One thing I would say is that Fascism isn't specifically 'White'. Japan had Fascism, it was justified as 'Asia for Asians' as they say. And then were the Blue Shirts in China. If anything I'd say Fascism attaches itself to whatever would unify a country to the traditional order, in America that would be things like Christianity and Exceptionalism, it just so happens that its mostly happened in the west because... well the west came to rule.
Yep, there's a tendency to equate Nazism with Fascism but Mussolini's original ideas were very different from Hitler's in many key areas. There were also all kinds of Fascist ideas blooming around Interwar Europe with wildly different components. Was Franco a Fascist? Some dispute that. He was certainly very different from Italy which was different from Germany and so-on and so-forth.
+twosquirrelly Where any of those people fascist ideologues? I'm going to guess no, so there opinion of fascism is irrelevant to its definition. Fascism operates under a strictly anti capitalist framework, hence the National Syndicalist Falange and Corporatist Estado Novo. There has never been a case of Capitalism and the Fascist Doctrine being implemented.
Chris Meachem yep. We have three different games of “footy”, and none of them are soccer. For those interested, it’s Rugby Union, Rugby League (they’re different sports, and Union is by far the superior!), and Australian Rules (which makes absolutely no fucking sense but can be impressive to watch nonetheless- just check out that photo of Tayla’s kick that garnered so much attention, the “here comes the boom” compilations, and the way they run up each other’s bodies to get the ball. Very impressive, even if I have no bloody idea what’s going on). All three of these footballs are superior to American football, which is basically just ads and then some big dudes crashing into each other. Rinse and repeat for four+ hours, because they have to stop after every single move and replace the players because apparently they can’t find people who can do more than one thing.
@@katherinemorelle7115 You're just listing different types of fights over funny shaped balls. There's only one football, it's the one where you use your feet to kick the ball. Everything else should be called 'throw-ball' or 'fight-ball' or something. You can reply till you're blue in the face, nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.
Philosophy Tube 10/10 nice joke, but gives a nod to you biases anyway, an example of which is your analysis on Liberalism having exceptions to their rule. It may have been the case when it was penned by the likes of John Locke, but it is no the only school of thought for Liberalism. After all, Marx's idea of keeping the state until it is not necessary to create a Communist Utopia isn't shared by Anarcho-Communists. Should I cherry-pick from that and say "All Communists want an all powerful state to rule over them like the USSR!"? I guess I shouldn't be so intellectually dishonest by doing that, like you have been in this video. Lying by omission is still lying.
@Cian McCabe it always makes me sad to see people taking WH40K at face value and wholly accepting the fascism, imperialism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance as good; instead of seeing the (imo) clear subtext criticizing those ideas.
@@emersonpage5384 It's mostly because 16 y-o aren't good at that. And those people make most of the group, and do most memes which comes up... LIKE THE WHITEST CREAM.
Cian McCabe are you happy knowing that the creators of 40k are all leftists and your spouting of Astartes buzzwords makes you sound completely out of the picture?
In my country, Brazil, we make the same distinction of liberalism and the left-wing, they are pretty much opposites here given the fact that most Brazilian liberals are economic liberal and politically conservative.
That's the case in most of the world where liberal is an economic term meaning "someone who likes the free market" which is pretty linked to the definition of the "Right wing". The US just uses it as a social term nowadays for people who " like social freedom". Interestingly enough, american liberals/democrats aren't "left" at all. Some can be called centre-right but 100% of their party is not left wing, can't speak for the voters though, I would just be guessing. I guess people in the US use 'left-wing' and 'liberal' interchangeably because in their mainstream politics the Dems are as left as it gets.
Michael Scott, I find it funny that in the USA social liberals thing they are left-wings, and right-wings think they are the extreme far-left. Brazil has something like that but on the contrary, for ex. PSDB stands for social democratic party of brazil, but is actually centre-right, basically our "social democracy" is actually social liberal and brazilians believe that most parties are "far-left", but mostly of them are centre-right. We don't have a big left party, PT was the closest but still they didn't do any tax or land reforms, they only did a negative income tax and affirmative actions and that were the most left Brazil ever got.
In the USA there's definetely a lot of misunderstanding behind those terms because many people don't bother to read about them and just end up using whatever everyone else does. I'm not exactly sure about this but I think social democracy is just left of social liberalism. Social democracy is centre right although it has "left/marxist" influences, it's supposed to be a more moderate form of capitalism or something, gonna have to read on it more. Greece's ruling party (Syriza) was supposed to be democratic socialist (centre left) but is now ruling as a social democratic party (centre right) yet people everywhere still call them "left".
Seems these comments are turning from a traditional marriage into a polyamoristic sex cult. And as long as you keep the culty part down to a minimum, act on enthusiastic consent and have open communication, that might even be healthier than traditional marriage :D
4:40 Yes, Liberalism is an ideology and, yes, in practice it makes exceptions to normal rules. But ALL ideologies that have been practiced do that. So it defines all ideologies not just Liberalism. Saying it's exception making is a defining attribute of Liberalism is discredit the meaning of "defining".
Doubt you'll see this, but a point about "acceptable violence" and liberalism. In my experience, liberalism's acceptance of violence has less to do with "exceptions" and more to do with "propriety", or in other words "political etiquette". Liberalism is very much about trying to create universalities and objectivity, the creation of a system that behaves in a uniform and predictable manner. So for Liberals the question is less the human cost of an act, but if that act conformed to the set system of rules and procedures they've set up. Horrific mass violence is fine, as long as you do it by the books, but a hungry man acquiring food via means not approved by the system, NO NO NO! I think this is why so many Liberals shuttered at the idea of Richard Spenser being punched, yet seem to not bat an eye at the United States bombing thousands of people with unmanned drones. One is a violation of etiquette, the other isn't. Edit: Another point I wanted to make (but forgot to because I wrote this comment hastily before running to work) is I think this also illuminates why so many establishment democrats are horrified by Trump, despite administrations they praised in the past being equally guilty of similar evils. Trump is evil, don't get me wrong, I despite that man, but there's been plenty of awful POTUS's before him, yet he revere most of them. Trump though is evil in an unpredictable and chaotic way that grinds against our notion of a civil and orderly state of affairs.
I can smell the post hoc rationalisation on this from a mile away...... Could it not be that people find the lack of accountability for violence a worrying prospect? With a state, there is a method in which they can be made accountable, although loopholes are used by many. When done by an anonymous attacker in the midst of a faceless crowd, there is little to no way of keeping them accountable, unless they are identified (which I'm supposing the mask wearers weren't expecting).
Philosophy Tube Not inherently. Citizens can make states accountable. States can leave citizens unaccountable. Liberals want everyone accountable. Anyone making exceptions is betraying liberalism's principles.
@@rhaq426 Individualism is more about an individual being responsible for solving their own problems than an individual being free to do as they wish. For example, an Individualist might argue that it is the individual responsibility of a person to get a good education even if they are from a poor family and thus cannot afford university tuition fees and that same Individualist might also argue that it is the duty of a person to adhere to society's traditional rules such as not being allowed to have sex outside of wedlock. An example of someone who is both an Individualist and a Traditionalist would be Jordan Peterson.
I think this was a really good introductory look at Liberalism, however I think it's important to point out that many modern Liberals see the acceptable use of violent force as follows: The State has a monopoly on the use for violence, and should use such authority as sparingly as possible. The laws of the State should be designed around the preservation of the liberties of its citizens. That monopoly on violent force should only be used against those that violate the law. So then, the only valid use of force would be the State acting in response to an individual violating the rights of others. A perfectly pacifistic ideology has a key weakness - its hands are entirely tied when others who do no adhere to that ideology commit acts of violence against them. So then, barring the universal acceptance of pacifism, there must be some level of justification of the use of violence in order for a society based on that ideology to continue to exist and not simply be wiped out by some other genocidal ideology that sees them as easy prey.
i think this goes back to the tolerance paradox. Just like a tolerant society can't tolerate intolerance, a pacifist society needs some degree of violence (or physical coercion anyway) to neutralize the threath of violence.
@@navaryn2938 the tolerance paradox is kinda gibberish tho, because I feel like tolerating intolerance isn't tolerance at all, just refusing to take action for what you believe. it's just kinda what bigoted people who aren't trying to hide the fact that they're bigoted use to say that people who aren't bigoted shouldnt try to stop them
I think this video lacked some historical context. The context from which Liberalism rose was where the biggest problems in society were ones which subsequently pointed to liberal ideals as solutions. Currently, Liberalism is also incredibly popular among intellectuals in countries with totalitarian and repressive governments (especially Theocratic ones) because the obvious solution is to define some basic individual rights like free speech, right for trial, and also remove codified privileges of people who serve as monarchs. What I'm saying is that Liberalism, I think, is a natural step in a society's progress. That's not to say Liberalism is perfect or even that it doesn't also have a natural, inevitable successor (*wink* Socialism), but that ideologies rise to solve systemic issues in society.
I must confess that as much as I enjoy Oliver's more recent videos, and as much as I understand why the style of content has changed in the context of his own life... I do kinda miss these bookcase videos.
with regard to circa 5:00. As someone who sees themselves as basically Liberal, couldn't I just say that Mill and Locke were hypocrites or that they didn't apply the moral and practical fundamentals of liberalism properly when they made exceptions for certain groups?
You could, but you would have to do that pretty much right the way through the history of liberalism, and people might start to wonder whether it was really more of a systemic problem.
Yes well that's basically what I've been thinking. The only way I can stop people from thinking that would be to apply those principles properly myself, I guess. I'm probably not capable of that but might as well aim high.
I forget where I read this defense of liberalism, but it goes something like: 'Don't concentrate on the hypocrisy of liberals. Concentrate on the effect that the accusation of hypocrisy has had on liberals.' Now you might get into arguments about whether or not the civil rights movement, abolitionists, human rights activists etc. are liberals themselves. But at the very least the overly dramatic rhetoric of liberals can be exploited by their enemies to make people's lives better :D
Ooh i should also add that there is a systemic problem. However, I don't thnk the problem is precisely with liberalism but rather with human psychology. The rapidity and ease with which we create ingroups and outgroups - usually without even realising we have even done it - and much reduced ability to feel empathy and compassion for outgroup members is a more fundamental cause for the injustices mentioned in the video. For a startling case in point, see the current Rohingya crisis. Buddhism may be considered by many to be one of the most peaceful religions but here we have a majority Buddhist population cleansing an outgroup from its territory, while champion of human rights Aung San Suu Kyi* is fine with it because 50% of the Rohingya are not dead or displaced. My point is that some behavioural forces operate beneath the level of philosophy or religion such that under the right (by which I mean wrong) circumstances they make hypocrites of us all except for a few angels (I would guess well under 5% and disproportionately female) who have miraculous moral fortitude. I think Alexander Solzhenytsin documented a few such cases from the gulags. *She is in a very (VERY) difficult position politcally so I'm reserving judgment upon her personally - its not an ideal example but it comes to mind quickly today.
Omg last thing what was the definition of ideology in this video? Because depending on the definition of ideology the statement about people who say they don't have an ideology definitely being ideological can be either true or falso imho.
he said: moderate and sensible* Nobody beilives themselves to be extreme (and if somone calls themself that, it's just to mess with their opponents calling them extreme - to try and take away the affect of the namecalling.)
@@puglosipher1666 Can confirm: Us Wolves fans have recently started singing "wanky wanderers" about ourselves to invalidate opposing fans using the same chant. Yes, everything does have to be about football.
Fascists are very brainwashed and believe extreme law and order is moderate and should be normal. Communists normally believe that they are just nice people who look out for everyone and are enlightened so they are moderate and not extreme. In reality they are both wrong and both have deeply flawed ideoligies that dont really work in long term practice as facism will always be destroyed as you cant hold everyone down for ever and communism goes against nateraul human enxtincts to carry on working and gaining things for your self from working hard and its also hard to motivate people to work under communism.
@@alexwhiting5881 Human nature has been proven to be cooperative and not competitive, Capitalism goes against human nature while Communism compliments human nature and would allow humans to thrive. Kropotkin proved this 150 years ago, since then all biologists and anthropologists have only made his arguments stronger by providing even more evidence that proves this.
An important point to note about Mill: he was explicitly not liberal on principle. He was first and foremost a utilitarian, and argued for liberalism on the grounds of its utility in places like England, and rejecting in in places he thought it would not be utilitous, like India. He would not have claimed to have been liberal with respect to India, or in any kind of general universal sense.
Allowing exceptions to deny certain groups of people certain rights is worrying, but an ideology that does not allow for exceptions at all is just as capable of harm. Rigidly following a strict code without consideration for potential edge cases is a dangerous thing, perhaps most notably exemplified by Batman. Most iterations of Batman follow a strict no-kill rule. This is a great guideline to follow most of the time, but it isn't hard for a writer to come up with a situation in which Batman can reasonably expect to prevent more future harm by electing to take a life. At the end of the day, I believe an ideology which allows for exceptions to its rules but considers them carefully beforehand risks doing less harm that one that follows its rules unerringly.
I'm inclined to agree with you. There's a quote from one of the Dune books, I think it was Chapterhouse: Dune, which elucidates the core principle -- Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codecs and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. Careful consideration is the only path that can lead to just action in all situations. It's no guarantee, but to enshrine anything else in ideology is to guarantee failure.
