We all know the horrors that far left, such as Soviet Russia, and the far right, such as Nazi Germany. What about the horrors of liberal governance?
Do we have any examples in history of 'far liberalism' atrocities? Can it be blamed on pure ideology? I am starting to think that liberalism causes different kind of injustices.
Also rather talk of historical examples if there are any.
Discuss.
You're going to need to tell us what you mean by liberalism
You are absolutely right. So I will check something for a good definition.
I would put emphasis on freedom. I do not consider most SJWs for example as liberal since they actually advocate a lot of freedom restrictions (such as speech and culture).
>International socialism is far left
>National socialism if far right
Why do people use those archaic distinctions of political right-left.
There's more to life than socialism OP. But how any kind of it can be put on right ?
Because the Nazis were socialist in name only, they abandoned any half-assed overtures to socialism, even purged them.
>Hitler's Germany
>Far right
It was basically a Keynesian economy on steroids
>Why do people use those archaic distinctions of political right-left.
What do you people propose for far left and far right?
From a book I read far left has a tendency for collectivism, anti-ethnocentrism (assimilation and exogamy) and nurture view, while the far right ethnocentrism, nature view and life as struggle - both are in support of a rigid hierarchy.
Liberalism has a tendency for xenophilia.
I am sure all come in different flavors.
the Great Deppression was economic liberalism's fault
First of all - stop thinking on one axis. XIXth and XXth centuries sprung up a lot of ideologies. It's no longer white-red russia, or national-international socialism. And US party dualism isn't normal elsewhere.
Using two axis - one for economic,and one for social/moral standpoint. But the more the merrier.
So you could have:
free market - central planned economy
conservative - progressive morals
If you like simplifying to one axis, I would go with state control - individual liberty, because it after all goes to "Can people decide for themselves and bear consequences?".
>Because the Nazis were socialist in name only
So was the USSR.
the gold standard and bad monetary policy were the fault of economic liberalism?
far right and far left are meme designations for politically illiterate retards.
Liberal governments are fine with inflicting atrocities as long as it's not on their own people
See: Belgian Congo, British India, Vietnam, Iraq.
That is what I thought, until I read some book. It used the big five personality test and others to test it i.e. certain traits allegedly correlate with political views.
Until someone debunks it in a scientific way, I am to believe it for now.
haidt?
yes
take a course of economic history and history of economic thinking plz
in those times all policies were made by liberals governments. Their deregulation of the markets and the austerity that followed was the implementation of the theories taught in the universities at the time
Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us - Avi Tuschman
But Haidt sounds interesting so I am thinking of giving him a try as well.
> huge public works programs, high business regulation and public investment aren't socialism
huh alright
I guess a good example of the injustices of a liberal government can be found in the far east trading companies and what they did to stay profitable.
I'll second this. Liberalism was a major driver of imperialism; the hunger for land that could be sold as private property and then used for economic development was a major factor in the destruction of Native Americans in the US.
You could point to the Irish potato famine as caused by liberalism as well.
you're going to have to do better than this lad, we can agree with deregulation falling under the banner of economic liberalism, but you're going to have to show your working wrt the gold standard and monetary policy of that period
what actions taken by the federal reserve were specifically the fault of economic liberalism?
you should steer away from bringing in austerity as that is fiscal policy and the huge stimulus brought in by FDR didn't do much compared to when the looser monetary policy
and don't go for the argument of 'the establishment were liberals qed', it's very lazy and doesn't get anywhere close to analysing liberalism
yeah haidt is pretty good
i would assume liberalism here is meant to be like classical liberalism, not to be conflated with the"far left/democrat" idea, and i'm not sure if OP means economic policy either, although i'd reckon classical liberalism is tied to economic policy...
anyway to look at the atrocities of classical liberalism, we should look at countries that have traditionally practiced classical liberalism, namely the United States and many of the European countries. Tocqueville brings up the idea of the "tyranny of the majority" which would make a classical liberal society irrationally vote for whatever is popular, not what would be best for a society. this is probably the biggest fault of classical liberalism - when a society loses interest in freedom, democracy, the basic tenets of classical liberalism, the society will commit "atrocities" in the form of irrational voting, which leads to the slow collapse of its society. we can see examples these atrocities when the people elect representatives without knowing what their platform is, we can see this when people say that democracy is "populism," or when voting numbers are low.
when a classical liberal society stops caring about classical liberalism - as it is their freedom to do so!, unlike other forms of government - then instead of riots or revolution, there will be a slower form of decadence. ultimately the atrocity will be the death of a stable and once happy society, the loss of life as a new (and probably more restrictive) government is put into place, the feeling of slowly losing one's nation, one's home, one's language.
