OT: Re: Modern v Classical Liberalism: was ...

Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 05:04:14 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition
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In article <email-address-deleted>, Brian D. Fernald <email-address-deleted> wrote:
(quoting me)
> > The conservatives also accepted the principle that wealth must be
> > transferred from the private to the public sector in order for the
> > government to do necessary things. So your obervation is consistent with
> > viewing modern liberals either as a kind of classical liberal or as a
> > kind of conservative. All it tells us is that none of the three were
> > anarxchists.
> It also shows us that modern liberals and classical liberals are
> reflections of some of the same basic assumptions.
In a sense that also includes classical conservatives? The basic
assumption being the rejection of anarchism?
> Take for example a coin. Which face is the coin, the head or the
> tails? Neither face is the coin, because every coin can be defined as
> having two faces.
> One side of the coin is classical liberalism and the other is modern
> liberalism, but they are still the same coin.
And I still don't see an argument for grouping those two in particular.
Would you equally say "one side is modern liberalism, one side is
traditional conservatism?"
> I would call the coin
> "American Liberalism" with a classical liberal face and a modern
> liberal tails. I would also suggest that the classical liberal and the
> modern liberal can only be understood in relation to each other.
How can that be the case when the classical liberal existed and was
understood before the modern liberal?
> > But classical liberalism was in large part defined by what the things
> > were that it thought it necessary for government to do. Modern
> > liberalism rejects that list in favor of--roughly speaking--the list
> > that would have been offered by the conservatives the classical liberals
> > were opposing.
>
> I'm not sure I understand the above.
A central feature of classical liberalism was a very narrow list of
proper governmental activities--typically courts, police and national
defense. Improving public morals through education, although
unfortunately accepted by some people who were otherwise liberals,
doesn't fit that--but does fit the view of the duties of the state held
by the traditional conservatives. Similarly for regulating the quality
of goods. Similarly for lots more. And you can replace "traditional
conservatives" with "modern liberals" in that statement and it's still
true.
...
> Likewise, the goal of welfare, can be stated as a 'right to survival'
> or a 'right to food'. The large welfare systems are then a technical
> means to arrive at the 'right to survival'. The classical liberal,
> opposing the welfare state would say that survival is a good thing, but
> not a function of the government, and therefore would not support the
> extension of a right to food.
Correct.
> The classical liberals do however, work forward from the notion that
> everyone being fed is a good, by supporting certain technical economic
> processes with the goal of producing an efficient economic society.
> This is also just a technical means to arriving at the good end.
Many classical liberals were utilitarians. But a utilitarian who
concludes that utility is maximized by Soviet Communism (to take a more
extreme example than yours) isn't therefor a classical liberal. Once you
define all disagreement about means as "just a technical means to
arriving at the good end," you have reduced all political disagreement
to pure disagreement about ends--which seems to me to drastically
misrepresent real world political differences.
> True, but part of the association with liberals and socialists derive
> from the two-party system.
That's not my point. The Republican party includes (among other things)
traditional conservatives and libertarians. That doesn't mean that one
is a watered down version of the other. But you could argue that the
usual form of classical liberalism is a watered down version of the
extreme modern form of libertarianism.
> However, even in a classically liberal state certain industries are
> nationalized. Police, military, etc., can all be understood as
> nationalized industries in the same way that Amtrak, USPS, etc. are
> nationalized.
Indeed--the reason for my suggesting that classical liberalism is a
watered down version of a more radical position.
(About Buckley)
> On his thought, I always taken him as I take Mcluhan, someone who
> points to a potential in things and not specifically to the thing it
> itself. One who raises the issue.
In _Cruising Speed_, he pretty clearly regards himself as an
intellectual middle man, transmitting the ideas of the real original
thinkers to a wider audience.
--
www.daviddfriedman.com