Maybe that's true. But he isn't stating these exceptions as being why liberalism is the Big Bad. He's saying that all ideologies have outlets for violence; liberalism claims otherwise, but in fact the rules of liberalism contain exceptions that basically deny certain people their rights. Those who lack rights may be treated violently. That violence is just never explicitly stated, because the idea of liberalism is to live in a city on a hill devoid of the darker parts of human nature, living as a liberated individual.
How can one talk about liberalism and not talk about John Rawls? I think Rawls is crucial to the conversation... and shows how liberalism can be distinct from libertarianism.
What do you think of Chomsky's view that anarcho-socialism is in fact the logical conclusion of unhypocritically applied liberal values? (It was something like that, I can't remember the exact words used).
Interesting question. I think it's called anarcho-syndicalism in case of Chomsky; anarcho-socialism (or else, social anarchism, more popular under this term, btw) is an umbrella term which can mean different things. And anarcho-syndicalism is cooperative production, strong unions, direct democracy, worker's self-management (doesn't have to be pure self-management technically, but managers nevertheless don't get paid 200 to 500 times above the average as these days), etc. Still, Chomsky himself has said multiple times that his political and economic views are diverse and don't belong to a single political ideology. He has conservative views, centrist views, etc. And that's just great I say--no one should sell himself to any specific ideology. I have never heard him say that, if you have the reference please share. What I like about Noam Chomsky most is his good habit to always emphasize that one should never get carried away with facultative philosophy in real life and should act based on the state of affairs in the real world.
Arman McHitaryan I just came across a video where Chomsky makes an almost equivalent claim. Its in the first 20 seconds of a video titled Noam Chomsky- Creating a Libertarian Socialist Society.
For a video that starts off by clarifying the definition in use, you seem to use "fascism" in a really loose way, seemingly synonymous with "political racism", instead of its stricter definition as the collusion of state and capital. A homogenous country (of any race) could still be fascist, without race being an issue at all.
Even that definition needs detail, unless the idea is that any country with public-private partnerships is fascist, which seems too broad to be useful.
@vaguelyhuman No it dosnt it has a cultural component. You can be whatever race. But you have to have that countries culture (see things like pax romana). Race is irrelevant culture is not. Facsim is in many ways a moderen version of ancient rome with ideas from Marx and the french revolution in it.
The fact that they won't even recognise that they're ideological is one of the most annoying things about liberals and pointing this out is usually the stage in the Twitter beef when they stop replying.
Christoph Spangler the fact that they lump everyone in a group together and imply that they all behave the same way is the most annoying thing about idiots, and bringing it up is usually the point in the beef when they have a fucking seizure lolololol
Velox South pointing out logical fallacies on youtube comments is liberal as fuck. It's like you're pointing it out to satisfy some sort of internal justice complex. Oh what a shame it would be for some poor schmuk to be influenced by an argument with a logical fallacy in it! Will you sit down to debate a fascist next?
Some high caliber arguments here. "A definining trait of Liberlaism is making exceptions", really? Are you sure if we looked really hard, we couldn't find a another ideology dominant in the 20th century that made a lot of exceptions for itself? You alluded to it when siad "a Lenist will thing violence is justified against an oppressive class?" because we know that's not what Lenin thought or did. Lenin thought violence was justified against any of political opponents, oppressive or otherwise. "Liberalism is racist because because people back then racist and some them of them wrote about it" wow, how are Liberalisms defenders to possibly counter that one?
"I assert that Liberalism is an ideology, even though it says it eschews ideology as a foundational principle and in fact is rooted in humanistic doubt. I have found the first inconsistency in Liberalism, by inventing it myself. Yay me."
With regard to the second point, I feel like "Liberalism makes exceptions" is missing the point a bit. It is, of course, true that every Liberal society has made exceptions. But an advocate can merely argue (and many do) that those were imperfect Liberal societies. People in the US can, for example, defend Liberalism and say that the slave-holding founders of the US were imperfect in their implementation of Liberal goals of freedom and justice for all. Unless you could show that exceptions are a *necessary* feature of Liberalism, saying that Liberal societies in practice don't live up to the stated aims is not a criticism of those aims, merely the implementation. Your second episode does address this in part, but I think a stronger case can be made (using your definition of ideology as a means of justifying violence) that Liberalism justifies violence in defense of property, but is willfully indifferent to the origin of the ownership defended. For instance, theft is a crime in Liberalism, but theft several generations prior is more or less given a pass and present ownership is defended, even if it is universally acknowledged that the theft which originated the ownership was not justified.
I think you are actually too generous to Locke. In my opinion, everything he ever wrote can be summed up as "The specific injustices to which I have been subjected are the worst possible injustices, and mark their perpetrators as indelibly evil. The injustices from which I have benefitted are simply the price we should all be willing to pay in order to prevent the more important kind of injustices - once again, those which i have personally suffered.
@@kingskylord6099 definitely seems that way. They think some nice sounding words on a document are freedom when actual freedom for the most people possible requires dismantling the power structures that bar people from basic freedoms and opportunities. So yeah true liberalism is leftism haha
Great video, Olly. Really enjoyed the philosophical perspective on liberalism, the focus on the construction of an ideology, because we usually talk about Liberalism in the context of the history of ideas (possibly because we are so influenced by it, it's easier to think about it as the influence of individuals such as Locke and Mill). Still, I do think the video could have benefited from comparing Liberalism to the Feudalist ideologies that came before it. Because, in some very limited ways, Liberalism does have emancipatory elements compared to the ideologies that came before it, at least for some classes. Though maybe not as much as Liberals like to believe, since you actually do a wonderful job of showing time and time again how Liberalism is historically founded on the subjugation of others. Or perhaps I'm just drawing too much from Historical Materialism here, but to me, it seems the Individualism propagated by Liberals was what allowed the working class to self-identify as such for the first time too, because it allowed them to realise their own interests and freed them from religious and feudalist notions of a social position determined by birth.
Some Liberals have made exceptions to who deserves rights, however that does not mean that Liberalism qua Liberalism is attached to those exceptions. The way most people have argued against exceptions is on Liberal grounds, pointing out that the exceptions are inconsistent with the core of Liberalism. As a result rights over time get expanded to more and more people as it becomes more broadly recognized that the exceptions are unfounded.
People have certainly pointed out the hypocrisy, yes. Some were left-leaning liberals and some were Leftists - Ture spends a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy, but we'll get to that in Part 4
Thanks for responding, it's an honor (I suspect we would disagree on most political things quite vociferously, but I still respect you). I'm so ignorant of who Ture is that i had to look him up to find out and am still not sure who he is. Is it Ture Königson? If so what should I read? If not who is it? (I doubt it's Norman Ture? He shows up a lot on jstor, but is very... free market?). My point was that no philosopher is consistent in either applying and living out their philosophy. That also applies to political philosophy. The fact that Locke failed to accept all the implications of Liberal ideas is an indictment of Locke, not of Liberalism. It certainly doesn't seem to imply that the exceptions carved out of liberalism are central to it, or inseparable from it.
this was so dang informative. i should read the extra bits in the dooblydoo, but for now im focusing on finishing your vids in this series. thanks for the great content!
I have a few counterpoints: * First, the exception towards Indians and NA in and of itself precedes liberalism and it's ingrained in the individuals that wrote it. XIX England was pretty racist, I don't need to tell you. And subsequent liberal thinkers have tried to slowly rid themselves of entrenched biases within their frameworks, like Rawls or even Friedman. I like this video besides a few minor points I didn' really agree to. It was a nice change of perspective. Maybe I'll subscribe if the next video isn't the counterexample of "Communism bad reee" but with liberalism. Do you plan to cover the main core of classical liberalism or are your looking for a more in-depth approach (maybe even looking at the Mont Pelerin Society and other schools of liberalism)?
I hope you will touch on liberalism's obsession with wealth. In the era of classical liberalism, political rights were determined by your net wealth, either through ownership of land or real estates, or through high enough income.
I'm not sure about the idea of Liberalism being defined by its use of exceptions. When any ideology is put into practice isn't the inherent messiness of the world always going to create pressures that drive people to make exceptions to their ideals? I'm not proposing that Liberal governments be let off the hook, but the degree to which exceptions are made seems more like a failure of execution than one the core tenets of Liberalism. Would it similarly be fair to say that Marxism is defined by totalitarianism because that's generally what happens when Marxist ideology has historically been put in to practice, just as generally Liberal governments make exceptions to their ideals of liberty and justice for all?
Exceptions are built into liberalism though. Also, I think it's fair to say that Marxism has been present alongside non-totalitarian governments far more often than totalitarian ones, in addition to which totalitarian governments have also been fascist, so to draw a link between Marxism and totalitarianism is a bit specious I reckon
Philosophy Tube you say that the founding fathers made exception to the rules but the are totally consistent with what they believe they where pro-white non egalitarian liberals
There are no such things as Indigenous-Canadians. There are Indigenous peoples living in so-called "Canada" but our identities are much more complex and distinct than that of the "Canadian" identity.
Omg I finally understand. I usually fall asleep in these kinda videos .I didn't.. and I understood 😃 thank you random handsome guy from RUclips. Subscribe 😊
7:00 re: the "shallow take" that everyone believes that people are individuals, there is a philosophy called Monism that believes otherwise. It's more of a spiritual philosophy, but posits that everyone or everything is a single entity. Of course this is pretty irrelevant in this context, but I couldn't resist being *that* contrarian person.
One question I would pose is, is it fair to judge the ideology on the founders? Just because the forefathers of Liberalism weren't the most philosophically consistent, does that put a stain on the ideology? Can the ideology grow past its roots, so to speak?
1) It takes effort prove an assertion (specifically, one that justifies action) than not to. Without that effort, there is no belief in any assertions. Therefore, non-belief, and therefore non-action, is the default. 2) Freedom only means anything in terms of its being NOT constraint. That is, freedom is a negative. 3) Liberalism, being about freedom (NOT constraining/interfering with people), is therefore about NON-ACTION. 4) So, Liberalism is, in a large sense, *actually the default.* The main thing I wanted to say, though, was that the hypocrisy of an ideology's adherents does not change the actual ideology. The fact that the Classical Liberals and US founding fathers were hypocrites is not a proof that their behaviour was in accord with Liberalism.
This is exactly what this video is missing. The above arguments can be applied to virtually any set of beliefs in an attempt to disprove them. This is a very limited view of liberalism, its the same kind of narration that tries to narrow socialism to the USSR. Finally, your 4th point hits the nail on the head. Liberalism and capitalism became universal, because they are in many ways the "default state". They are a fundament we can build upon.
Ok so admitedly this is video 1/4 so perhaps I'm commenting a little early here but I think there's a really big problem with the argument in this video. This is the "all Socialists are Stalinists" argument or "all Conservatives are Nazis" argument. It's arguing that Socialism always and inevitably falls into Stalinist dictatorship and gettos and therefore dictatorship and gettos are ideologically compatible with Socialism. ~That's a lie. It is not true that tyranny and gettos are the aim of Socialism or even compatible with it. In the same way arguing that Liberalism ideologically is in favour of exceptions for barbarians or even that such objections could be compatible is just incorrect. It is untrue. Individual Liberals may indeed be fine with slavery or with poverty (at least for some) but it's far harder to persuasively argue that the ideology of Liberalism is necessarily accepting of them. This isn't an argument saying Margret Thatcher was a Liberal (something that's debatable in itself) but instead it is an argument that all Liberalism is and HAS to be Margaret Thatcher. It is simply redefining Liberalism as Thatcherism and that isn't any more true than defining Socialism as Stalinism.
Historian here: I think it's important to signal that you just glossed over the fact that slavery was already a debated issue at the time of the American independence. However, a more sensible assumption would be to say that they prioritized the unity of the union rather than solving the matter on the spot (which some argue, in a believable manner, would have caused the US' states to enter into instability and possibly an earlier civil war). However, I understand the point you're trying to make, and I'd like to clarify that in no manner do I find it more important to defend these individuals' legacies than to analythe the downsides of their times and actions. I just want to qualify and specify somethings which might otherwise, for ideological reasons or for mere lack of knowledge, be overstated.
You aren't wrong that slavery was debated at the time of the founding fathers, but slavery was also something many of the founding fathers, even those who vocally or politically opposed, did. It's not as bad as how the 1619 project put it (even though this part of the 1619 project was overemphasized and many other parts were much better), the revolution didn't happen to secure slavery, but the founding fathers were rarely particularly adamant in opposition to slavery. Jefferson was quite arguably the most liberal president we ever had and personally owned slaves. Jackson (not a founding father, but still) was pretty liberal himself and both expanded the slave trade in the u.s. and is responsible for the trail of tears. Again, not wrong, but you might be overstating their opposition.
Every ideology and political view EVER is about deciding who gets more, and who gets less. Simple as that. There's no "just" ideology, at least among realistically possible. People will always prioritize ones among others, it's in our nature, and that's what needs to change to solve the worlds biggest problem.
Is there any ideology that doesn't make exceptions, and follows its own rules consistently? For example, an ideology that maintains that violence by the state is never appropriate, and always follows that rule?
Is that necessarily true, though? Anarchism seems to provide such a system that opposes violence, although I am not entirely sure if it follows its own rules in practice consistently. Why is it not possible to have society without violence?
A state without recourse to physical violence wouldn't really be a state, because it couldn't have police or courts (or equivalents) and thus couldn't really be said to be in control of a territory. Different states, following different ideologies, use wildly varying amounts of physical violence and make varying amounts of rights exceptions. So you could definitely find states with, so to speak, high consistency ratings and low brutality scores. Now, you could have a *society* without violence, and if you find one let me know, I want to move there! But it wouldn't have a state.
