter, I love reading smart, understated humor like this: "We understand the claim 'public roads should be properly maintained' to be a position on how our authorities should spend taxpayers’ money, not a commitment to a personal project." But on the larger issue before us, I wouldn't have thought to address it, as Helen does, as a matter of the scale and complexity of modern societies (containing the many issues about which we may care) and the "strategic confusion" we might be tempted to deploy to misunderstand those who disagree with us. As I type this, it also occurs to me that those of us who disagree with capital punishment probably shouldn't challenge our fellow American citizens who support the death penalty to carry it out themselves.
You are really very perceptive. I’ma big admirer. My only counter argument is that in these days of 10-word attention spans, the only retort that is likely to get a response before the person switches channel is: Why aren’t you using your spare room to house immigrants? Even Cambridge professors these days find it difficult to judge if statements like “I ran multiple marathons on a broken leg” need verification. Which brings me to why you do not have the number of paid subscribers you deserve. There simply aren’t that many people with money and interest in intelligent commentary.
The spare-room argument has intuitive force because it exploits a legitimate moral instinct: we trust people more when they are willing to bear some cost for what they claim to believe. The whole actions speak louder than words thing. In a small community, where saying “something should be done” may amount to asking your neighbors to do it, personal action can be meaningful evidence of sincerity.
In a society of millions, it doesn’t work the same way. A person’s willingness to incur a private cost may tell us something about their sincerity, but almost nothing about whether the goal is moral or the policy will work. I think that is why this argument survives despite the category error. It answers whether I should trust the person and then pretends it has answered whether I should support the policy.
The 'spare room' attack would make sense if anyone was saying immigrants, homeless or anyone else would be housed by randomly drafting homeowners to quarter them in their homes.
By that do you mean a building in your community that you do not own, do not pay for, have never done a repair or upgrade on and is in fact owned by another individual who did all those things but you like to imagine you own it because you drive past it 3 times a month and feel like because it lives in your imagination it also lives on your personal balance sheet?
In a society of millions, it can also be easy to forget that someone does have to do something, with whatever risks that entails. Whether the war is just or not, someone's son or daughter may die fighting it, so we should keep that in mind. Your preferred policy is always implemented by real people, and we should remember that, they aren't just NPCs that are part of the game of life.
Yes, I agree with this. I certainly would never write an essay saying that we should endorse and vote for policies without giving any thought to the human cost involved if they are implemented. I think that should be at the forefront of anything anybody thinks should happen.
I had to look up "NPCs" and this is what I found: "non-player character (or non-playable character). In video games, it is any character not controlled by a human player. In modern internet slang, it describes a person who seems to lack deep or original thought, acting instead on a predictable "script" or copying popular trends."
For those whose villages and communities have been blighted by the billeting on them of large numbers of undocumented illegal migrants, the issue is not the sincerity of those who are telling them they should just suck it up. It is their willingness to bear some of the cost. To their credit celebrities such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Gary Lineker and Emma Thompson did house refugees for a time, but they were people they chose to house and none of them were undocumented illegal migrants. The question is whether those who are bearing little or none of the cost of a policy have a right to claim the moral high ground over those who are being forced to bear most of the cost.
An interesting and thought-provoking essay. I think it aligns with accusing someone of not caring about issue A when they are actually prioritizing other issues, something real people have to do. Maybe I donate to cancer research and not to diabetes research. That doesn't mean that I wish ill to people with diabetes.
It does seem that if someone says for example, "I think we should abolish the police" while they live in a gated community with private security, then it is valid to ask them to explain why they think abolishing the police will not harm society in general or those who don't have the financial wherewithal that they do.
While I think the "Why don't you have a homeless " is silly, falling back entirely on "It's a complex society, I don't fix the roads either " misses the point too. That is, I think it's reasonable to ask someone what costs they'd be willing to bear for their proposed solution. For example, if someone thinks no one should be homeless, it would be reasonable to ask them if they've volunteered or donated to the local homeless shelter. If they have, then it indicates that they actually do care a lot about the issue. If they haven't, and in fact they got the zoning board to prevent a shelter from moving into their neighborhood, I'm gonna say they don't care, they just like the social benefits of appearing to care.
