{"id":6864,"date":"2017-02-07T08:18:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T08:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6864"},"modified":"2017-02-07T08:18:51","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T08:18:51","slug":"more-liberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/02\/07\/more-liberalism\/","title":{"rendered":"More liberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In its Christmas edition, the Economist ran a leading\u00a0article<\/a> on the need for even more liberalism in 2017 \u2013 despite its many sets-back in 2016. \u00a0I was struck by the passage:<\/p>\n

As a set of beliefs that emerged at the start of the 19th century to oppose both the despotism of absolute monarchy and the terror of revolution, liberalism warns that uninterrupted power corrupts. \u00a0Privilege becomes self-perpetuating. \u00a0Consensus stifles creativity and initiative. \u00a0In an ever-shifting world, dispute and argument are not just inevitable; they are welcome because they lead to renewal.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is more, liberals have something to offer societies struggling with change. \u00a0In the 19th century, as today, old ways were being upended by relentless technological, economic, social and political forces. \u00a0People yearned for order. \u00a0The illiberal solution was to install someone with sufficient power to dictate what was best \u2014 by slowing change if they were conservative, or smashing authority if they were revolutionary. \u00a0You can hear echoes of that in calls to \u201ctake back control\u201d, as well as in the mouths of autocrats who, summoning an angry nationalism, promise to hold back the cosmopolitan tide.<\/em><\/p>\n

Liberals came up with a different answer. \u00a0Rather than being concentrated, power should be dispersed, using the rule of law, political parties and competitive markets. \u00a0Rather than putting citizens at the service of a mighty, protecting state, liberalism sees individuals as uniquely able to choose what is best for themselves. \u00a0Rather than running the world through warfare and strife, countries should embrace trade and treaties.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This last paragraphs seems particularly significant. \u00a0The article\u00a0ends:<\/p>\n

\"...\u00a02016 also represented a demand for change. \u00a0Never forget liberals\u2019 capacity for reinvention. \u00a0Do not underestimate the scope for people, including even a Trump administration and post-Brexit Britain, to think and innovate their way out of trouble. \u00a0The task is to harness that restless urge, while defending the tolerance and open-mindedness that are the foundation stones of a decent, liberal world.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0Guardian's Jonathan Freedland added to this steely determination:<\/p>\n

\"If liberal means holding true to the values of the Enlightenment, including a belief\u00a0in\u00a0facts\u00a0and evidence and reason, then call me a liberal. \u00a0And if liberal means cherishing the norms and institutions that protect and sustain democracy, from a free press to an independent judiciary, then call me a liberal. \u00a0For those values are under assault just now, in a way few of us ever\u00a0imagined.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Nigel Biggar in The Times added to all this by reminding us that some at least of the Enlightenment's heritage came out of somewhere.<\/p>\n

Truth, goodness, and beauty surely transcend time and place; no one culture has a monopoly of wisdom. \u00a0Nevertheless, some values are more at home in one culture than another, more deeply embedded in its traditions of thought and enshrined in its law and institutions. \u00a0The primacy of the individual over the state is arguably more entrenched in those western cultures shaped by Christianity than in those eastern ones shaped by Confucianism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

...................................<\/p>\n

If, as I noted above, these points are\u00a0significant:<\/p>\n