Enlightenment liberalism is a hard sell these days. We see right-populists gumming up the works in Italy (where a nativist Lega party is leading in the polls), Germany (where their AfD nativist force "grand coalitions" of establishment parties to keep them at bay) and the UK (where Brexit animates a more populist Johnson government to the dismay of the Tory elites) as well as the US.
Thus, we have have a lot of hand-wringing in elite circles. This Politico EU piece wonders if they've hit peak populism and this piece on the Politico mothership worries that they haven't... because the peasants are too dense to appreciate it-
As much as President Donald Trump’s liberal critics might want to lay America’s ills at his door, [psychologist Shaun] Rosenberg says the president is not the cause of democracy’s fall—even if Trump’s successful anti-immigrant populist campaign may have been a symptom of democracy’s decline.
We’re to blame, said Rosenberg. As in “we the people.”
Democracy is hard work. And as society’s “elites”—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.
His prediction? “In well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail.”
Secular small-l liberal thought doesn't always sell well, especially if people feel threaten by their anti-conservative-religion and citizen-of-the-world views. If your small-l liberal elites can't explain how their world-view works better for the county than a nativist populist, then there might be a problem with their world-view rather than with the mind of the median voter. However, that requires humility (that you might actually be wrong) and respect for your fellow man, something that runs counter to human nature.
How does open borders and free trade help Joe Sixpack? How does normalizing sexual minorities make life better for folks whose religion or culture sees being heterosexual and cisgendered as optimal versus the alternatives? Those are items that can be hard sells if you're working against racism (immigration) blue-collar self-interest (immigration and free trade) and traditional culture both secular and religous (sexual minorities and immigration).
The Golden Rule seems to the cornerstone of liberalism when done well, but when forgiveness for people who disagree with you is lacking, you get conservatives "deplatformed" by militant leftists and liberals being asked to leave America if they don't buy into a Trumpian world-view. Without forgiveness and respect for others, you'll see autocratic tendencies across the political spectrum.
Small-l liberal democracy will give rights to minorities on Golden Rule grounds, since an unshackled democracy allows 51% to rape and pillage the other 49%. Loving God and loving one's neighbor as oneself were Jesus' two prime directives; it's hard to do the latter without the former, but liberal democracies try to institutionalize the Golden Rule.
The cultural left will want the Golden Rule applied to immigrants and sexual minorities, but neglect to give grace to poor natives and folks with a more traditional sexual morality. Christian traditionalists will often forget to be charitable to immigrants and minorities both ethnic and sexual, forgetting that Imago Dei applies to the targets of Trumpian wrath.
Democracy, to borrow from Mencken, is the idea that the people should get what they want ... good and hard. Even if it isn't good for them. In a democracy, your candidate will occasionally (and sometimes frequently) be beaten by the "bad guy", but if your guy always wins, you're living in a one-party state that you agree with. Sometimes the bad guys win, and your job is to persuade part of the majority to support your guys.
The alternative is either an autocratic state that enforces your world-view, or a bounded democracy where unacceptable candidates aren't allowed. Iran has democratic features, but only within the bounds set by a group of Shia clergy. Germany has a lot more democratic features than Iran, but parties that look too Nazi are persona non grata.
Germany came to mind via this piece, where a city councilman from a Naziesque party got elected mayor by his peers, much to the chagrin of everyone and his uncle.
Stefan Jagsch of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was elected unanimously by seven councillors in Waldsiedlung, near Frankfurt am Main.
Mr Jagsch won because no rival stood against him. The small town has about 2,650 residents.
The NPD has survived efforts to ban it, but is seen as "anti-constitutional".
Note that the NPD is a very small party and not the larger nativist AfD; the AfD seems to have absorbed much of the NPD vote on the national level, but Mr. Jagsch seems to have been an exception to the rule.
The NPD does have some troubling tendencies, like wanting to regain the ethnically-German areas in other countries and a rejection of the small-l liberal order. However, the German electoral authorities have opted not to declare it illegal, fearing that deplatforming it will give it more attention than it deserves.
One of liberalism's weak spots is that the Golden Rule mentality will give grace to people who would not give it back in return were they in power, be they white-nationalists or Islamists. Liberalism is playing by the rules in a knife-fight, but playing by the rules is in their DNA.
You're better off beating such folks at the ballot box rather than banning them, for that merely gives then street cred.
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