And if they’ve opposed abortion that they have actually volunteered or donated to charities that support kids in care? And if they care about locking up criminals, that they’ve become dedicated time or money to supporting programmes to protect victims of violent crime? And if they want stronger immigration policies that they’ve offered their own time to patrol borders? There are a lot of important policies that people can support at the same time. I’ve supported Shelter in giving a young person a room and support Karma Nirvana addressing honour crime. I support secular humanist organisations and foodbanks and organisations that address loneliness in the elderly but there are still a lot of policies I support which I do not actively involve myself in. I don’t think testing people’s dedication to all of the policies they support by demanding evidence of engagement with some aspect of them in one’s personal life is a useful thing to do. I think expecting good and consistent arguments is better.
I think there's a level of support that matters. I think if support is "have an opinion " then everyone has those. If someone cares enough to say, write a long essay on Substack, I think that's a higher level of caring, so it's makes sense to ask a higher price from them. I do think that, yes, we should strive for good arguments first and foremost, but if the person's entire argument is essentially moral shaming ie declaring something a "human right" without any idea how it's paid for, it's a good counterarguement to push if they are willing to put any "skin in the game."
I think when it comes to matters like potholes, say, which concern how the government should spend money we are required to give it, you're right that support for that policy doesn't require personal action. The government takes our money for the express purpose of providing public services. However, when people are advocating a policy which others feel would be damaging to them, and the advocates of that policy are perceived to be insulated from its likeky effects by virtue of, say, their wealth or where they live, then I think it is reasonable to expect them ro demonstrate that they are not asking of others sacrifices that they would not be prepared to make themselves. I used to have a friend who loudly proclaimed his socialist beliefs while remaining enormously rich and profligate. When I challenged him on this, he said it was not up to him to deliver socialism, it was up to government. This is a cop-out. If I believe that the rich should give to the poor, and I am rich, I do not wait for the government to make me do it; I do it myself, because I believe it is right . I may also campaign for a government which requires others to do the same but I do not simply outsource my moral decision to the state.
The most common variation on this from the right is a claim that people who are rich but who support greater economic equality are hypocrites who have no right to advocate for greater fairness until they have given away enough of their wealth to qualify as poor.
A Brit who declares that he supports closed borders and zero immigrants for his country, whilst advocating for the rights of other countries to allow immigration if they want it, and living in one of those "expat"-friendly countries, is entirely reasonable.
"Stressing the importance of vetting individuals for values compatible with those of a liberal democracy and the pre-existing culture" is something we do for ethical, moral, practical and crime prevention reasons
Sorry, anyone listening to the current woke left and expecting good faith dialogue is MASSIVELY AT FAULT. They are doing one of the most stupid things imaginable.
This is a discussion of how best to talk to people. If we think someone is not at all capable of good faith discussion of a particular topic, then this essay is not relevant vis-a-vis that person.
I live in Portland, Oregon, on the Left Coast of the USA, surrounded by people who are left of center and in varying degrees woke. It is not stupid for me to at times take the plunge and engage in a discussion with such a person on a contentious issue. Although trying to dialogue with the most prominent woke folks will likely prove to be a thankless task, many of those less celebrated mortals who currently subscribe to various woke opinions may eventually come around to questioning one or more of the woke articles of faith if we plant seeds of ideas and facts that challenge their current views.
The essay we are commenting on is wholly relevant to our communicating with those people.
Are they really "stupid", or do they have different objectives?
I hear the right call the left stupid quite a lot. However, it seems that the left are often implementing what they have stated as an aspiration with some success, thanks to well organised representation across different tiers of institutions. (Immigration is a case in point. High taxes, racial quotas to create "social equity" etc). They are "stupid" policies only if your objectives for society are prosperity, cohesion, technological progress, security etc. I don't see much evidence the Woke left care a jot about any of those things.
I would suggest the category error here is rather in the framing of the argument. The main political argument against uncontrolled illegal immigration is that in a sovereign democratic country, who is allowed in and granted citizenship should be decided in accordance with tthe policy of the democratically elected government, not by criminal gangs. The political counter-argument to this is that to do so would be counter to a number of treaties the UK signed up to (albeit in a very different world before most of us were born). The further argument is that it would be wrong to try and extricate ourselves from the obligations of these treaties, but at this point the political argument becomes more of a moral argument. This is regularly countered by a moral argument that, if it is not wrong for us to prevent uninvited strangers from entering our house, it is not wrong for us to apply the same principle to our country and indeed to our village or community.