For a 9 minute introduction, you spent most of it talking about how every ideology has flaws and then introduced liberalism not by what it stands for, but by its exceptions. I get bias exists, but if you intend on doing an education channel you have to at least try not to show every 30 seconds you disagree with what you are talking about.
I'm not sure I understand the idea of differentiating ideologies by who they allow violence to be enacted against? There's plenty of overlap, and there's bound to be some ideologies that are indistinguishable in terms of who they consider legitimate targets, many anarchist and marxist tendencies for instance. Marx and Bakunin probably agreed on shooting policemen and capitalists. One difference between anarchism and marxism (in practice) seems to be the structure of the organizations which deploy violence --an army under control of a worker's state, or a militia under control of its members--. These both vary from the liberal police force. Perhaps the way in which violence is deployed could be another measure of difference between ideology.
I think you are stereotyping Liberalism by picking those who had exceptions to the rule. True Liberalism believes that there are no exceptions to their beliefs.
"To the Americans 'liberal' means anything to the left of Sauron" I genuinely laughed out loud. That is BASED (written with the perspective of February 2021)
Certainly there are hypocrites of all stripes, but some ideologies define their political enemies (those against whom violence is acceptable) explicitly. Liberalism claims to be nonviolent, but then builds in exceptions.
The irony, of course, of liberalism in America meaning “anything to the left of Sauron” is that the ideology of liberalism is hegemonic in America-to an extent that often amazes people from most other countries, in my experience.
I tend to think liberal individualism is actually a good thing for feminism. In the Middle East for example lots of women's rights as individuals are forego-ed or de-prioritized on the claim that it will hurt the overall needs of society/class or that the collective needs of society are more imp than individual women. So if societal progress was measured/based on individual status, that will force the women card as individuals on the table, also liberalism emphasizes the economical gain behind each individual -women included, that led many misogynist families to push their female relatives into the market sphere giving these women economical power. To give an example in KSA women were prohibited from driving giving the excuse that the poor drivers would be severely hurt economically as lots of them are immigrants and from lower economical classes. So their financial survival was presented as a higher priority over the individual female rights to drive. Surely that was not the main reason but still it was a one that people didn't know how to argue against except on other economical grounds not on the ground that individual rights are prioritized over the lower class overall financial woes, if the two collided as in this example. There are other examples where this theme comes up too.
Liberals in the west will not identify as feminists since feminists in the west are cultural marxists which is not compatible. In the west there is no right or opportunity that males have that females do not, whereas in the middle east that is clearly not the case sadly.
I belong to several more marginalized communities (for example, I am trans and disabled), and I have been concerned/critical about Liberalism (from the left) for a long time, particularly how political goals that are based in Liberal ideas often seem to a) fail to benefit the most marginalized groups and/or b) favor symbolic or "in name only" gains instead of material gains (for any group). So you get campaigns or initiatives that demand "equality" or "recognition" or "representation," instead of, e.g., providing housing and health care, or ending deportations or police violence. What I find is that within my communities, Liberal thinking seems profoundly influential and I just don't know what to do about it. No one wants to be an ass and go around telling everyone "you're wrong, and your proposed solutions won't help our people at all." People living in desperate conditions seem to find a lot of hope and affirmation in Liberalism, and though I obviously feel they're being duped, I can't deny that having hope is important. Perhaps I just need more solidly leftist examples and victories (relevant to their lives) to point to instead?
So, your main criticism of capital-L Liberalism in this video is that it recognizes citizenship? Surely a nation must not conflate citizen with non-citizen-unless you wish to abolish nation-states altogether. Also, I wouldn't conflate "processing migrants" with "violence," unless of course we're willing to change the definition of violence itself. Surprisingly ideologically-driven analysis, here.
This analysis is pretty far from a dispassionate or charitable take on Liberalism, not to mention extremely shallow, and I say that as a Social Democrat. The most educated Liberals I've met don't claim it isn't an ideology, they just claim that they have a working epistemology. Sure the idiots make that claim, but idiots in my ideology make that claim, I'm not about to go casting stones. So they claim that their method allow them to know things, and when you contrast them with the kind of folks who characterize them the way they are characterized in this video in terms of the usual continental philosophers criticisms it is hard to disagree with them, at least in relative terms. Thatcher was a capital L Liberal, sure, but such an analysis is horrifically shallow. I'm a social democrat. My ideology has roots that can be traced back to Marx, but if a conservative tries to talk about my ideology in such a shallow way lumping me in with Stalin and Lenin I tend to get grumpy. You can do socialism well, you can do it badly, you can do Liberalism well, you can do it badly. I happen to think even Liberalism done well is still bad, but not because Thatcher was a bad Liberal. Which brings us to Liberalism making exceptions. All practical, successful ideologies make exceptions, because they have to. Sure, they also do it because it is convenient, or allows certain people to obtain power or wealth. Ideologies are approximate guides for how to form social orders. They typically make exceptions to allow the systems they are embedded in to self-perpetuate, or using this justification as an excuse as a decent subset of the adherents believe them to necessary for the system to self-perpetuate. Here it is presented as some defining characteristic of Liberalism, when compared with most ideologies I would suggest Liberalism is pretty careful about who it designates as an exception. The absurd degree to which the British tried to dress up the brutal deindustrialisation of India as a 'civilizing project' shows the exact opposite of what is argued here. Far from casually creating exceptions Liberals build vast complexes of lies and absurd narratives to justify their exceptions they are so averse to them. By contrast Fascists or Communists just slap the word counter revolutionary on whoever they don't like and give them a bullet. This brings us back to lumping Conservatives with an economic liberal inclination in with all the other Liberals. In a democracy ideologies can only continue as long as the majority are at least implicitly on board with them. Conservatives look at methods of forming the body politic and worry if it can self perpetuate if its character is undermined by radical change. And I don't always disagree with them either, I don't want non-native Fascists given leave to speak or stay in my country after all and I'm prepared to use the power of the state to prevent this. Of course the more hard core conservatives who draw their ideas from Liberalism are going to make bad exceptions (those not needed to allow the system to perpetuate). They, like say Marx, have a broken epistemology which doesn't recognize that there are effective approaches to analyzing society as a collective rather than individualistically. I'd say it is pretty unfair to criticize these people on the grounds they are Liberal when in reality Liberalism has always had a spectrum of perspectives here . In fact I'd go further, it isn't Liberalism that is the problem in this specific case, but rather the very school of philosophy from which many of these criticisms that are drawn that is at fault. After all, the Austrian School has far more in common epistemically with the Continentals than the Analytics. If you demand social analysis be done not with an eye to epistemic efficiency and effectiveness but rather in terms of your preferred atoms (the individual as in the Austrian School, the class as in Marxism, the racial / gender / whatever identity as in National Socialism / Fascism / the Frankfurt School), you will end up with a bad social model, and when you don't know what is, you cant make sensible decisions about how much universality to apply to your ideology and not provoke the collapse of the system it is in. Why are you going after Liberals using bad arguments from continental school, when there are perfectly good arguments against liberals from the analytic and pragmatist schools?
"It's an ideology, it has a tradition of violence towards selected groups, it makes exceptions in its moral judgments." It seems like these are general enough to be shared by all of the political ideas you mentioned.
Like always, another great video. I just have to say that I watched all 4 videos and none of them actually explicitly state the actual definition of Liberalism, only its effects. Just found it a bit odd, because taken at it's pure face value the idea of Liberalism is something that most people can agree as noble. At it's most basic Liberalism means upholding the views of liberty and equality. So the video discusses mostly the manifestations of different politics that disguised itself under the banner of Liberalism, but it is not about what true Liberalism actually is.
I disagree with some of the points you've made here, so I'll explain why here. _"Ideologies determine what facts are important and what actions are acceptable."_ (0:42) That's true, the purpose of an ideology is to filter information in a certain way to get to a judgement about an action. But I find this to be a weird definition of ideology - because that's what an ideology does, not what it is. I would rather define an ideology as a set of ideas that form a comprehensive world view, since this definition is a little more specific on what an ideology actually is and is less prone to confusion by false association. _"So we can see that no matter how much somebody insists their ideology is based purely on the facts, that's never the full picture."_ (1:58) That seems to be a bit of an uncharitable interpretation to me. Obviously, noone bases their opinion purely on the facts, that would be an instance of the is-ought fallacy. But what I think the statement wants to say is that the one making it has considered the facts and would change their ideology if the facts were different. This is not self-evident behaviour, since there are ideologies that assert certain "facts" - all religions, for instance. And even in secular ideologies, this behaviour of *NOT* considering the facts can be found; an example would be feminism and the long-disproven Gender Wage Gap. _"A political ideology identifies who are the acceptable targets of violence."_ (3:11) It's true, this is one thing every ideology necessarily has to do. But because of the way this is worded and because of the analogy to fascism, I get the feeling that you're not just stating neutral facts but want to deliberately provoke a certain reaction in your viewers - and I must disagree with that. Violence is always a possibility, and so any ideology must necessarily judge if (and when) violence is acceptable. This is not arbitrary (like you make it sound) or inherently evil (like your comparison to fascism makes it sound). Liberals, for instance, would consider violence acceptable only if it is directed at someone who initiated violence first and if it is an appropriate defense against that violence. That applies to your statement just as well as the Nazis' use of violence does. _"Every ideology says that [it is non-violent and moderate]."_ (3:56) So what? Are you trying to imply that there is no objective standard to which ideologies could be held? Because I could propose a few. Quality of life in systems run by these ideologies, for instance. Or, in the case of being violent, body count. If you compare communism, fascism and liberalism with these standards, you'll get to a conclusion very quickly. As for being moderate or centrist, that is not something you can tell in a vacuum because these things are defined relative to other ideologies in a specific society. But in comparison to other ideologies in, say, Western society, you will - again - find that liberalism is indeed quite moderate. _"Making exceptions to the normal rules is a defining characteristic of liberal ideology in practice."_ (4:38) Such as? _"Classical liberals like John Stuart Mill and John Locke wanted liberty but they made exceptions for "barbarians" and "savage races"."_ (4:46) Well, does that reflect on liberalism? Or does that reflect on John Stuart Mill and John Locke? You have to keep in mind that these people lived in a much different time than we do. Liberalism has evolved since to include the principle of equality. Holding it accountable for people who were racist in a time when everyone was racist is disingenuous. _"One thing my country's very good at doing today is preaching all kinds of freedoms and nice things for people but denying these same things to immigrants."_ (5:44) Stop you right there: That's not an exception to the rule. The rule is that every policy should aim to maximize the amount of freedom citizens have. This rule can only apply to the own country - obviously. Immigrants cost a lot of time and money. They have to be registered, integrated and supported - and it has to be made sure they don't unlawfully use even more ressources. These ressources belong to the citizens of the country, and so it must be made sure that the immigration that occurs does not cost them too much of their freedom - or else the system wouldn't be liberal. Another point is that an immigrant chose to immigrate into a certain country of their own free will - other than, for instance, a black person who can be held as a slave. Having actions have consequences (if they were known before the action) does not contradict liberalism. In short: Denying certain rights to a migrant from a country you don't rule is not equivalent to denying people certain rights based on their skin colour or their region of origin if that region is under your rule. I want to stress again that you need to be extremely careful when you are using language that might be academically adequate, but has strong connotations from another source. When you are saying "liberalism makes makes an exception for migrants to justify violence against them", you are not techincally wrong. But what that statement tells your audience is not what you were actually saying. It is a very common fallacy: Re-define a word, apply it to something, and then use the true meaning as emotional appeal to make your point. A communist example I once encountered: Private property is autocracy. "Property" means rule over something, and it being private means that you do it yourself: Autocracy. And you can see in history how well that works. 1. Redefine "autocracy": ruling about some *THING* yourself [note: this takes away the negative meaning of autocracy, since this negative meaning derives from the unjustified rule over people who have their own wishes etc.] 2. Apply "autocracy" to private property. 3. Use the true connotation of "autocracy" for an emotional response against private property [FALLACY!] You have done similar: 1. Redefine "justify violence": Stating when it might be acceptable to use violence [note: this takes away the negative connotation, since it no longer means to justify something that is unjust, but to decide when it is just] 2. Apply to liberalism as an ideology. 3. Use the true connotation of "justifying violence" for an emotional response against liberalism [FALLACY!] I can't stand when people do this. Don't do this.
Tony Campbell The Wage Gape as described by feminists is untrue. Women do not get paid 70% of what a man earns for the same job. The Wage Gap is based on the average earnings of all men and all women and does not control for hours worked, education level, time worked at that job, or even occupation. Whenever these controls are implemented the gap drops significantly. There is still about 4-7% of a difference that’s unaccounted for when these controls are in place. However, feminism uses the 70% soundbite to influence people and support their own decisions and arguments, which is a fair example of ignoring facts in the support of an ideology.
