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Comment by monideas | Hacker News Reader

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I'd modify this take: modern liberalism was meant as a commitment, not as a truth. Something collectively agreed on as good, valuable and important, as opposed to something true like the "sky is blue".

The issue, as I think history will judge it, is the truth that precedes liberalism has been spent & forgotten. In the absence of the "why", commitment became truth: the perception/prism/the water people see themselves in and others, the world, etc. From there, as you said, the logic proceeds mechanically (fact: kids are blank slates, results: parents, teachers, environment are to be blamed[1]). Because we can't reason our way out of the truth even if our senses and experiences are screaming at us to stop.

It is a consuming, comfortable & reasonable truth, held tightly because the alternatives are seen as unreasonable. In this way, modern liberalism is useful as a defense mechanism.

[1] reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44226329

What you’re describing is basically a people + a covenant + a system of law. That is basically the structure of the Jews, the covenant they have with G-d, and the Torah.

The question is then to what extend that particular system is an accurate reflection of reality, and to answer that question you would have the analyze the delta between them, both in terms of how it was initially conceived vs how it evolved.

In the case of the US, at a very basic level for example the founders did not envision the US as a multiracial society or that everyone, including non-landowners could vote. Also that the US constitution itself looks very different today in terms of its amendments and more importantly the case law and jurisprudence around constitutional law which is de facto the constitution of the US. I don’t mean that these are right or wrong necessarily, just that the initial conception is very different.

Basically I think you are right but that also the basic premise of liberalism and the liberal system even in its initial conception is flawed and therefore doomed to fail.

I do think fundamentally liberalism does assert a view of human psychology and sociology that assumes that properly organizing and orienting the human mind is at least 3 orders of magnitude easier than it really is. If you actually study anthropology, like the anthropological studies that were done in the 19th century and if you study depth psychology which heavily makes use of those anthropological studies, you find a very terrifying and very chaotic and complex picture of the human psyche, as revealed in the religions, mythologies, and rites of pre-civilization peoples which liberalism has virtually absolutely no awareness of.

> To be fair

Opening with “to be fair” doesn’t make a straw man fair.

I don’t know what you’re calling a strawman, but the point is that wxw’s response is simply an epitome of the underlying problem. He’s just engaging in political discourse completely in line with the ideological superstructure which is ultimately responsible for this very problem (violence against teachers being normalized). You can’t expect the typical person to be able to transcend that, hence “to be fair”.

To be fair, liberalism says none of these things. People that call themselves liberal but are not, do often believe in these things, but they don't vote for liberals anymore so its a moot point.

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