At this point, the debate usually descends into name-calling, with those who oppose uncontrolled immigration being portrayed as racist to delegitimise them personally. The natural response to this is to seek to delegitimise the privileged elites who are saying this, by accusing them of hypocrisy in holding what Rob Henderson has called luxury beliefs which, at no personal cost, confer status on the holder at the expense of those less fortunate. Privileged elites living in houses with multiple spare bedrooms know there is no danger of large numbers of fighting-age males being billeted on their community, so it costs them nothing to engage in moral posturing against those who do face such risks. Calling them on their willingness to face inconvenience to address the issue they say they care so much about is a not unreasonable thing to do.
The remedy here is surely for both sides to stop their moral posturing and ad hominem arguments and to engage in good faith in a political process geared towards practical solutions. But I will not be holding my breath wiating for that.
The size and complexity of modern society don't make government power necessary; they make voluntary cooperation and market coordination more important. Complex society does require institutions and coordination, but institutions don't have to rely on government force to coordinate people's actions.
Markets, private associations, voluntary organizations, charities, insurance, contracts, and civil society already coordinate activities on an enormous scale without requiring a central authority to command everyone. The claim that modern complex society requires government coordination simply smuggles government into the picture and treats its existence as proof of its necessity.
Democracy may determine who gets to wield government power, but it doesn't give them a moral right to violate individual freedom or property rights. If an individual has no moral right to seize his neighbour's property for a supposedly worthy purpose, neither does the government acquire that right simply by calling it public policy.
In that post, I am talking about what is rather than what should be. Whenever there is a community of humans, whether it is a tribe of hunter-gatherers or a religious community or a monarchy or even a group of children playing in a playground, there will always be a system of “government” with a hierarchy and leadership and rules. That’s how humans work. So do the other great apes. It doesn’t make much sense to speak of whether this is necessary. You could conceptualise a species in which this doesn’t happen but it wouldn’t be ours.
All we can do is formulate systems to mediate this. You’d prefer one in which market forces determined the leadership, hierarchies and rules more strongly than an elected government which had its powers very limited. That’s an arguable position and commonly argued. It doesn’t change the underlying reality of how human societies work though and is tangential to an argument about public policy being different to personal projects which remains true.
I understand the "let immigrants use your house" rhetoric quite differently. It's not on the lines of "you should personally help with the policies you want to see." It's an analogy that helps conceptualize immigration control itself. "You know how your property is yours and not everyone else's, and it's perfectly fine for you to close the door, and people absolutely do not have a right to move in with you? Well..."
Re: "The political stance: “I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X” belongs in a different category to the personal stance “I feel I have a responsibility to implement X in my own life.”"
I admit I am somewhat on the fence with this one. I personally think being "liberal" transcends speaking liberal words and thoughts. In the domain of "action" rather than "words", it is the ideal that I don't force you - or work with/through others to force you - to pay for my ideological or aesthetic preferences. (Its sometimes easier said than done, but if we hold to that as the ideal, we can then measure how well we do). Therefore, if two groups disagree about X, then the natural liberal conclusion would indeed be that the supporters paid for it, and the detractors didn't.
There is an important missing bit here for me. If someone says, "I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X", how is it decided whether society implements X or not? It would seem to matter more than just being a pedantic footnote. If I put my case in a democratic process, or sell it in a marketplace, perhaps that's fair enough. However, if I then using lobbying, lawfare, alliance building and various psychological tricks on the public to get my way, then that's not liberal, is it? (or is it?)
And might it also matter what X actually is? If X causes a serious imposition, does that not also influence whether the proposition is liberal or not. (If X = "we house all asylum seekers", then there is practically likely to be a cost and security risk to locals and if the proposal is rejected, there is an imposition to the asylum seekers. If X = "we push more young people towards apprentices" the enforced costs and impositions placed on someone or other feel less).