I know this comment is a year old, but I just want to post my reaction of your critique: 1. The biggest thing I noticed is that in your final and longest point, you seem to be speaking through a layer of ideology which you haven't dispelled yourself - equating violence to something inherently unjust. Violence, as a concept, is never really defined in the popular usage of the word as being something which is unjust, but as something which brings physical attack in an effort to hurt or kill someone. While you can see this as being unjust, it is not a part of the definition and your attempt to try and equate violence with innately being unjust is an example of ideological filtering that changes your worldview - which is not a negative mind you but it is something that you need to be aware of happening. I also don't see how exactly using emotive language is fallacious and not just a debate tactic. 2. The point of every ideology spouting itself as being moderate and rational is one that I think you misinterpreted. This point exists for the sole cause of saying that every single ideology, if you listen to the people who believe in it will always present itself as being one of fairness and the "most rational solution". Their views, in the eyes of whoever is speaking, seem to be the most moderate because of his aforementioned "hierarchy of facts" and of which facts that one should prioritize. This is what he meant, not that we should compare liberalism to any other ideology or government type. 3. You also make a body-count remark, implying that liberalism has a lower body-count than all the other ideologies. This seems to me to be fallacious, as you can take the liberal democracies of England and France and see what their countries did to their colonies and count those bodies up. Of course, you can always argue that such facets are not inherent to liberalism, which is kind of what you did where you argued that the racism of liberalism in the past can be just a sign of the times. John Locke being racist was simply his own personal views and does not reflect on the ideology of liberalism, distilling the ideology based simply on ideals within a vacuum and not on its real world consequences, but in this I would say that this is no different an argument than when communists claim the USSR and other similar Marxist-Leninist states were "not true communism" or "not true socialism" - something I'm sure you would vehemently disagree with. 4. Ironic for me to comment on your first point this far at the bottom, but oh well. I personally found it to be slightly pedantic, as what Philosophy Tube was trying to say was not a definition of ideology but of what ideology does - which is what you criticized. You claim that he was being inaccurate in his definition, when he never outright claimed that he was giving a definition in a vacuum - he was defining it through its actions which were more important to the contexts of the video since he use several historical and real life situations to further justify his point. Just some different takes I had on your analysis of the video. While I enjoyed watching it as a whole and his interpretation of liberalism is interesting, I agree with you in that there was a layer of bias there, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - he never truly tries to be the be-all-end-all of political definitions and there will always be a sheen of bias in any take of something. The video is a personal project of one person and therefore should be read as such - trying to have people be completely unbiased in their interpretations of things, or to remove bias is a waste of time and won't amount to much.
Liberalism as it is presented today is almost singularly founded on the philosophy of Objectivism. For academics who wish to pretend that Ayn Rand does not exist or that she should not be taken so seriously as to be mentioned even in the discussion where she is the proverbial "big elephant", is laid to shame after Cliff's Notes added her works to their list of student guides. That ends the discussion of whether or not she has a presence in academic considerations. Personally, I have never met an Objectivist (or Liberal/conservative) who was not obnoxious and superficial. But, I can no more blame Ayn Rand for being misrepresented by her admirers than by her detractors. Her goal was to correct the intellectual tragedy that all of Aristotle's exoteric writings have been lost. Like her, I and most students of philosophy, think all of philosophy is essentially a foot note to Aristotle. He was the father of an epistemology based on observation and logic which evolved into the scientific method. As a novelist, Ayn Rand was necessarily confined to a focus on social and political ideology. Nevertheless, her non-fiction works clearly show that she grasped the importance of demonstrating that any idea had to be connected to a system of a non-contradictory hierarchy--not merely a floating "ideology". I like her, but I may not know enough about her to defend her or to say I completely agree with her. I do feel distracted by her fans, who I find distasteful. But to discus Liberalism without a mention of her is either consciously or unconsciously dishonest.
What I find particularly interesting here is the second part about built in exceptions. It seems that could be an overall critique of democracy. Since the fact that we live under majority rule implies that there is always a minority whose voice and power is limited and their class is made the exception by definition. Just a thought, anyway.
That's an interesting perspective, it kinda seems like democracy really isn't a egalitarian ideal, but more of populist one. Having a vote and losing is almost like not voting at all. It's not like the losers get anything out of it.
HAHAHAHAHA477 That's not true even though it might seem like it. Even if "your" party loses, you should always vote. It makes it more likely that whoever gets into power will lean more in your direction. For example if the "stripy party" wins but you and lots of other people voted for the "spotty party", the leader of the "stripy party" might be more willing to tweak his policies so that they are closer to what you want or enact policies you wanted that he otherwise wouldn't have.
@Crispman Lol, like the people in power care about their opposing side. That only ever happens in you have a generous leader, or if the losing side is a threat to you. Either way, if your vote lost, you barely matter.
HAHAHAHAHA477 Nope. Providing that you're in a country with a properly functioning government, the places of power that politicians hold are temporary and they know it. If they sense that their position has the potential to be contested they're probably going to try and appease both the people that are on their side and the people that are the biggest threat to them if they can't convert them. I'm not saying that any of this behaviour is guaranteed and it mostly concerns local politicians but it does happen, even if you don't hear much about it in the news. Also as reference this is coming from a UK perspective so I understand if your situation is vastly different to mine.
@Crispman I don't know much about what's happening in the UK, but I can tell you that the phrase "properly functioning government" is an oxymoron. No government has ever "properly functions" within its life span. Its either becoming corrupt, or it is corrupt. The future administration cares nothing about past administrations. It will set forth on implementing it's own policies and rule if you voted for them or not.
8:36 The I wouldn't say the struggle in fascism is always race-related, more about groups of people with a certain identity - whether its their nationality, or their values - a conservatism to the next level even.
5:42 I disagree with this. The examples of liberals making exceptions was in the past only. He gave the example of John Locke etc for an example of liberals making exceptions in history, and then followed with "my country" for the example about now, mentioning immigration. His country rejects immigrants in spite of liberals. Liberals generally will argue for inclusiveness of immigrants, and everyone else including LGBTQ and even takes that to the extreme. So the "exceptions" thing is clearly a historical thing and no longer valid.
+Nivesh Proag One exception that has persisted to this day in America is the idea that prisoners can basically be treated like slaves while they are imprisoned and then shunned by society after the fact so they can't find a job. Another one is foreigners. America doesn't give a shit about the human rights of people who aren't American. America tramples on the property rights of people that get in the way of corporate profits. There are tons of modern examples of exceptions... You fail to see that in most countries the Liberal ideology is prevalent throughout the political spectrum. The liberalism he is talking about is not about whether you are on the left or right; in America, at least, liberalism is the entire foundation of our values.
I'd encourage anyone reading this to look up an explanation of liberalism elsewhere, as this entire video was a straw man of liberalism (which may not have been intentional, the creator might not understand it). Liberalism is all about establishing and protecting the freedom of the individual unless that freedom harms someone else. It's not about one type of group attacking another type of group. It was expressly made to bring freedom, justice and peace to all members of society, and if spread around the world, to all members of the world. That being said the liberal writers did say we'd never get perfect results, and some sort of injustice and tyranny will always crop up and need to be dealt with, and those occurrences are what opponents of liberalism use to discredit it. Those critics always ignore that those instances tend to come from authoritarians overcoming liberals within that society. And those same critics tend to ignore the massive human rights achievements that come along with liberalism that we still enjoy today. Seeing the title of this video and people in the comments snicker at liberalism and pretend it's a thing of the past is frankly disturbing. So again please look elsewhere for an explanation as this is important stuff. Also Margaret Thatcher was not a liberal, she was a neoliberal, which is a completely different thing. Liberalism is a liberal ideology made to question and limit the power the state has over the individual, and neoliberalism is an authoritarian ideology that leans into the state as a means to power.
7:10 actually, I think some people would question considering people individuals. Some may define people more as a function of social relations or a set of personas connected in mind and body. Individual can be taken to mean “a unit not able to be divided further,” and that’s something a Jungian could disagree with. Of course, I’d be astounded if one could create a sensible political theory based on personas as a fundamental unit of society, at least if it turns out practically different from other ideologies.
I dont think the Geordie reflex was necessary? You act as if you are impatial but let yourself down. You are supposed to be educating not expressing your political agenda. Not impressed at all
Philosophy Tube i understand where you're coming from, you cant not have an opinion. But to you're wider audience maybe its better to keep on thr fence as it kind changes the feel of your channel! But i understand you're pov you are putting across. Listen i think your videos are sound and increase my knowledge on philosophy tremendously as a young student myself. I thank you for that. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Keep doing what you are doing! Have a good day!
Your contention that the making of exceptions is somehow a defining characteristic of liberalism is very weak. You identified a couple of examples on liberals making exceptions. This hardly demonstrates that it is essential to the philosophy itself. In fact, Liberals very often led the charge in recognizing the rights of people that everyone else denied. I don't think it's an accident that Mill was unusual in arguing for equality between the sexes in "The Subjection of Women" or that Jeremy Bentham argued in "Offenses Against Ones Self" for liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexuality or that many of the US founders including John Adams and Alexander Hamilton we're deeply opposed to slavery. If any ideology can be credited with the progress of equal rights before the law for all people, it is liberalism, which recognizes the unalienable rights of the individual.
showing people following rules isn't contradictory to that they have been historically making exceptions. next video is about capitalism, which in itself can be argued as an exception to concept of freedom for all.
Don't they? What about the bits where I talk about how exceptions are still made along similar lines? In my video on Locke I showed how they are still being made with regards to Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
![Oscar Maydon x Fuerza Regida - Tu Boda [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_ymicn0_GYc/mqdefault.jpg)
"In the US liberal means anything left of Sauron". American from the deep south here, spot-freaking-on
seee my namf, its supremely important
I lost it when he said that.
Canada we pretend we're better and then can vote out our copycats -_-
Lmao i always say they call anybody left of Genghis Khan a commie
2 years after this comment and liberal is anything right of democratic socialism.
One thing I would say is that Fascism isn't specifically 'White'. Japan had Fascism, it was justified as 'Asia for Asians' as they say. And then were the Blue Shirts in China.
If anything I'd say Fascism attaches itself to whatever would unify a country to the traditional order, in America that would be things like Christianity and Exceptionalism, it just so happens that its mostly happened in the west because... well the west came to rule.
A Fascist is someone who follows Mussolini's Fascist Doctrine. No if ands or buts.
That's a fair point! Thank you!
+
Yep, there's a tendency to equate Nazism with Fascism but Mussolini's original ideas were very different from Hitler's in many key areas.
There were also all kinds of Fascist ideas blooming around Interwar Europe with wildly different components. Was Franco a Fascist? Some dispute that. He was certainly very different from Italy which was different from Germany and so-on and so-forth.
+twosquirrelly Where any of those people fascist ideologues? I'm going to guess no, so there opinion of fascism is irrelevant to its definition. Fascism operates under a strictly anti capitalist framework, hence the National Syndicalist Falange and Corporatist Estado Novo. There has never been a case of Capitalism and the Fascist Doctrine being implemented.
In the US the term "Liberal' has been turn the same way as football to refer to something completely difference compare to the rest of the world
Ricardo Guanipa underrated comment
What a neat way to put it!
Thank you.
Australians also struggle with the concept of football. I'm not qualified to comment on their use of the word liberal.
Chris Meachem yep. We have three different games of “footy”, and none of them are soccer.
For those interested, it’s Rugby Union, Rugby League (they’re different sports, and Union is by far the superior!), and Australian Rules (which makes absolutely no fucking sense but can be impressive to watch nonetheless- just check out that photo of Tayla’s kick that garnered so much attention, the “here comes the boom” compilations, and the way they run up each other’s bodies to get the ball. Very impressive, even if I have no bloody idea what’s going on). All three of these footballs are superior to American football, which is basically just ads and then some big dudes crashing into each other. Rinse and repeat for four+ hours, because they have to stop after every single move and replace the players because apparently they can’t find people who can do more than one thing.
@@katherinemorelle7115 You're just listing different types of fights over funny shaped balls.
There's only one football, it's the one where you use your feet to kick the ball. Everything else should be called 'throw-ball' or 'fight-ball' or something.
You can reply till you're blue in the face, nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.
Inb4 "Ummm *actually* sauron would better be described as left wing herr derp"
"Say what you will about Sauron, he did make the Orc Battalions run on time!"
Philosophy Tube "What has the Dark Lord ever done for us?"
"Aqueducts?"
All he did was bring the anarchist revolution to a decidedly fascist middle earth.
Philosophy Tube 10/10 nice joke, but gives a nod to you biases anyway, an example of which is your analysis on Liberalism having exceptions to their rule. It may have been the case when it was penned by the likes of John Locke, but it is no the only school of thought for Liberalism. After all, Marx's idea of keeping the state until it is not necessary to create a Communist Utopia isn't shared by Anarcho-Communists. Should I cherry-pick from that and say "All Communists want an all powerful state to rule over them like the USSR!"? I guess I shouldn't be so intellectually dishonest by doing that, like you have been in this video. Lying by omission is still lying.
I did list contemporary examples of exceptions being made though, and the reading list contains many, and there are even more coming in the series!
"Anybody politically left of Sauron" hahahaha, oh...too true.
I hit like right after he said that
@Cian McCabe it always makes me sad to see people taking WH40K at face value and wholly accepting the fascism, imperialism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance as good; instead of seeing the (imo) clear subtext criticizing those ideas.
@@emersonpage5384 It's mostly because 16 y-o aren't good at that. And those people make most of the group, and do most memes which comes up... LIKE THE WHITEST CREAM.
Cian McCabe are you happy knowing that the creators of 40k are all leftists and your spouting of Astartes buzzwords makes you sound completely out of the picture?
40K politics are a satire of extremist ideas and the idea of a nation ever being "good"
In my country, Brazil, we make the same distinction of liberalism and the left-wing, they are pretty much opposites here given the fact that most Brazilian liberals are economic liberal and politically conservative.
Carla Duncan né isso, e os conservadores como exemplo Bolsonaro, defende uma ideia que seria mais progressista como armamento da população.
