How To Be A Liberal

TODAY. Reveals the six lies behind the rise of nationalism in the USA, Great Britain, India, Israel, Brazil, Philippines, Hungary and Italy

BIRTH. The origin of independent thought in the mind of philosopher Ren© Descartes, who realised Cogito, ergo sum: 'I think therefore I am'. Mentions Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on the Method, and Nicolaus Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.

AWAKENING. In the English Civil War period, radicals started to outline three political thoughts that challenged the established order. They were: freedom of religious conscience, the notion of the individual, and the notion of doubt. These three ideas would become central to liberalism

THE THREE REVOLUTIONS. Liberalism was moulded in the furnace of three revolutions in the 18th century: The Glorious Revolution in England, the American Revolution and the French Revolution

CONSTANT. The womanising dissolute 18th Century Swiss philosopher Benjamin Constant established the political rights of the individual and warned of the tyranny of an over-mighty government in Napoleonic France

HARRIET AND JOHN. Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill laid the groundwork for the development of modern liberalism, including championing a minority cause in 19th Century Victorian England: the right of women to vote. They wrote The Enfranchisement of Women and On Liberty

DEATH. The Dreyfuss Affair in France, the extermination of peasants in Ukraine's Holodomor, and the genocide against Jews in Nazi Germany showed what happens when tyrants could channel the 'will of the people' over the rights of the individual protected by liberalism

NEW WORLD ORDER. After Second World War, liberal democracies in the West built a new post-war, rights-based liberal world order designed to guarantee peace and individual rights. Economically John Maynard Keynes triumphed over Friedrich Hayek

BELONGING. One flaw in liberalism was the lack of recognition of the identity felt by individuals, whether nationality or religion. The English writer George Orwell and philosopher Isaiah Berlin averred the importance of this sense of belonging

CRASH. The post-war liberal world order crashed with oil crisis stagflation in the 1970s when Hayek's small state philosophy took root in US governments, leading to bank deregulation on Wall Street (and likewise in the UK under Margaret Thatcher) - leading to the 2008 global financial crash

IDENTITY WAR. Liberalism had largely been devised by white men, and woman and ethnic groups carved out a separate identity that put the group ahead of the individual. 'This was no longer the politics of how to change the world. It was the politics of who you were.'

ANTI-TRUTH. Just as liberalism faced multiple threats from the resurgence of nationalism, the rise of identity politics and the financial crash, people's ability to use reason diminished with the rise of social media. Facts became opinions.

THE NEW NATIONALISM. 1. Hungary, with Victor Urban. 2. US, with Donald Trump. 3 Brexit Britain where nationalist propaganda trumped a nation's interests

THE OTHER. How nationalists have seized on a supposed threat to their countries from other people to whip up dissent and to crack down on immigration and the rights of individuals, harming democracy and liberal values

TOMORROW. The big problem with liberalism has been complacency that it would eventually triumph around the world. The answer is for liberals to fight for their democratic values. Joe Biden's election as US President offers hope for a kinder, better future

SORRY & THANK YOU.

FURTHER READING

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