This article, more than others, makes me wonder if liberalism is actually possible. You could find a version of it, but when you turn it into a different light, what you believe to be liberal, someone else believes to be an illiberal imposition. (This is why, arguably, multiculturalism has so many problems: it works so long as everyone has a similar view of core tenets. However, when they don't, group A's desire for X is felt as an illiberal imposition to group B)
Well, all politics transcend words and thoughts. Policies are actions and so are campaigning and voting. You can’t vote liberal though. That’s a philosophical position and it can correspondingly apply to all aspects of life. It’s also a governing system and what America had a revolution for so action definitely a part of it. We must protect liberal democracies. However, I’d also not want to apply liberalism completely to my personal life. I believe that on a public level of principle, everybody must have individual liberty and the right to do what they want provided it doesn’t materially harm anyone else. I’d not apply that lens to my marriage or parenting, though.
There is an important missing bit here for me. If someone says, "I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X", how is it decided whether society implements X or not? It would seem to matter more than just being a pedantic footnote. If I put my case in a democratic process, or sell it in a marketplace, perhaps that's fair enough. However, if I then using lobbying, lawfare, alliance building and various psychological tricks on the public to get my way, then that's not liberal, is it? (or is it?)
Well, voting, campaigning, lobbying, forming alliances all can be. Being deceptive or bullying isn’t., no. That’s what I meant by liberalism being both democratic and dialogic. See the paragraph about voting for certain policies and also the marketplace of ideas for arguing for and against things and trying to convince others of them.
And might it also matter what X actually is?
Yes, when applying liberalism to your politics, it matters whether or not it is liberal.
This article, more than others, makes me wonder if liberalism is actually possible.
Liberals will always disagree about what is and isn’t liberal.
There is also a curious distinction between conservatives that believe charity and accommodation for the poor is a moral imperative to be solved by the charitable person own volition. In contrast to the the traditional left wing that has delegated such questions to the public sphere. It is mildly amusing that modern progressives mirror the moral postering of the christian right in this question.
Just as a personal matter, I love reading smart, understated humor like this: "We understand the claim 'public roads should be properly maintained' to be a position on how our authorities should spend taxpayers’ money, not a commitment to a personal project." But on the larger issue before us, I wouldn't have thought to address it, as Helen does, as a matter of the scale and complexity of modern societies (containing the many issues about which we may care) and the "strategic confusion" we might be tempted to deploy to misunderstand those who disagree with us. As I type this, it also occurs to me that those of us who disagree with capital punishment probably shouldn't challenge our fellow American citizens who support the death penalty to carry it out themselves.
You are really very perceptive. I’ma big admirer. My only counter argument is that in these days of 10-word attention spans, the only retort that is likely to get a response before the person switches channel is: Why aren’t you using your spare room to house immigrants? Even Cambridge professors these days find it difficult to judge if statements like “I ran multiple marathons on a broken leg” need verification. Which brings me to why you do not have the number of paid subscribers you deserve. There simply aren’t that many people with money and interest in intelligent commentary.
The spare-room argument has intuitive force because it exploits a legitimate moral instinct: we trust people more when they are willing to bear some cost for what they claim to believe. The whole actions speak louder than words thing. In a small community, where saying “something should be done” may amount to asking your neighbors to do it, personal action can be meaningful evidence of sincerity.
In a society of millions, it doesn’t work the same way. A person’s willingness to incur a private cost may tell us something about their sincerity, but almost nothing about whether the goal is moral or the policy will work. I think that is why this argument survives despite the category error. It answers whether I should trust the person and then pretends it has answered whether I should support the policy.
Indeed. I absolutely trust one of my friends who opposes abortion and assisted dying. I just think he is wrong.
The 'spare room' attack would make sense if anyone was saying immigrants, homeless or anyone else would be housed by randomly drafting homeowners to quarter them in their homes.
How about if undocumented migrants were billeted in large numbers on randomly drafted communities and villages?
What exactly is a 'drafted community'?
By that do you mean a building in your community that you do not own, do not pay for, have never done a repair or upgrade on and is in fact owned by another individual who did all those things but you like to imagine you own it because you drive past it 3 times a month and feel like because it lives in your imagination it also lives on your personal balance sheet?