That's the case in most of the world where liberal is an economic term meaning "someone who likes the free market" which is pretty linked to the definition of the "Right wing". The US just uses it as a social term nowadays for people who " like social freedom".
Interestingly enough, american liberals/democrats aren't "left" at all. Some can be called centre-right but 100% of their party is not left wing, can't speak for the voters though, I would just be guessing. I guess people in the US use 'left-wing' and 'liberal' interchangeably because in their mainstream politics the Dems are as left as it gets.
Adding to the issue that we live in an economic feudalism...
Michael Scott, I find it funny that in the USA social liberals thing they are left-wings, and right-wings think they are the extreme far-left. Brazil has something like that but on the contrary, for ex. PSDB stands for social democratic party of brazil, but is actually centre-right, basically our "social democracy" is actually social liberal and brazilians believe that most parties are "far-left", but mostly of them are centre-right. We don't have a big left party, PT was the closest but still they didn't do any tax or land reforms, they only did a negative income tax and affirmative actions and that were the most left Brazil ever got.
In the USA there's definetely a lot of misunderstanding behind those terms because many people don't bother to read about them and just end up using whatever everyone else does.
I'm not exactly sure about this but I think social democracy is just left of social liberalism. Social democracy is centre right although it has "left/marxist" influences, it's supposed to be a more moderate form of capitalism or something, gonna have to read on it more. Greece's ruling party (Syriza) was supposed to be democratic socialist (centre left) but is now ruling as a social democratic party (centre right) yet people everywhere still call them "left".
She looks like a sophisticated Shaggy
_intellectual_ Shaggy
zoinks, Scoob, these liberals are trying to hold back our social progress
@@Sam-lr9oi Scoobs that guy, like, is betraying the motherland with his trotskyist ideals.
It wasn't him?
I legit just paused the video 10 seconds in to come here and comment he looks like shaggy but I guess I was to late
as a very smart person i am going to leave a comment calling ollie disingenuous for not bringing up X on a video called Part 1 of 4
"Margaret Thatcher" *spits*
Marry me
Same .
"pYOOr EEdeeology" Marry me
Please
Seems these comments are turning from a traditional marriage into a polyamoristic sex cult.
And as long as you keep the culty part down to a minimum, act on enthusiastic consent and have open communication, that might even be healthier than traditional marriage :D
the comment I was looking for
Man. British Shaggy is pretty smart
This video is PURE IDEOLOGY
Eris Lecter
This comment is pure ideology.
Hákon Sigurðsson
My comment is pure ideology.
Get spooked unique!
Consider *sniff* the following...
Eris Lecter I fucking love that smug ass Stirner meme.
4:40 Yes, Liberalism is an ideology and, yes, in practice it makes exceptions to normal rules. But ALL ideologies that have been practiced do that. So it defines all ideologies not just Liberalism. Saying it's exception making is a defining attribute of Liberalism is discredit the meaning of "defining".
And here I thought Liberal just meant leftwing.
Looks like I identify as a leftwing socialist now.
Sigh that feels better
hell yeah
Welcome :)
same buddy same
fuck yes
Wtf is a right-wing socialist?
"The problem with pissing in my grave is that you eventually run out of piss"
-- Margaret Thatcher
There will never be enough piss to sufficiently piss on the witch’s grave
Well we can drink.
yeah FR i dunno what op or thatcher are f!%king smoking lol
sad attempt at a pithy metaphor
piss isnt a f!%king finite resource yall
Doubt you'll see this, but a point about "acceptable violence" and liberalism.
In my experience, liberalism's acceptance of violence has less to do with "exceptions" and more to do with "propriety", or in other words "political etiquette". Liberalism is very much about trying to create universalities and objectivity, the creation of a system that behaves in a uniform and predictable manner. So for Liberals the question is less the human cost of an act, but if that act conformed to the set system of rules and procedures they've set up. Horrific mass violence is fine, as long as you do it by the books, but a hungry man acquiring food via means not approved by the system, NO NO NO!
I think this is why so many Liberals shuttered at the idea of Richard Spenser being punched, yet seem to not bat an eye at the United States bombing thousands of people with unmanned drones. One is a violation of etiquette, the other isn't.
Edit: Another point I wanted to make (but forgot to because I wrote this comment hastily before running to work) is I think this also illuminates why so many establishment democrats are horrified by Trump, despite administrations they praised in the past being equally guilty of similar evils. Trump is evil, don't get me wrong, I despite that man, but there's been plenty of awful POTUS's before him, yet he revere most of them. Trump though is evil in an unpredictable and chaotic way that grinds against our notion of a civil and orderly state of affairs.
This is a good point well made. I think maybe it's consistent with what I said about exceptions though, insofar as those exceptions are deemed proper
I can smell the post hoc rationalisation on this from a mile away......
Could it not be that people find the lack of accountability for violence a worrying prospect? With a state, there is a method in which they can be made accountable, although loopholes are used by many. When done by an anonymous attacker in the midst of a faceless crowd, there is little to no way of keeping them accountable, unless they are identified (which I'm supposing the mask wearers weren't expecting).
Oh they bat an eye.
But isn't far more unaccountable violence done by the state than the citizenry?
Philosophy Tube Not inherently. Citizens can make states accountable. States can leave citizens unaccountable. Liberals want everyone accountable. Anyone making exceptions is betraying liberalism's principles.
Thanks Olly, I learnt so much from this video. Had no idea the sun was Ninety three million miles away
7:36 I second that Geordie Reflex
I would hope it's a human decency reflex
Great shit, thanks for touching on individualism. Individualism =/= individual liberty.
Wdym
when did he say that?
if its not that then what is it?
@@rhaq426 Individualism is more about an individual being responsible for solving their own problems than an individual being free to do as they wish. For example, an Individualist might argue that it is the individual responsibility of a person to get a good education even if they are from a poor family and thus cannot afford university tuition fees and that same Individualist might also argue that it is the duty of a person to adhere to society's traditional rules such as not being allowed to have sex outside of wedlock.
An example of someone who is both an Individualist and a Traditionalist would be Jordan Peterson.
@@kierangorman3052 thanks
@@rhaq426 You're welcome.
I think this was a really good introductory look at Liberalism, however I think it's important to point out that many modern Liberals see the acceptable use of violent force as follows:
The State has a monopoly on the use for violence, and should use such authority as sparingly as possible. The laws of the State should be designed around the preservation of the liberties of its citizens. That monopoly on violent force should only be used against those that violate the law. So then, the only valid use of force would be the State acting in response to an individual violating the rights of others.
A perfectly pacifistic ideology has a key weakness - its hands are entirely tied when others who do no adhere to that ideology commit acts of violence against them. So then, barring the universal acceptance of pacifism, there must be some level of justification of the use of violence in order for a society based on that ideology to continue to exist and not simply be wiped out by some other genocidal ideology that sees them as easy prey.
i think this goes back to the tolerance paradox. Just like a tolerant society can't tolerate intolerance, a pacifist society needs some degree of violence (or physical coercion anyway) to neutralize the threath of violence.
@@navaryn2938 the tolerance paradox is kinda gibberish tho, because I feel like tolerating intolerance isn't tolerance at all, just refusing to take action for what you believe. it's just kinda what bigoted people who aren't trying to hide the fact that they're bigoted use to say that people who aren't bigoted shouldnt try to stop them
I think this video lacked some historical context. The context from which Liberalism rose was where the biggest problems in society were ones which subsequently pointed to liberal ideals as solutions.
Currently, Liberalism is also incredibly popular among intellectuals in countries with totalitarian and repressive governments (especially Theocratic ones) because the obvious solution is to define some basic individual rights like free speech, right for trial, and also remove codified privileges of people who serve as monarchs.
What I'm saying is that Liberalism, I think, is a natural step in a society's progress. That's not to say Liberalism is perfect or even that it doesn't also have a natural, inevitable successor (*wink* Socialism), but that ideologies rise to solve systemic issues in society.
The historical context is coming in Part 2!
I must confess that as much as I enjoy Oliver's more recent videos, and as much as I understand why the style of content has changed in the context of his own life... I do kinda miss these bookcase videos.
I do as well, watch the video on crowd funding.
with regard to circa 5:00. As someone who sees themselves as basically Liberal, couldn't I just say that Mill and Locke were hypocrites or that they didn't apply the moral and practical fundamentals of liberalism properly when they made exceptions for certain groups?
You could, but you would have to do that pretty much right the way through the history of liberalism, and people might start to wonder whether it was really more of a systemic problem.
Yes well that's basically what I've been thinking. The only way I can stop people from thinking that would be to apply those principles properly myself, I guess. I'm probably not capable of that but might as well aim high.
I forget where I read this defense of liberalism, but it goes something like: 'Don't concentrate on the hypocrisy of liberals. Concentrate on the effect that the accusation of hypocrisy has had on liberals.' Now you might get into arguments about whether or not the civil rights movement, abolitionists, human rights activists etc. are liberals themselves. But at the very least the overly dramatic rhetoric of liberals can be exploited by their enemies to make people's lives better :D
Ooh i should also add that there is a systemic problem. However, I don't thnk the problem is precisely with liberalism but rather with human psychology. The rapidity and ease with which we create ingroups and outgroups - usually without even realising we have even done it - and much reduced ability to feel empathy and compassion for outgroup members is a more fundamental cause for the injustices mentioned in the video.
For a startling case in point, see the current Rohingya crisis. Buddhism may be considered by many to be one of the most peaceful religions but here we have a majority Buddhist population cleansing an outgroup from its territory, while champion of human rights Aung San Suu Kyi* is fine with it because 50% of the Rohingya are not dead or displaced.
My point is that some behavioural forces operate beneath the level of philosophy or religion such that under the right (by which I mean wrong) circumstances they make hypocrites of us all except for a few angels (I would guess well under 5% and disproportionately female) who have miraculous moral fortitude. I think Alexander Solzhenytsin documented a few such cases from the gulags.
*She is in a very (VERY) difficult position politcally so I'm reserving judgment upon her personally - its not an ideal example but it comes to mind quickly today.
Omg last thing what was the definition of ideology in this video? Because depending on the definition of ideology the statement about people who say they don't have an ideology definitely being ideological can be either true or falso imho.
I've been following Olly for a few years. I keep coming back to this series because of how informative it is.
"Everybody thinks that their ideology is moderate and central"
Is that really true though? What about communists and fascists?
he said: moderate and sensible*
Nobody beilives themselves to be extreme (and if somone calls themself that, it's just to mess with their opponents calling them extreme - to try and take away the affect of the namecalling.)
@@puglosipher1666 Can confirm: Us Wolves fans have recently started singing "wanky wanderers" about ourselves to invalidate opposing fans using the same chant.
Yes, everything does have to be about football.
@@puglosipher1666 I don't know, I consider myself pretty hard left
Fascists are very brainwashed and believe extreme law and order is moderate and should be normal.
Communists normally believe that they are just nice people who look out for everyone and are enlightened so they are moderate and not extreme.
In reality they are both wrong and both have deeply flawed ideoligies that dont really work in long term practice as facism will always be destroyed as you cant hold everyone down for ever and communism goes against nateraul human enxtincts to carry on working and gaining things for your self from working hard and its also hard to motivate people to work under communism.
@@alexwhiting5881 Human nature has been proven to be cooperative and not competitive, Capitalism goes against human nature while Communism compliments human nature and would allow humans to thrive.
Kropotkin proved this 150 years ago, since then all biologists and anthropologists have only made his arguments stronger by providing even more evidence that proves this.
An important point to note about Mill: he was explicitly not liberal on principle. He was first and foremost a utilitarian, and argued for liberalism on the grounds of its utility in places like England, and rejecting in in places he thought it would not be utilitous, like India. He would not have claimed to have been liberal with respect to India, or in any kind of general universal sense.
As an aside, is utilitous really a word? I can't find it on the internet or in my dictionary,
@@tapan97 It's a perfectly cromulent word, like "embiggens".
@@Pfhorrest Haha, had to search for this reference as well. Thanks for the reply, I wasn't really expecting one after 5 years.
Allowing exceptions to deny certain groups of people certain rights is worrying, but an ideology that does not allow for exceptions at all is just as capable of harm. Rigidly following a strict code without consideration for potential edge cases is a dangerous thing, perhaps most notably exemplified by Batman. Most iterations of Batman follow a strict no-kill rule. This is a great guideline to follow most of the time, but it isn't hard for a writer to come up with a situation in which Batman can reasonably expect to prevent more future harm by electing to take a life.
At the end of the day, I believe an ideology which allows for exceptions to its rules but considers them carefully beforehand risks doing less harm that one that follows its rules unerringly.
I'm inclined to agree with you. There's a quote from one of the Dune books, I think it was Chapterhouse: Dune, which elucidates the core principle -- Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codecs and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
Careful consideration is the only path that can lead to just action in all situations. It's no guarantee, but to enshrine anything else in ideology is to guarantee failure.
Maybe that's true. But he isn't stating these exceptions as being why liberalism is the Big Bad. He's saying that all ideologies have outlets for violence; liberalism claims otherwise, but in fact the rules of liberalism contain exceptions that basically deny certain people their rights. Those who lack rights may be treated violently. That violence is just never explicitly stated, because the idea of liberalism is to live in a city on a hill devoid of the darker parts of human nature, living as a liberated individual.
How can one talk about liberalism and not talk about John Rawls?
I think Rawls is crucial to the conversation... and shows how liberalism can be distinct from libertarianism.