OP here. I should've defined liberalism, though to be honest I am a bit confused about it now.
Tocqueville is an interesting fellow by the way, and eerie prophetic.
gawd it is getting way too easy to spot them pol/cats
they really are that stupid
>Dude public infrastructure and taxes are socialist
IP BAN OF ALL AMERICANS FROM THIS BOARD WHEN
It is interesting though how the former cultural enemy of America shaped their ideology. Everything associated with the commie becomes a kind of taboo.
But I see myself doing this too. If I associate something with my own cultural enemy I am more likely to dismiss it. Say a book.
Is there a psychological word for this phenomenon?
Guilt by association?
Association fallacy sounds like it yea.
No, because despite Fascists and Socialists whining about 'muh dajenurasy' and 'muh inequality' respectively, liberalism is actually pretty great.
It's not perfect, but without a doubt the best system yet devised by man.
Communists and Fascists ought to be forcibly silenced and censored before they get a chance to try their retarded social engineering projects again and kill a couple million in the process.
Implying capitalism never killed anyone.
>No, because despite Fascists and Socialists whining about 'muh dajenurasy' and 'muh inequality' respectively, liberalism is actually pretty great.
You could trivialize that with "muh democracy" just as easily.
So basically on the far end of the spectrum, atrocities occur on your own people, whereas near the center of the spectrum atrocities occur on other people?
> Do we have any examples in history of 'far liberalism' atrocities?
All the coup d'etats on behalve of corporations should count as one, I believe.
How about 90th Russia chaos and everything?
>believing in the left/right false dichotomy
Fuck off good goy
>90th
It's 90s.
Heh, good catch brother
Pretty much this.
Liberal states (UK&USA) of course commited atrocities. They were not ideologically motivated though, but rather results of imperialism, like colonization, or fuckups like Iraq or Vietnam.
Regime changes often result chaos, nothing weird about that
The fact is that capitalists are responsible for the most deaths in history, bar none, but that's really inconvenient since they're the ones in power, so the only "horrors" people are taught are "what these other guys did wow are they evil keep buying chocolate" and "this bad thing that happened which was isolated and has nothing to do with liberalism/capitalism please believe me how about a coke senpai"
>They were not ideologically motivated though
>but rather results of imperialism, like colonization
That is ideological motivation or is at least tied in with ideology (see anticommunism, as in Vietnam) but even if it wasn't it's not like the absence of ideology makes it acceptable. If anything it's worse.
>That is ideological motivation
Liberalism goes against both imperialism and colonialism. Imperialism and colonialism comes from competition between nations.
>see anticommunism, as in Vietnam
Were the atrocities result of inefficiency of US army leading to collateral damage or orders from politicians? Did US en masse executed their ideological opponents like Nazis or Soviets or did they rather killed random civilians who just happened to be in a bad place at a bad time?
I feel that Iraq war and Libya, Syria were most certainly motivated by liberal ideology. At least if we believe that democracy was the goal.
>Liberalism goes against both imperialism and colonialism
Europe is a pretty obvious case of liberalism gone awry.
"Yes let's import millions of muslim refugees to drain our welfare system dry some of which that are guaranteed to be terrorists others who will bring nothing but a massive clash of culture. Oh by the way they will outbreed and replace the native population too!"
Gee I wonder what could go wrong.
>he fell for the Eurabia meme
Explain how not?
Imperialism and colonialism are results of liberal competition between countries that were forced to "adapt or die" that comes with the free market
Countries always compete. Free market or not.
No but colonialism was started because countries needed materials for their industry that needed to stay competitive in the free market
There's a reason it took place shortly after the industrial revolution
>needed to stay competitive in the free market
You mean to be wealthy, Something all nations desire?
Do nations really need free market to compete?
Didn't Brits already out-competed pretty much everyone at the point colonization became a major thing?
>There's a reason it took place shortly after the industrial revolution
Colonialism goes more than milenium before industrial revolution, unless you mean specifically the massive subjugation of non-white people by Europeans started by discovery of America.
And only thing it had to do with liberalism is that most advanced European nation and established ruler of the Sea got so succesful thanks to it. .