In a society of millions, it can also be easy to forget that someone does have to do something, with whatever risks that entails. Whether the war is just or not, someone's son or daughter may die fighting it, so we should keep that in mind. Your preferred policy is always implemented by real people, and we should remember that, they aren't just NPCs that are part of the game of life.
Yes, I agree with this. I certainly would never write an essay saying that we should endorse and vote for policies without giving any thought to the human cost involved if they are implemented. I think that should be at the forefront of anything anybody thinks should happen.
I had to look up "NPCs" and this is what I found: "non-player character (or non-playable character). In video games, it is any character not controlled by a human player. In modern internet slang, it describes a person who seems to lack deep or original thought, acting instead on a predictable "script" or copying popular trends."
100%.
For those whose villages and communities have been blighted by the billeting on them of large numbers of undocumented illegal migrants, the issue is not the sincerity of those who are telling them they should just suck it up. It is their willingness to bear some of the cost. To their credit celebrities such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Gary Lineker and Emma Thompson did house refugees for a time, but they were people they chose to house and none of them were undocumented illegal migrants. The question is whether those who are bearing little or none of the cost of a policy have a right to claim the moral high ground over those who are being forced to bear most of the cost.
An interesting and thought-provoking essay. I think it aligns with accusing someone of not caring about issue A when they are actually prioritizing other issues, something real people have to do. Maybe I donate to cancer research and not to diabetes research. That doesn't mean that I wish ill to people with diabetes.
It does seem that if someone says for example, "I think we should abolish the police" while they live in a gated community with private security, then it is valid to ask them to explain why they think abolishing the police will not harm society in general or those who don't have the financial wherewithal that they do.
While I think the "Why don't you have a homeless " is silly, falling back entirely on "It's a complex society, I don't fix the roads either " misses the point too. That is, I think it's reasonable to ask someone what costs they'd be willing to bear for their proposed solution. For example, if someone thinks no one should be homeless, it would be reasonable to ask them if they've volunteered or donated to the local homeless shelter. If they have, then it indicates that they actually do care a lot about the issue. If they haven't, and in fact they got the zoning board to prevent a shelter from moving into their neighborhood, I'm gonna say they don't care, they just like the social benefits of appearing to care.
And if they’ve opposed abortion that they have actually volunteered or donated to charities that support kids in care? And if they care about locking up criminals, that they’ve become dedicated time or money to supporting programmes to protect victims of violent crime? And if they want stronger immigration policies that they’ve offered their own time to patrol borders? There are a lot of important policies that people can support at the same time. I’ve supported Shelter in giving a young person a room and support Karma Nirvana addressing honour crime. I support secular humanist organisations and foodbanks and organisations that address loneliness in the elderly but there are still a lot of policies I support which I do not actively involve myself in. I don’t think testing people’s dedication to all of the policies they support by demanding evidence of engagement with some aspect of them in one’s personal life is a useful thing to do. I think expecting good and consistent arguments is better.
I think there's a level of support that matters. I think if support is "have an opinion " then everyone has those. If someone cares enough to say, write a long essay on Substack, I think that's a higher level of caring, so it's makes sense to ask a higher price from them. I do think that, yes, we should strive for good arguments first and foremost, but if the person's entire argument is essentially moral shaming ie declaring something a "human right" without any idea how it's paid for, it's a good counterarguement to push if they are willing to put any "skin in the game."
I think when it comes to matters like potholes, say, which concern how the government should spend money we are required to give it, you're right that support for that policy doesn't require personal action. The government takes our money for the express purpose of providing public services. However, when people are advocating a policy which others feel would be damaging to them, and the advocates of that policy are perceived to be insulated from its likeky effects by virtue of, say, their wealth or where they live, then I think it is reasonable to expect them ro demonstrate that they are not asking of others sacrifices that they would not be prepared to make themselves. I used to have a friend who loudly proclaimed his socialist beliefs while remaining enormously rich and profligate. When I challenged him on this, he said it was not up to him to deliver socialism, it was up to government. This is a cop-out. If I believe that the rich should give to the poor, and I am rich, I do not wait for the government to make me do it; I do it myself, because I believe it is right . I may also campaign for a government which requires others to do the same but I do not simply outsource my moral decision to the state.