It is a four part series so it is quite likely he will touch upon Rawls.
What do you think of Chomsky's view that anarcho-socialism is in fact the logical conclusion of unhypocritically applied liberal values? (It was something like that, I can't remember the exact words used).
I think it's demonstrative that he's not not a liberal which is why a lot of Marxists have trouble fully cosigning his stiff
Interesting question. I think it's called anarcho-syndicalism in case of Chomsky; anarcho-socialism (or else, social anarchism, more popular under this term, btw) is an umbrella term which can mean different things. And anarcho-syndicalism is cooperative production, strong unions, direct democracy, worker's self-management (doesn't have to be pure self-management technically, but managers nevertheless don't get paid 200 to 500 times above the average as these days), etc.
Still, Chomsky himself has said multiple times that his political and economic views are diverse and don't belong to a single political ideology. He has conservative views, centrist views, etc. And that's just great I say--no one should sell himself to any specific ideology.
I have never heard him say that, if you have the reference please share. What I like about Noam Chomsky most is his good habit to always emphasize that one should never get carried away with facultative philosophy in real life and should act based on the state of affairs in the real world.
Arman McHitaryan I just came across a video where Chomsky makes an almost equivalent claim. Its in the first 20 seconds of a video titled Noam Chomsky- Creating a Libertarian Socialist Society.
Great idea for a series !
*sniff*
For a video that starts off by clarifying the definition in use, you seem to use "fascism" in a really loose way, seemingly synonymous with "political racism", instead of its stricter definition as the collusion of state and capital. A homogenous country (of any race) could still be fascist, without race being an issue at all.
That's a fair cop, and a video I have in the scripting stage about the philosophy of antifa goes more into fascism
Even that definition needs detail, unless the idea is that any country with public-private partnerships is fascist, which seems too broad to be useful.
@vaguelyhuman No it dosnt it has a cultural component. You can be whatever race. But you have to have that countries culture (see things like pax romana). Race is irrelevant culture is not. Facsim is in many ways a moderen version of ancient rome with ideas from Marx and the french revolution in it.
He's handsome...
The fact that they won't even recognise that they're ideological is one of the most annoying things about liberals and pointing this out is usually the stage in the Twitter beef when they stop replying.
Christoph Spangler the fact that they lump everyone in a group together and imply that they all behave the same way is the most annoying thing about idiots, and bringing it up is usually the point in the beef when they have a fucking seizure lolololol
I'm a liberal. Liberalism is an ideology. You are now demonstrably false, and you are fighting a straw man. Have a wonderful day.
Velox South pointing out logical fallacies on youtube comments is liberal as fuck. It's like you're pointing it out to satisfy some sort of internal justice complex. Oh what a shame it would be for some poor schmuk to be influenced by an argument with a logical fallacy in it! Will you sit down to debate a fascist next?
@@justinlanan2565 Exposing a persons faulty argument is liberal now instead of being rationally consistent? Then sign me up for more liberalism then.
Ideology is an ugly word. I prefer to cal things a political philosophy
That's fun, because in France "libéralisme" is the classic right-wing ideology xD
Some high caliber arguments here.
"A definining trait of Liberlaism is making exceptions", really? Are you sure if we looked really hard, we couldn't find a another ideology dominant in the 20th century that made a lot of exceptions for itself? You alluded to it when siad "a Lenist will thing violence is justified against an oppressive class?" because we know that's not what Lenin thought or did. Lenin thought violence was justified against any of political opponents, oppressive or otherwise.
"Liberalism is racist because because people back then racist and some them of them wrote about it" wow, how are Liberalisms defenders to possibly counter that one?
instant like for use of past tense
existential. anarchist LOL same
Instant skepticism.
Lmao
"I assert that Liberalism is an ideology, even though it says it eschews ideology as a foundational principle and in fact is rooted in humanistic doubt. I have found the first inconsistency in Liberalism, by inventing it myself. Yay me."
With regard to the second point, I feel like "Liberalism makes exceptions" is missing the point a bit. It is, of course, true that every Liberal society has made exceptions. But an advocate can merely argue (and many do) that those were imperfect Liberal societies. People in the US can, for example, defend Liberalism and say that the slave-holding founders of the US were imperfect in their implementation of Liberal goals of freedom and justice for all. Unless you could show that exceptions are a *necessary* feature of Liberalism, saying that Liberal societies in practice don't live up to the stated aims is not a criticism of those aims, merely the implementation.
Your second episode does address this in part, but I think a stronger case can be made (using your definition of ideology as a means of justifying violence) that Liberalism justifies violence in defense of property, but is willfully indifferent to the origin of the ownership defended. For instance, theft is a crime in Liberalism, but theft several generations prior is more or less given a pass and present ownership is defended, even if it is universally acknowledged that the theft which originated the ownership was not justified.
I think you are actually too generous to Locke. In my opinion, everything he ever wrote can be summed up as "The specific injustices to which I have been subjected are the worst possible injustices, and mark their perpetrators as indelibly evil. The injustices from which I have benefitted are simply the price we should all be willing to pay in order to prevent the more important kind of injustices - once again, those which i have personally suffered.
Not only is Shaggy more powerful that SS4 Goku, but he's also a master philosopher.
Abby five years ago: Presenting cold facts like a lecture
Abby today: HEY GUYS, I'M LITERALLY ART LET'S TALK ABOUT ME
Sounds like you're saying liberalism would be good if it was true to itself instead of having all those exceptions
If liberals made little or no exceptions, then they would be leftists. When they decide to make even more exceptions, then they become far-right.
@@kingskylord6099 definitely seems that way. They think some nice sounding words on a document are freedom when actual freedom for the most people possible requires dismantling the power structures that bar people from basic freedoms and opportunities. So yeah true liberalism is leftism haha
Great video, Olly. Really enjoyed the philosophical perspective on liberalism, the focus on the construction of an ideology, because we usually talk about Liberalism in the context of the history of ideas (possibly because we are so influenced by it, it's easier to think about it as the influence of individuals such as Locke and Mill).
Still, I do think the video could have benefited from comparing Liberalism to the Feudalist ideologies that came before it. Because, in some very limited ways, Liberalism does have emancipatory elements compared to the ideologies that came before it, at least for some classes. Though maybe not as much as Liberals like to believe, since you actually do a wonderful job of showing time and time again how Liberalism is historically founded on the subjugation of others. Or perhaps I'm just drawing too much from Historical Materialism here, but to me, it seems the Individualism propagated by Liberals was what allowed the working class to self-identify as such for the first time too, because it allowed them to realise their own interests and freed them from religious and feudalist notions of a social position determined by birth.
Ahah, we'll be getting onto that in Part 2!
[SNIFFING INTENSIFIES]
Some Liberals have made exceptions to who deserves rights, however that does not mean that Liberalism qua Liberalism is attached to those exceptions. The way most people have argued against exceptions is on Liberal grounds, pointing out that the exceptions are inconsistent with the core of Liberalism.
As a result rights over time get expanded to more and more people as it becomes more broadly recognized that the exceptions are unfounded.
People have certainly pointed out the hypocrisy, yes. Some were left-leaning liberals and some were Leftists - Ture spends a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy, but we'll get to that in Part 4
Thanks for responding, it's an honor (I suspect we would disagree on most political things quite vociferously, but I still respect you). I'm so ignorant of who Ture is that i had to look him up to find out and am still not sure who he is. Is it Ture Königson? If so what should I read? If not who is it? (I doubt it's Norman Ture? He shows up a lot on jstor, but is very... free market?).
My point was that no philosopher is consistent in either applying and living out their philosophy. That also applies to political philosophy. The fact that Locke failed to accept all the implications of Liberal ideas is an indictment of Locke, not of Liberalism. It certainly doesn't seem to imply that the exceptions carved out of liberalism are central to it, or inseparable from it.
Dooblydoo? I shall hereby pronounce you an official beardlover
I jumped a little bit when he said it, I thought Matt Colville was the only one to use that.
@@aWinterCrow you need to become acquainted with the "dooblidoo community"
this was so dang informative. i should read the extra bits in the dooblydoo, but for now im focusing on finishing your vids in this series. thanks for the great content!
RUclips showing me a Mike Bloomberg Add before this video is peak irony.
Where do i find something that gives this definition of ideology as "what facts are important"?
I have a few counterpoints:
* First, the exception towards Indians and NA in and of itself precedes liberalism and it's ingrained in the individuals that wrote it. XIX England was pretty racist, I don't need to tell you. And subsequent liberal thinkers have tried to slowly rid themselves of entrenched biases within their frameworks, like Rawls or even Friedman.
I like this video besides a few minor points I didn' really agree to. It was a nice change of perspective. Maybe I'll subscribe if the next video isn't the counterexample of "Communism bad reee" but with liberalism. Do you plan to cover the main core of classical liberalism or are your looking for a more in-depth approach (maybe even looking at the Mont Pelerin Society and other schools of liberalism)?
"Liberal is assumed to be a political position anywhere left of Sauron"... okay, Olly, you get a like for that alone!
Ollie! I'm curious as to where you got your definition of ideology from. Is that a quoted definition or have you extrapolated from several sources?
I hope you will touch on liberalism's obsession with wealth. In the era of classical liberalism, political rights were determined by your net wealth, either through ownership of land or real estates, or through high enough income.
You're gonna enjoy Part 2! :P
I'm not sure about the idea of Liberalism being defined by its use of exceptions. When any ideology is put into practice isn't the inherent messiness of the world always going to create pressures that drive people to make exceptions to their ideals?
I'm not proposing that Liberal governments be let off the hook, but the degree to which exceptions are made seems more like a failure of execution than one the core tenets of Liberalism. Would it similarly be fair to say that Marxism is defined by totalitarianism because that's generally what happens when Marxist ideology has historically been put in to practice, just as generally Liberal governments make exceptions to their ideals of liberty and justice for all?
Exceptions are built into liberalism though.
Also, I think it's fair to say that Marxism has been present alongside non-totalitarian governments far more often than totalitarian ones, in addition to which totalitarian governments have also been fascist, so to draw a link between Marxism and totalitarianism is a bit specious I reckon
Philosophy Tube you say that the founding fathers made exception to the rules but the are totally consistent with what they believe they where pro-white non egalitarian liberals
There are no such things as Indigenous-Canadians. There are Indigenous peoples living in so-called "Canada" but our identities are much more complex and distinct than that of the "Canadian" identity.
Omg I finally understand. I usually fall asleep in these kinda videos .I didn't.. and I understood 😃 thank you random handsome guy from RUclips. Subscribe 😊
you should watch the rest of his videos, theyre really entertaining
Olly started to look like an educated, live action version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. And now I can't unsee it.
I really like your multiple part series. Great content.
7:00 re: the "shallow take" that everyone believes that people are individuals, there is a philosophy called Monism that believes otherwise. It's more of a spiritual philosophy, but posits that everyone or everything is a single entity. Of course this is pretty irrelevant in this context, but I couldn't resist being *that* contrarian person.
One question I would pose is, is it fair to judge the ideology on the founders? Just because the forefathers of Liberalism weren't the most philosophically consistent, does that put a stain on the ideology? Can the ideology grow past its roots, so to speak?
1) It takes effort prove an assertion (specifically, one that justifies action) than not to. Without that effort, there is no belief in any assertions. Therefore, non-belief, and therefore non-action, is the default.
2) Freedom only means anything in terms of its being NOT constraint. That is, freedom is a negative.
3) Liberalism, being about freedom (NOT constraining/interfering with people), is therefore about NON-ACTION.
4) So, Liberalism is, in a large sense, *actually the default.*
The main thing I wanted to say, though, was that the hypocrisy of an ideology's adherents does not change the actual ideology. The fact that the Classical Liberals and US founding fathers were hypocrites is not a proof that their behaviour was in accord with Liberalism.
This is exactly what this video is missing. The above arguments can be applied to virtually any set of beliefs in an attempt to disprove them.
This is a very limited view of liberalism, its the same kind of narration that tries to narrow socialism to the USSR.
Finally, your 4th point hits the nail on the head. Liberalism and capitalism became universal, because they are in many ways the "default state". They are a fundament we can build upon.
Ok so admitedly this is video 1/4 so perhaps I'm commenting a little early here but I think there's a really big problem with the argument in this video.
This is the "all Socialists are Stalinists" argument or "all Conservatives are Nazis" argument. It's arguing that Socialism always and inevitably falls into Stalinist dictatorship and gettos and therefore dictatorship and gettos are ideologically compatible with Socialism. ~That's a lie. It is not true that tyranny and gettos are the aim of Socialism or even compatible with it.
In the same way arguing that Liberalism ideologically is in favour of exceptions for barbarians or even that such objections could be compatible is just incorrect. It is untrue. Individual Liberals may indeed be fine with slavery or with poverty (at least for some) but it's far harder to persuasively argue that the ideology of Liberalism is necessarily accepting of them.
This isn't an argument saying Margret Thatcher was a Liberal (something that's debatable in itself) but instead it is an argument that all Liberalism is and HAS to be Margaret Thatcher. It is simply redefining Liberalism as Thatcherism and that isn't any more true than defining Socialism as Stalinism.
Historian here: I think it's important to signal that you just glossed over the fact that slavery was already a debated issue at the time of the American independence. However, a more sensible assumption would be to say that they prioritized the unity of the union rather than solving the matter on the spot (which some argue, in a believable manner, would have caused the US' states to enter into instability and possibly an earlier civil war). However, I understand the point you're trying to make, and I'd like to clarify that in no manner do I find it more important to defend these individuals' legacies than to analythe the downsides of their times and actions. I just want to qualify and specify somethings which might otherwise, for ideological reasons or for mere lack of knowledge, be overstated.
