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by
R.R. Reno
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June 27 - July 6, 2020
In the twenty-first century, oligarchy and an unaccountable elite pose a far greater threat to the future of liberal democracy than does the return of Hitler. Solidarity
What is freedom for in a liberal, open society? Historically, the West has appealed to metaphysics and religion for answers.
We must accept the “strain” of freedom, the existential tension that comes from knowing that we must decide for ourselves the ends our freedom is to serve.
“Although history has no meaning, we can give it meaning.”12
“meaning” instead of “truth.”
Value-free facts alone constitute the domain of truth in Popper’s universe.
The Open Society and Its Enemies,
truth to meaning
either an open society or Auschwitz.
transcendent truth,
The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief,
an older liberal consensus based on natural rights gave way to a liberal consensus about the importance of consensus.
Arthur Schlesin...
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Modern man, Schlesinger observes, is vulnerable to authoritarians who promise to restore national purpose or reestablish social solidarity around a collectivist economic model such as socialism.
“restore the balance between individual and community.”
shared prosperity rather than on the strong gods will allow us to achieve a stable common life consistent with the individualism of an open society.
What principles will maintain the balance between individual interests and communal purpose? None, as it turns out.
Abraham Maslow, Karen Horney, Rollo May, and others may not have read Popper,
timeless, empirical truths
individuality.
“conventionality”—the
Popper’s “closed soc...
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deemed an impediment to personal growth an...
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anti-metaphysical,
The Open Society and Its Enemies,
“greater meaning,”
self-actualization,
autonomy—“lib...
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But precisely because it is post-conventional, one cannot teach young people the content of this code,
Cannot codify it or it would suddenly be Conventional ! And, there are no determinant end point.
Consensus is what they strive for.
Dissent cannot be tolerated and is punished.
Dissent = illiberalism = fascism.
Petulant children that cannot tolerate “No".
authenticity in personal life demands rejecting the authority of traditional moral norms.
ever-greater “growth” and “development.”
Consensus
punished dissent,
authenticity in personal life demands rejecting the authority of traditional moral norms.
The Open Society and Its Enemies,
metaphysical tradition
critical faith, a negative piety.
unending duty to banish the traditionalists, who are loyal to the strong gods that are thought to have caused so much suffering and death.
1955, Walter Lippmann,
Essays in the Public Philosophy,
“traditions of civility.”
return to metaphysics to secure a stable basis for liberal society—respect
Now, Lippmann argued, the future of free societies depends on making first principles explicit,
We can best guard against totalitarianism when we know the transcendent sources of our political convictions.
After Virtue
“public interest”
the content of which can be filled in by social-sc...
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In 1943, two psychologists at the University of California launched a project to study the roots of anti-Semitism.
They, too, wished to prevent the return of totalitarianism, racial animus, and nationalist aggression.
Theodor W. Adorno, the latter a leading figure in the Frankfurt School, a Marxist group of anti-fascist intellectuals who fled ...
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Popper’s closed-versus-open terminology,