The most common variation on this from the right is a claim that people who are rich but who support greater economic equality are hypocrites who have no right to advocate for greater fairness until they have given away enough of their wealth to qualify as poor.
A Brit who declares that he supports closed borders and zero immigrants for his country, whilst advocating for the rights of other countries to allow immigration if they want it, and living in one of those "expat"-friendly countries, is entirely reasonable.
"Stressing the importance of vetting individuals for values compatible with those of a liberal democracy and the pre-existing culture" is something we do for ethical, moral, practical and crime prevention reasons
Sorry, anyone listening to the current woke left and expecting good faith dialogue is MASSIVELY AT FAULT. They are doing one of the most stupid things imaginable.
This is a discussion of how best to talk to people. If we think someone is not at all capable of good faith discussion of a particular topic, then this essay is not relevant vis-a-vis that person.
I live in Portland, Oregon, on the Left Coast of the USA, surrounded by people who are left of center and in varying degrees woke. It is not stupid for me to at times take the plunge and engage in a discussion with such a person on a contentious issue. Although trying to dialogue with the most prominent woke folks will likely prove to be a thankless task, many of those less celebrated mortals who currently subscribe to various woke opinions may eventually come around to questioning one or more of the woke articles of faith if we plant seeds of ideas and facts that challenge their current views.
The essay we are commenting on is wholly relevant to our communicating with those people.
Are they really "stupid", or do they have different objectives?
I hear the right call the left stupid quite a lot. However, it seems that the left are often implementing what they have stated as an aspiration with some success, thanks to well organised representation across different tiers of institutions. (Immigration is a case in point. High taxes, racial quotas to create "social equity" etc). They are "stupid" policies only if your objectives for society are prosperity, cohesion, technological progress, security etc. I don't see much evidence the Woke left care a jot about any of those things.
I would argue their objectives are stupid and the only way they can explain them makes them look stupid.
I would suggest the category error here is rather in the framing of the argument. The main political argument against uncontrolled illegal immigration is that in a sovereign democratic country, who is allowed in and granted citizenship should be decided in accordance with tthe policy of the democratically elected government, not by criminal gangs. The political counter-argument to this is that to do so would be counter to a number of treaties the UK signed up to (albeit in a very different world before most of us were born). The further argument is that it would be wrong to try and extricate ourselves from the obligations of these treaties, but at this point the political argument becomes more of a moral argument. This is regularly countered by a moral argument that, if it is not wrong for us to prevent uninvited strangers from entering our house, it is not wrong for us to apply the same principle to our country and indeed to our village or community.
At this point, the debate usually descends into name-calling, with those who oppose uncontrolled immigration being portrayed as racist to delegitimise them personally. The natural response to this is to seek to delegitimise the privileged elites who are saying this, by accusing them of hypocrisy in holding what Rob Henderson has called luxury beliefs which, at no personal cost, confer status on the holder at the expense of those less fortunate. Privileged elites living in houses with multiple spare bedrooms know there is no danger of large numbers of fighting-age males being billeted on their community, so it costs them nothing to engage in moral posturing against those who do face such risks. Calling them on their willingness to face inconvenience to address the issue they say they care so much about is a not unreasonable thing to do.
The remedy here is surely for both sides to stop their moral posturing and ad hominem arguments and to engage in good faith in a political process geared towards practical solutions. But I will not be holding my breath wiating for that.
The size and complexity of modern society don't make government power necessary; they make voluntary cooperation and market coordination more important. Complex society does require institutions and coordination, but institutions don't have to rely on government force to coordinate people's actions.
Markets, private associations, voluntary organizations, charities, insurance, contracts, and civil society already coordinate activities on an enormous scale without requiring a central authority to command everyone. The claim that modern complex society requires government coordination simply smuggles government into the picture and treats its existence as proof of its necessity.
Democracy may determine who gets to wield government power, but it doesn't give them a moral right to violate individual freedom or property rights. If an individual has no moral right to seize his neighbour's property for a supposedly worthy purpose, neither does the government acquire that right simply by calling it public policy.
