Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Liberal Optimism — Paul Robinson

Good post with a link to the author's latest at RT (see below).

I would agree with the thrust but the major deficiency is missing the conflict between liberalism and traditionalism as chief factor in the current moment of the historical dialect. This conflict is seen not only among nations but within nations and even in social groups such as churches and political parties.

This dialectic has many facets, so it is not a simple task to summarize it other than by noting major trends as they develop, usually from already existing conditions. But history is shaped by "humanity," which consists of individuals and social groups interacting in terms of a complex adaptive system subject to reflexivity and emergence. 

Trying to force the process or speed it up is generally to be deprecated, and not only because it is illiberal. Humans just are not that smart and we don't have the foresight needed either. In addition, social groups are often very different in their value systems and this is especially the case with societies, especially civilizational ones.

Moreover, the Western push for liberalization seems not only illiberal but also hypocritical on one hand and "interested" on the other. For one thing, Western nations do not have a clean record, as China is now pointing fingers at. For another, liberalization is a code word for Western dominated neoliberal "capitalism," even thought neoliberalism is incompatible with genuine democracy as governance of, by and for the people.

Irrussianality
Liberal Optimism
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

See also

RT
Western focus on Russian political dead-enders exposes failure to grasp that real change in Moscow will come from system insiders
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

3 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Why do academics sound like broken records?

Liberalism, traditionalism, dialectic, blah blah blah.
These are the same old recycled concepts that you've posted hundreds of times.
Post something new for a change; assuming that academia is capable of regurgitating something original.

Exploitation and violence are the legacy of humanity.
It makes no difference what evildoers (or do-gooders) call themselves.
It is all pretense.

A "liberal" is just as likely to be responsible for mass suffering and death, as a Nazi. The former just has blinders on.

Matt Franko said...

You’d have to eliminate the Liberal Art schools entirely and only have people train under Science…

Tom is trained under the Jesuits they use the liberal art method… which includes dialectics, paradox, synthesis, etc…

It’s good if you are writing a song but if you try to use it in material matters you eventually blow the whole thing up…

Peter Pan said...

I doubt that labeling and categorizing the human condition has anything to do with art. Output from artists is found in many venues. It is consumed. Sometimes it provokes thought. Output from academia goes into a file cabinet.