You aren't wrong that slavery was debated at the time of the founding fathers, but slavery was also something many of the founding fathers, even those who vocally or politically opposed, did. It's not as bad as how the 1619 project put it (even though this part of the 1619 project was overemphasized and many other parts were much better), the revolution didn't happen to secure slavery, but the founding fathers were rarely particularly adamant in opposition to slavery. Jefferson was quite arguably the most liberal president we ever had and personally owned slaves. Jackson (not a founding father, but still) was pretty liberal himself and both expanded the slave trade in the u.s. and is responsible for the trail of tears. Again, not wrong, but you might be overstating their opposition.
Good vid, but I don't think "exceptions" really works as a specific aspect of liberal ideology; pretty much all ideologies do that.
Every ideology and political view EVER is about deciding who gets more, and who gets less. Simple as that. There's no "just" ideology, at least among realistically possible. People will always prioritize ones among others, it's in our nature, and that's what needs to change to solve the worlds biggest problem.
"anybody politically left of Sauron".
Sauron, the one centrist to Rule Them All, the one who will Make America Great Again!
This explains a lot about your position, I originally had no idea what you were on about when you described liberalism as a community of strength.
Is there any ideology that doesn't make exceptions, and follows its own rules consistently? For example, an ideology that maintains that violence by the state is never appropriate, and always follows that rule?
Mathymathymathy No, because society is not possible without violence.
Is that necessarily true, though? Anarchism seems to provide such a system that opposes violence, although I am not entirely sure if it follows its own rules in practice consistently.
Why is it not possible to have society without violence?
Some follow their own rules consistently and violently because they own their status as ideologies
Mathymathymathy If you can not use the threat of violence against those who are willing to use it themselves, you enable warlordism basically.
A state without recourse to physical violence wouldn't really be a state, because it couldn't have police or courts (or equivalents) and thus couldn't really be said to be in control of a territory. Different states, following different ideologies, use wildly varying amounts of physical violence and make varying amounts of rights exceptions. So you could definitely find states with, so to speak, high consistency ratings and low brutality scores. Now, you could have a *society* without violence, and if you find one let me know, I want to move there! But it wouldn't have a state.
Fascinating facts. Morty: "Oh, everything’s crooked! Reality is poison! I want to go back! I hate this! Everything is a lie."
For a 9 minute introduction, you spent most of it talking about how every ideology has flaws and then introduced liberalism not by what it stands for, but by its exceptions. I get bias exists, but if you intend on doing an education channel you have to at least try not to show every 30 seconds you disagree with what you are talking about.
Lol, notice the title? You should have stopped there if you were looking for a balanced assessment.
“left of Sauron” i literally choked
I'm not sure I understand the idea of differentiating ideologies by who they allow violence to be enacted against? There's plenty of overlap, and there's bound to be some ideologies that are indistinguishable in terms of who they consider legitimate targets, many anarchist and marxist tendencies for instance. Marx and Bakunin probably agreed on shooting policemen and capitalists.
One difference between anarchism and marxism (in practice) seems to be the structure of the organizations which deploy violence --an army under control of a worker's state, or a militia under control of its members--. These both vary from the liberal police force. Perhaps the way in which violence is deployed could be another measure of difference between ideology.
Mmhmm, who it's deployed against and why are both important. Organisational structure can be a form of structural violence as well.
when I saw Trudeau with the thumbs up, thats was the moment i knew I loved this channel
I think you are stereotyping Liberalism by picking those who had exceptions to the rule. True Liberalism believes that there are no exceptions to their beliefs.
"To the Americans 'liberal' means anything to the left of Sauron" I genuinely laughed out loud. That is BASED (written with the perspective of February 2021)
Can anyone name a ideology that does not make acceptations to its own rules?
Certainly there are hypocrites of all stripes, but some ideologies define their political enemies (those against whom violence is acceptable) explicitly. Liberalism claims to be nonviolent, but then builds in exceptions.
The irony, of course, of liberalism in America meaning “anything to the left of Sauron” is that the ideology of liberalism is hegemonic in America-to an extent that often amazes people from most other countries, in my experience.
All democratic countries are a fruit of liberalism
I tend to think liberal individualism is actually a good thing for feminism. In the Middle East for example lots of women's rights as individuals are forego-ed or de-prioritized on the claim that it will hurt the overall needs of society/class or that the collective needs of society are more imp than individual women. So if societal progress was measured/based on individual status, that will force the women card as individuals on the table, also liberalism emphasizes the economical gain behind each individual -women included, that led many misogynist families to push their female relatives into the market sphere giving these women economical power.
To give an example in KSA women were prohibited from driving giving the excuse that the poor drivers would be severely hurt economically as lots of them are immigrants and from lower economical classes. So their financial survival was presented as a higher priority over the individual female rights to drive.
Surely that was not the main reason but still it was a one that people didn't know how to argue against except on other economical grounds not on the ground that individual rights are prioritized over the lower class overall financial woes, if the two collided as in this example.
There are other examples where this theme comes up too.
That is Islamophobic.
You're probably the only individualist, capitalist and rational feminist I have ever seen. Congradulations and thanks for being smart I guess...
Liberals in the west will not identify as feminists since feminists in the west are cultural marxists which is not compatible. In the west there is no right or opportunity that males have that females do not, whereas in the middle east that is clearly not the case sadly.
Liberal feminism is the problem. The solution is radical and socialist feminism period
+Learn Social Justice
Everybody is the problem except me!
I belong to several more marginalized communities (for example, I am trans and disabled), and I have been concerned/critical about Liberalism (from the left) for a long time, particularly how political goals that are based in Liberal ideas often seem to a) fail to benefit the most marginalized groups and/or b) favor symbolic or "in name only" gains instead of material gains (for any group). So you get campaigns or initiatives that demand "equality" or "recognition" or "representation," instead of, e.g., providing housing and health care, or ending deportations or police violence.
What I find is that within my communities, Liberal thinking seems profoundly influential and I just don't know what to do about it. No one wants to be an ass and go around telling everyone "you're wrong, and your proposed solutions won't help our people at all." People living in desperate conditions seem to find a lot of hope and affirmation in Liberalism, and though I obviously feel they're being duped, I can't deny that having hope is important.
Perhaps I just need more solidly leftist examples and victories (relevant to their lives) to point to instead?
apparently nobody noticed you are dressed as Shaggy
So, your main criticism of capital-L Liberalism in this video is that it recognizes citizenship? Surely a nation must not conflate citizen with non-citizen-unless you wish to abolish nation-states altogether. Also, I wouldn't conflate "processing migrants" with "violence," unless of course we're willing to change the definition of violence itself. Surprisingly ideologically-driven analysis, here.
This analysis is pretty far from a dispassionate or charitable take on Liberalism, not to mention extremely shallow, and I say that as a Social Democrat.
The most educated Liberals I've met don't claim it isn't an ideology, they just claim that they have a working epistemology. Sure the idiots make that claim, but idiots in my ideology make that claim, I'm not about to go casting stones. So they claim that their method allow them to know things, and when you contrast them with the kind of folks who characterize them the way they are characterized in this video in terms of the usual continental philosophers criticisms it is hard to disagree with them, at least in relative terms.
Thatcher was a capital L Liberal, sure, but such an analysis is horrifically shallow. I'm a social democrat. My ideology has roots that can be traced back to Marx, but if a conservative tries to talk about my ideology in such a shallow way lumping me in with Stalin and Lenin I tend to get grumpy. You can do socialism well, you can do it badly, you can do Liberalism well, you can do it badly. I happen to think even Liberalism done well is still bad, but not because Thatcher was a bad Liberal.
Which brings us to Liberalism making exceptions. All practical, successful ideologies make exceptions, because they have to. Sure, they also do it because it is convenient, or allows certain people to obtain power or wealth. Ideologies are approximate guides for how to form social orders. They typically make exceptions to allow the systems they are embedded in to self-perpetuate, or using this justification as an excuse as a decent subset of the adherents believe them to necessary for the system to self-perpetuate. Here it is presented as some defining characteristic of Liberalism, when compared with most ideologies I would suggest Liberalism is pretty careful about who it designates as an exception.
The absurd degree to which the British tried to dress up the brutal deindustrialisation of India as a 'civilizing project' shows the exact opposite of what is argued here. Far from casually creating exceptions Liberals build vast complexes of lies and absurd narratives to justify their exceptions they are so averse to them. By contrast Fascists or Communists just slap the word counter revolutionary on whoever they don't like and give them a bullet.
This brings us back to lumping Conservatives with an economic liberal inclination in with all the other Liberals. In a democracy ideologies can only continue as long as the majority are at least implicitly on board with them. Conservatives look at methods of forming the body politic and worry if it can self perpetuate if its character is undermined by radical change. And I don't always disagree with them either, I don't want non-native Fascists given leave to speak or stay in my country after all and I'm prepared to use the power of the state to prevent this.
Of course the more hard core conservatives who draw their ideas from Liberalism are going to make bad exceptions (those not needed to allow the system to perpetuate). They, like say Marx, have a broken epistemology which doesn't recognize that there are effective approaches to analyzing society as a collective rather than individualistically. I'd say it is pretty unfair to criticize these people on the grounds they are Liberal when in reality Liberalism has always had a spectrum of perspectives here .
In fact I'd go further, it isn't Liberalism that is the problem in this specific case, but rather the very school of philosophy from which many of these criticisms that are drawn that is at fault. After all, the Austrian School has far more in common epistemically with the Continentals than the Analytics. If you demand social analysis be done not with an eye to epistemic efficiency and effectiveness but rather in terms of your preferred atoms (the individual as in the Austrian School, the class as in Marxism, the racial / gender / whatever identity as in National Socialism / Fascism / the Frankfurt School), you will end up with a bad social model, and when you don't know what is, you cant make sensible decisions about how much universality to apply to your ideology and not provoke the collapse of the system it is in.
Why are you going after Liberals using bad arguments from continental school, when there are perfectly good arguments against liberals from the analytic and pragmatist schools?
Where did he say he was trying to be "dispassionate"?
"I'm a social democrat"
Could have just said you're a liberal and saved the essay.
@retarded99 I was being secretarian
"It's an ideology, it has a tradition of violence towards selected groups, it makes exceptions in its moral judgments."
It seems like these are general enough to be shared by all of the political ideas you mentioned.
First, maybe?, ONE SARGON TO MANY!
Like always, another great video. I just have to say that I watched all 4 videos and none of them actually explicitly state the actual definition of Liberalism, only its effects. Just found it a bit odd, because taken at it's pure face value the idea of Liberalism is something that most people can agree as noble. At it's most basic Liberalism means upholding the views of liberty and equality. So the video discusses mostly the manifestations of different politics that disguised itself under the banner of Liberalism, but it is not about what true Liberalism actually is.
7:39 That quote sounds like something and edgy 15 year old would say
Whenever I am in a discussion about the flaws of liberalism, this video series is what I point to.
I disagree with some of the points you've made here, so I'll explain why here.
_"Ideologies determine what facts are important and what actions are acceptable."_ (0:42)
That's true, the purpose of an ideology is to filter information in a certain way to get to a judgement about an action. But I find this to be a weird definition of ideology - because that's what an ideology does, not what it is. I would rather define an ideology as a set of ideas that form a comprehensive world view, since this definition is a little more specific on what an ideology actually is and is less prone to confusion by false association.
_"So we can see that no matter how much somebody insists their ideology is based purely on the facts, that's never the full picture."_ (1:58)
That seems to be a bit of an uncharitable interpretation to me. Obviously, noone bases their opinion purely on the facts, that would be an instance of the is-ought fallacy. But what I think the statement wants to say is that the one making it has considered the facts and would change their ideology if the facts were different.
This is not self-evident behaviour, since there are ideologies that assert certain "facts" - all religions, for instance. And even in secular ideologies, this behaviour of *NOT* considering the facts can be found; an example would be feminism and the long-disproven Gender Wage Gap.
_"A political ideology identifies who are the acceptable targets of violence."_ (3:11)
It's true, this is one thing every ideology necessarily has to do. But because of the way this is worded and because of the analogy to fascism, I get the feeling that you're not just stating neutral facts but want to deliberately provoke a certain reaction in your viewers - and I must disagree with that.
Violence is always a possibility, and so any ideology must necessarily judge if (and when) violence is acceptable. This is not arbitrary (like you make it sound) or inherently evil (like your comparison to fascism makes it sound). Liberals, for instance, would consider violence acceptable only if it is directed at someone who initiated violence first and if it is an appropriate defense against that violence. That applies to your statement just as well as the Nazis' use of violence does.
_"Every ideology says that [it is non-violent and moderate]."_ (3:56)
So what? Are you trying to imply that there is no objective standard to which ideologies could be held? Because I could propose a few. Quality of life in systems run by these ideologies, for instance. Or, in the case of being violent, body count. If you compare communism, fascism and liberalism with these standards, you'll get to a conclusion very quickly.
As for being moderate or centrist, that is not something you can tell in a vacuum because these things are defined relative to other ideologies in a specific society. But in comparison to other ideologies in, say, Western society, you will - again - find that liberalism is indeed quite moderate.
_"Making exceptions to the normal rules is a defining characteristic of liberal ideology in practice."_ (4:38)
Such as?