In that post, I am talking about what is rather than what should be. Whenever there is a community of humans, whether it is a tribe of hunter-gatherers or a religious community or a monarchy or even a group of children playing in a playground, there will always be a system of “government” with a hierarchy and leadership and rules. That’s how humans work. So do the other great apes. It doesn’t make much sense to speak of whether this is necessary. You could conceptualise a species in which this doesn’t happen but it wouldn’t be ours.
All we can do is formulate systems to mediate this. You’d prefer one in which market forces determined the leadership, hierarchies and rules more strongly than an elected government which had its powers very limited. That’s an arguable position and commonly argued. It doesn’t change the underlying reality of how human societies work though and is tangential to an argument about public policy being different to personal projects which remains true.
I understand the "let immigrants use your house" rhetoric quite differently. It's not on the lines of "you should personally help with the policies you want to see." It's an analogy that helps conceptualize immigration control itself. "You know how your property is yours and not everyone else's, and it's perfectly fine for you to close the door, and people absolutely do not have a right to move in with you? Well..."
Re: "The political stance: “I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X” belongs in a different category to the personal stance “I feel I have a responsibility to implement X in my own life.”"
I admit I am somewhat on the fence with this one. I personally think being "liberal" transcends speaking liberal words and thoughts. In the domain of "action" rather than "words", it is the ideal that I don't force you - or work with/through others to force you - to pay for my ideological or aesthetic preferences. (Its sometimes easier said than done, but if we hold to that as the ideal, we can then measure how well we do). Therefore, if two groups disagree about X, then the natural liberal conclusion would indeed be that the supporters paid for it, and the detractors didn't.
There is an important missing bit here for me. If someone says, "I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X", how is it decided whether society implements X or not? It would seem to matter more than just being a pedantic footnote. If I put my case in a democratic process, or sell it in a marketplace, perhaps that's fair enough. However, if I then using lobbying, lawfare, alliance building and various psychological tricks on the public to get my way, then that's not liberal, is it? (or is it?)
And might it also matter what X actually is? If X causes a serious imposition, does that not also influence whether the proposition is liberal or not. (If X = "we house all asylum seekers", then there is practically likely to be a cost and security risk to locals and if the proposal is rejected, there is an imposition to the asylum seekers. If X = "we push more young people towards apprentices" the enforced costs and impositions placed on someone or other feel less).
This article, more than others, makes me wonder if liberalism is actually possible. You could find a version of it, but when you turn it into a different light, what you believe to be liberal, someone else believes to be an illiberal imposition. (This is why, arguably, multiculturalism has so many problems: it works so long as everyone has a similar view of core tenets. However, when they don't, group A's desire for X is felt as an illiberal imposition to group B)
Well, all politics transcend words and thoughts. Policies are actions and so are campaigning and voting. You can’t vote liberal though. That’s a philosophical position and it can correspondingly apply to all aspects of life. It’s also a governing system and what America had a revolution for so action definitely a part of it. We must protect liberal democracies. However, I’d also not want to apply liberalism completely to my personal life. I believe that on a public level of principle, everybody must have individual liberty and the right to do what they want provided it doesn’t materially harm anyone else. I’d not apply that lens to my marriage or parenting, though.
There is an important missing bit here for me. If someone says, "I believe society should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate X", how is it decided whether society implements X or not? It would seem to matter more than just being a pedantic footnote. If I put my case in a democratic process, or sell it in a marketplace, perhaps that's fair enough. However, if I then using lobbying, lawfare, alliance building and various psychological tricks on the public to get my way, then that's not liberal, is it? (or is it?)
Well, voting, campaigning, lobbying, forming alliances all can be. Being deceptive or bullying isn’t., no. That’s what I meant by liberalism being both democratic and dialogic. See the paragraph about voting for certain policies and also the marketplace of ideas for arguing for and against things and trying to convince others of them.
And might it also matter what X actually is?
Yes, when applying liberalism to your politics, it matters whether or not it is liberal.
This article, more than others, makes me wonder if liberalism is actually possible.
Liberals will always disagree about what is and isn’t liberal.
There is also a curious distinction between conservatives that believe charity and accommodation for the poor is a moral imperative to be solved by the charitable person own volition. In contrast to the the traditional left wing that has delegated such questions to the public sphere. It is mildly amusing that modern progressives mirror the moral postering of the christian right in this question.