A very interesting article, well explained. Thank you. It seems that classical liberalism, with its emphasis on formal equality of opportunity for all (and for all beliefs in the marketplace of ideas), is really quite fragile as a dominant ideological alignment. It lends itself to the culture of organised scepticism that welcomes change through critique. Once established as the dominant form, high liberalism then seems to protect itself against any slip back, not least because it has turned the moral argument against individualistic formal equality. Coercion and the erosion of the formal equality of some people (and ideas) becomes morally acceptable to high liberalism.
But HL in turn leaves itself vulnerable to wokeism, partly because it retains an openness to new ideas, but also because a morally-justified form of 'nice' authoritarianism[!!!] (i.e. coercion on steroids!) represents a logical extension to HL coercion, once substantive equality is established as a higher moral goal than formal equality at the individual level. To attain an equality of outcomes goal, ever stringent interventions can be morally justified. Enter wokeism!!
What is needed is an inherent fragility to wokeism that can act as a catalyst to lead us back to classical liberalism. One dimension to that might be the built-in psychological resistance that people tend to have with authoritarianism. Luke Conway (in Liberal Bullies, 2024) talks about two elements of this being 'reactance' (inherent hostility to having one's freedoms [i.e. negative rights] taken away) and 'informational contamination' (inherent distrust of state messaging on anything, once people realise that it tends to be heavily contaminated with propaganda). These are built-in vulnerabilities to the maintenance of authoritarianism, just as the extreme tolerance of classical liberalism is an inherent feature that makes it vulnerable to change.
What makes these vulnerabilities point us back towards classical liberalism, rather than high liberalism, is that they are experienced by REAL people, i.e. real flesh and blood individuals. As classical liberalism moved to high liberalism, the emphasis began to change from flesh and blood individuals to abstractions, to group ID 'labels'. When Biden says something like "the next member of the Supreme Court is going to be....a black woman", and then, as an AFTER thought, they look for a person to represent that label, he is effectively privileging a 'label' above flesh and blood human beings. But labels don't experience pain and emotion, and they don't experience things like hostile reactance to authoritarianism. Real individual people do. Hence, the pushback against many of the inherent problems with wokeism is arguably best conveyed through the formal equality framework of classical liberalism, rather than through a woke-light, more abstract and more group label focused, high liberalism. Wokeism, when taken to excess, arguably [and very ironically] revalidates and rejuvenates classical liberalism.
A very interesting article, well explained. Thank you. It seems that classical liberalism, with its emphasis on formal equality of opportunity for all (and for all beliefs in the marketplace of ideas), is really quite fragile as a dominant ideological alignment. It lends itself to the culture of organised scepticism that welcomes change through critique. Once established as the dominant form, high liberalism then seems to protect itself against any slip back, not least because it has turned the moral argument against individualistic formal equality. Coercion and the erosion of the formal equality of some people (and ideas) becomes morally acceptable to high liberalism.
But HL in turn leaves itself vulnerable to wokeism, partly because it retains an openness to new ideas, but also because a morally-justified form of 'nice' authoritarianism[!!!] (i.e. coercion on steroids!) represents a logical extension to HL coercion, once substantive equality is established as a higher moral goal than formal equality at the individual level. To attain an equality of outcomes goal, ever stringent interventions can be morally justified. Enter wokeism!!
What is needed is an inherent fragility to wokeism that can act as a catalyst to lead us back to classical liberalism. One dimension to that might be the built-in psychological resistance that people tend to have with authoritarianism. Luke Conway (in Liberal Bullies, 2024) talks about two elements of this being 'reactance' (inherent hostility to having one's freedoms [i.e. negative rights] taken away) and 'informational contamination' (inherent distrust of state messaging on anything, once people realise that it tends to be heavily contaminated with propaganda). These are built-in vulnerabilities to the maintenance of authoritarianism, just as the extreme tolerance of classical liberalism is an inherent feature that makes it vulnerable to change.
What makes these vulnerabilities point us back towards classical liberalism, rather than high liberalism, is that they are experienced by REAL people, i.e. real flesh and blood individuals. As classical liberalism moved to high liberalism, the emphasis began to change from flesh and blood individuals to abstractions, to group ID 'labels'. When Biden says something like "the next member of the Supreme Court is going to be....a black woman", and then, as an AFTER thought, they look for a person to represent that label, he is effectively privileging a 'label' above flesh and blood human beings. But labels don't experience pain and emotion, and they don't experience things like hostile reactance to authoritarianism. Real individual people do. Hence, the pushback against many of the inherent problems with wokeism is arguably best conveyed through the formal equality framework of classical liberalism, rather than through a woke-light, more abstract and more group label focused, high liberalism. Wokeism, when taken to excess, arguably [and very ironically] revalidates and rejuvenates classical liberalism.