_"Classical liberals like John Stuart Mill and John Locke wanted liberty but they made exceptions for "barbarians" and "savage races"."_ (4:46)
Well, does that reflect on liberalism? Or does that reflect on John Stuart Mill and John Locke?
You have to keep in mind that these people lived in a much different time than we do. Liberalism has evolved since to include the principle of equality. Holding it accountable for people who were racist in a time when everyone was racist is disingenuous.
_"One thing my country's very good at doing today is preaching all kinds of freedoms and nice things for people but denying these same things to immigrants."_ (5:44)
Stop you right there: That's not an exception to the rule. The rule is that every policy should aim to maximize the amount of freedom citizens have. This rule can only apply to the own country - obviously. Immigrants cost a lot of time and money. They have to be registered, integrated and supported - and it has to be made sure they don't unlawfully use even more ressources. These ressources belong to the citizens of the country, and so it must be made sure that the immigration that occurs does not cost them too much of their freedom - or else the system wouldn't be liberal.
Another point is that an immigrant chose to immigrate into a certain country of their own free will - other than, for instance, a black person who can be held as a slave. Having actions have consequences (if they were known before the action) does not contradict liberalism.
In short: Denying certain rights to a migrant from a country you don't rule is not equivalent to denying people certain rights based on their skin colour or their region of origin if that region is under your rule.
I want to stress again that you need to be extremely careful when you are using language that might be academically adequate, but has strong connotations from another source. When you are saying "liberalism makes makes an exception for migrants to justify violence against them", you are not techincally wrong. But what that statement tells your audience is not what you were actually saying. It is a very common fallacy: Re-define a word, apply it to something, and then use the true meaning as emotional appeal to make your point. A communist example I once encountered:
Private property is autocracy. "Property" means rule over something, and it being private means that you do it yourself: Autocracy. And you can see in history how well that works.
1. Redefine "autocracy": ruling about some *THING* yourself [note: this takes away the negative meaning of autocracy, since this negative meaning derives from the unjustified rule over people who have their own wishes etc.]
2. Apply "autocracy" to private property.
3. Use the true connotation of "autocracy" for an emotional response against private property [FALLACY!]
You have done similar:
1. Redefine "justify violence": Stating when it might be acceptable to use violence [note: this takes away the negative connotation, since it no longer means to justify something that is unjust, but to decide when it is just]
2. Apply to liberalism as an ideology.
3. Use the true connotation of "justifying violence" for an emotional response against liberalism [FALLACY!]
I can't stand when people do this. Don't do this.
You lost me at "long disproven gender wage gap."
Way to sneak in some counter factual ideological propaganda. Real cool.
Tony Campbell The Wage Gape as described by feminists is untrue. Women do not get paid 70% of what a man earns for the same job. The Wage Gap is based on the average earnings of all men and all women and does not control for hours worked, education level, time worked at that job, or even occupation. Whenever these controls are implemented the gap drops significantly.
There is still about 4-7% of a difference that’s unaccounted for when these controls are in place. However, feminism uses the 70% soundbite to influence people and support their own decisions and arguments, which is a fair example of ignoring facts in the support of an ideology.
Good solid thought out critique. +1
I know this comment is a year old, but I just want to post my reaction of your critique:
1. The biggest thing I noticed is that in your final and longest point, you seem to be speaking through a layer of ideology which you haven't dispelled yourself - equating violence to something inherently unjust. Violence, as a concept, is never really defined in the popular usage of the word as being something which is unjust, but as something which brings physical attack in an effort to hurt or kill someone. While you can see this as being unjust, it is not a part of the definition and your attempt to try and equate violence with innately being unjust is an example of ideological filtering that changes your worldview - which is not a negative mind you but it is something that you need to be aware of happening. I also don't see how exactly using emotive language is fallacious and not just a debate tactic.
2. The point of every ideology spouting itself as being moderate and rational is one that I think you misinterpreted. This point exists for the sole cause of saying that every single ideology, if you listen to the people who believe in it will always present itself as being one of fairness and the "most rational solution". Their views, in the eyes of whoever is speaking, seem to be the most moderate because of his aforementioned "hierarchy of facts" and of which facts that one should prioritize. This is what he meant, not that we should compare liberalism to any other ideology or government type.
3. You also make a body-count remark, implying that liberalism has a lower body-count than all the other ideologies. This seems to me to be fallacious, as you can take the liberal democracies of England and France and see what their countries did to their colonies and count those bodies up. Of course, you can always argue that such facets are not inherent to liberalism, which is kind of what you did where you argued that the racism of liberalism in the past can be just a sign of the times. John Locke being racist was simply his own personal views and does not reflect on the ideology of liberalism, distilling the ideology based simply on ideals within a vacuum and not on its real world consequences, but in this I would say that this is no different an argument than when communists claim the USSR and other similar Marxist-Leninist states were "not true communism" or "not true socialism" - something I'm sure you would vehemently disagree with.
4. Ironic for me to comment on your first point this far at the bottom, but oh well. I personally found it to be slightly pedantic, as what Philosophy Tube was trying to say was not a definition of ideology but of what ideology does - which is what you criticized. You claim that he was being inaccurate in his definition, when he never outright claimed that he was giving a definition in a vacuum - he was defining it through its actions which were more important to the contexts of the video since he use several historical and real life situations to further justify his point.
Just some different takes I had on your analysis of the video. While I enjoyed watching it as a whole and his interpretation of liberalism is interesting, I agree with you in that there was a layer of bias there, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - he never truly tries to be the be-all-end-all of political definitions and there will always be a sheen of bias in any take of something. The video is a personal project of one person and therefore should be read as such - trying to have people be completely unbiased in their interpretations of things, or to remove bias is a waste of time and won't amount to much.
Liberalism as it is presented today is almost singularly founded on the philosophy of Objectivism. For academics who wish to pretend that Ayn Rand does not exist or that she should not be taken so seriously as to be mentioned even in the discussion where she is the proverbial "big elephant", is laid to shame after Cliff's Notes added her works to their list of student guides. That ends the discussion of whether or not she has a presence in academic considerations. Personally, I have never met an Objectivist (or Liberal/conservative) who was not obnoxious and superficial. But, I can no more blame Ayn Rand for being misrepresented by her admirers than by her detractors. Her goal was to correct the intellectual tragedy that all of Aristotle's exoteric writings have been lost. Like her, I and most students of philosophy, think all of philosophy is essentially a foot note to Aristotle. He was the father of an epistemology based on observation and logic which evolved into the scientific method. As a novelist, Ayn Rand was necessarily confined to a focus on social and political ideology. Nevertheless, her non-fiction works clearly show that she grasped the importance of demonstrating that any idea had to be connected to a system of a non-contradictory hierarchy--not merely a floating "ideology". I like her, but I may not know enough about her to defend her or to say I completely agree with her. I do feel distracted by her fans, who I find distasteful. But to discus Liberalism without a mention of her is either consciously or unconsciously dishonest.
What I find particularly interesting here is the second part about built in exceptions. It seems that could be an overall critique of democracy. Since the fact that we live under majority rule implies that there is always a minority whose voice and power is limited and their class is made the exception by definition. Just a thought, anyway.
That's an interesting perspective, it kinda seems like democracy really isn't a egalitarian ideal, but more of populist one. Having a vote and losing is almost like not voting at all. It's not like the losers get anything out of it.
HAHAHAHAHA477
That's not true even though it might seem like it. Even if "your" party loses, you should always vote. It makes it more likely that whoever gets into power will lean more in your direction. For example if the "stripy party" wins but you and lots of other people voted for the "spotty party", the leader of the "stripy party" might be more willing to tweak his policies so that they are closer to what you want or enact policies you wanted that he otherwise wouldn't have.
@Crispman
Lol, like the people in power care about their opposing side. That only ever happens in you have a generous leader, or if the losing side is a threat to you. Either way, if your vote lost, you barely matter.
HAHAHAHAHA477
Nope. Providing that you're in a country with a properly functioning government, the places of power that politicians hold are temporary and they know it. If they sense that their position has the potential to be contested they're probably going to try and appease both the people that are on their side and the people that are the biggest threat to them if they can't convert them. I'm not saying that any of this behaviour is guaranteed and it mostly concerns local politicians but it does happen, even if you don't hear much about it in the news. Also as reference this is coming from a UK perspective so I understand if your situation is vastly different to mine.
@Crispman
I don't know much about what's happening in the UK, but I can tell you that the phrase "properly functioning government" is an oxymoron. No government has ever "properly functions" within its life span. Its either becoming corrupt, or it is corrupt. The future administration cares nothing about past administrations. It will set forth on implementing it's own policies and rule if you voted for them or not.
8:36 The I wouldn't say the struggle in fascism is always race-related, more about groups of people with a certain identity - whether its their nationality, or their values - a conservatism to the next level even.
5:42 I disagree with this. The examples of liberals making exceptions was in the past only. He gave the example of John Locke etc for an example of liberals making exceptions in history, and then followed with "my country" for the example about now, mentioning immigration. His country rejects immigrants in spite of liberals. Liberals generally will argue for inclusiveness of immigrants, and everyone else including LGBTQ and even takes that to the extreme. So the "exceptions" thing is clearly a historical thing and no longer valid.
Plenty of liberals are against mass immigration - and there's nothing illiberal about that.
+Nivesh Proag One exception that has persisted to this day in America is the idea that prisoners can basically be treated like slaves while they are imprisoned and then shunned by society after the fact so they can't find a job. Another one is foreigners. America doesn't give a shit about the human rights of people who aren't American. America tramples on the property rights of people that get in the way of corporate profits. There are tons of modern examples of exceptions... You fail to see that in most countries the Liberal ideology is prevalent throughout the political spectrum. The liberalism he is talking about is not about whether you are on the left or right; in America, at least, liberalism is the entire foundation of our values.
I'd encourage anyone reading this to look up an explanation of liberalism elsewhere, as this entire video was a straw man of liberalism (which may not have been intentional, the creator might not understand it). Liberalism is all about establishing and protecting the freedom of the individual unless that freedom harms someone else. It's not about one type of group attacking another type of group. It was expressly made to bring freedom, justice and peace to all members of society, and if spread around the world, to all members of the world.
That being said the liberal writers did say we'd never get perfect results, and some sort of injustice and tyranny will always crop up and need to be dealt with, and those occurrences are what opponents of liberalism use to discredit it. Those critics always ignore that those instances tend to come from authoritarians overcoming liberals within that society. And those same critics tend to ignore the massive human rights achievements that come along with liberalism that we still enjoy today. Seeing the title of this video and people in the comments snicker at liberalism and pretend it's a thing of the past is frankly disturbing. So again please look elsewhere for an explanation as this is important stuff. Also Margaret Thatcher was not a liberal, she was a neoliberal, which is a completely different thing. Liberalism is a liberal ideology made to question and limit the power the state has over the individual, and neoliberalism is an authoritarian ideology that leans into the state as a means to power.
Little more than a well-posioning broth of genetic fallacy, tu quoque, and guilt by association. Pure ideology.
You're gonna love Part 2 then.
Zizek grows stronger with every "pure ideology" uttered
7:10 actually, I think some people would question considering people individuals. Some may define people more as a function of social relations or a set of personas connected in mind and body. Individual can be taken to mean “a unit not able to be divided further,” and that’s something a Jungian could disagree with. Of course, I’d be astounded if one could create a sensible political theory based on personas as a fundamental unit of society, at least if it turns out practically different from other ideologies.
I dont think the Geordie reflex was necessary? You act as if you are impatial but let yourself down. You are supposed to be educating not expressing your political agenda. Not impressed at all
I don't act as if I'm impartial, and indeed a lot of the point of this video was to show that that isn't really possible.
Philosophy Tube i understand where you're coming from, you cant not have an opinion. But to you're wider audience maybe its better to keep on thr fence as it kind changes the feel of your channel! But i understand you're pov you are putting across. Listen i think your videos are sound and increase my knowledge on philosophy tremendously as a young student myself. I thank you for that. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Keep doing what you are doing! Have a good day!
I think you missed the point of the video.
Political Liberalism - John Rawls
Liberalism Democracy and Development - Sylvia Chan
Your contention that the making of exceptions is somehow a defining characteristic of liberalism is very weak. You identified a couple of examples on liberals making exceptions. This hardly demonstrates that it is essential to the philosophy itself.
In fact, Liberals very often led the charge in recognizing the rights of people that everyone else denied. I don't think it's an accident that Mill was unusual in arguing for equality between the sexes in "The Subjection of Women" or that Jeremy Bentham argued in "Offenses Against Ones Self" for liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexuality or that many of the US founders including John Adams and Alexander Hamilton we're deeply opposed to slavery.
If any ideology can be credited with the progress of equal rights before the law for all people, it is liberalism, which recognizes the unalienable rights of the individual.
showing people following rules isn't contradictory to that they have been historically making exceptions. next video is about capitalism, which in itself can be argued as an exception to concept of freedom for all.
WTF is a "right"? You mean a condition granted by the state that is necessary for upholding the social order (ie diffusing revolutionary fever)?
I mean this: aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individual_rights.html
Recommended reading: campus.aynrand.org/works/1963/04/01/mans-rights
Channeling that Shaggy Rogers energy to pwn fascism. I dig it.
These people you speak of in the video do not represent Liberalism as a whole.
Don't they? What about the bits where I talk about how exceptions are still made along similar lines? In my video on Locke I showed how they are still being made with regards to Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
** olly i love you so much