The issue here is that women rely on men to provide and protect them, and when they don't have that, they rely on the state for provision and protection. This is what sets the authoritarian system off. Women won't stop seeking provision and protection because it is an innate ordering of preferences by women to focus on those. The allure of freedom involves the allure of the benefits of agency. Men are going to be pre-disposed towards that agency, so the concept of limiting the power of the state to allow men to succeed is appealing to men, but only appealing to married women who want their husbands to succeed.
Women, on the other hand, will not be so driven in their agency to prefer liberty over security & provision. The most liberating thing a woman can do is have a good man in her life to provide and secure for her. At that point, she will then have the ability to build a family, a home, and a community (which will be her most meaningful work in life). But, that's a long hard road, and it only works if the project can be defended while it's being done.
Authoritarianism gives women the illusion of security and safety draped in a lie of accountability. In reality, a specific man is the best way a woman can have accountable safety and security.
It's a problem with liberal ideology. It's predicated upon individual rights and social norms of treating others as individuals. Thus it has no internally consistent grounding for excluding "those" people. This is why women eventually ended up with civic participation.
Liberalism is also hostile to social norms and expectations. It compels people to maximize "do what I want" leisure time and options and thus to attack things like the gendered expectations necessary to maintain families and even, for some, the expectation to work at all.
The dirty work necessary to maintain society still needs to be done so you end up with a fractured society wherein people are trying to offload the burdens onto others in order to endlessly "liberate" themselves. The dirty work never goes away so someone is always lacking "liberation."
It's a problem with liberal ideology. It's predicated upon individual rights and social norms of treating others as individuals. Thus it has no internally consistent grounding for excluding "those" people. This is why women eventually ended up with civic participation.
You bring up good points but at the end of the day I don't think this is a problem with liberalism itself, but rather the difference between a grounded application of liberal principles versus ungrounded idealism.
Voting rights in the USA used to be tied to property ownership. This supposedly disenfranchised many women because most women didn't own property at the time, but the rational basis for limiting voting rights to property owners was sound, and it should have remained that way. This was still liberalism, but it was liberalism grounded rationally to support the American system of government, taking into account people's personal investment in the system and the rights that correspond with that investment.
The problems arose when people began to argue that there should be no restrictions placed on voting in the name of equality. This is an idealistic notion but one not grounded in reality, and we can see the fallout of this blind idealism in the political pandering to non-contributors in society, since their vote is worth just as much as those who are actually contributing and invested in this country's future.
This ungrounded idealism is the root of the problem more so than the liberal principles themselves, because every ideology suffers the same problem if you unmoore it's principles from practical reality. This is the same problem that anarchy and communism struggle with; both sound great until you try to put them into practice.
Liberal principles themselves are ungrounded idealism. Equality is a myth. Private actors are more than capable of being tyrants, as even other iterations of liberalism recognized.
taking into account people's personal investment in the system and the rights that correspond with that investment.
George Soros has more investment in the system than you. Should he get more rights?
The way people use the word "equality" nowadays is several steps removed from the liberal principles of legal and political equality. The idea that all people should be equal in every way, in every context, was never part of liberalism.
Fun fact, the word "equality" doesn't even appear in the US Constitution.
George Soros has more investment in the system than you. Should he get more rights?
Yes, if the law were written that way, but it's not, and for good reason. The US Constitution was written to find balance between the tyranny of the many and the tyranny of the few. If someone was a citizen and owned property, they could vote (because they have a vested interest in the country), but they didn't scale the political influence of voters based on wealth either.
Liberalism is concerned with equal application of the law, not making everyone equal.
Fun fact, the word "equality" doesn't even appear in the US Constitution.
I know. "Equal" does appear in the DoI however.
The US Constitution was written to find balance between the tyranny of the many and the tyranny of the few.
When you say Constitution, are you including the Bill of Rights?
If someone was a citizen and owned property, they could vote (because they have a vested interest in the country), but they didn't scale the political influence of voters based on wealth either.
This is just motivated reasoning on both your part and the part of the liberals at the time. Suffrage was doled out this way to produce results friendly to the ruling class, just as it always has been.
Liberalism is concerned with equal application of the law, not making everyone equal.
In practice, liberalism is concerned with obfuscating power relations and destroying impediments to profits, including traditions, where applicable.
When you say Constitution, are you including the Bill of Rights?
Yes, the original ten amendments in particular. The more recent amendments are debatable.
This is just motivated reasoning on both your part and the part of the liberals at the time. Suffrage was doled out this way to produce results friendly to the ruling class, just as it always has been.
What motivated reasoning? I'm just stating historical fact.
What ruling class? They had to basically force George Washington to be President. There was so little power in the federal government at the time, it was considered a burden... an act of servitude, to serve in Congress.
In practice, liberalism is concerned with obfuscating power relations and destroying impediments to profits, including traditions, where applicable.
OK. Don't forget it was a fight to get them in there...
What motivated reasoning? I'm just stating historical fact.
I interpreted you as approving of the fact that only property owners could vote. It's something a lot of right liberals say today.
What ruling class? They had to basically force George Washington to be President. There was so little power in the federal government at the time, it was considered a burden... an act of servitude, to serve in Congress.
I don't understand this argument. You are implying that the lack of power in the Presidency means there is no ruling class.
Can you back this up with anything?
Sure. You can see liberalism obfuscating power relations in a topic we are discussing now, restricted suffrage. This topic obfuscates power relations when it comes up in its usual form because the implication is that society is going to shit because we gave too much power to the wrong type of plebes. In reality, it's going to shit because of the people with the most amount of power.
As I said, to Gizortnik, history backs up my claim that liberalism destroy traditions. What traditions are being preserved by liberalism? How is it even helping?
Most of that isn't true. Liberalism is neither hostile to social norms nor social expectations. Liberalism only requires that the state is not the imposer of those social expectations by taking the place of god and morality, which it can't be.
Liberalism isn't trying to manifest a civil society and maintain it, it instead allows the civil society to exist without the state seeking to fundamentally destroy it.
Frankly, if you remove the state from imposing the elites moral standards, it means the population's own moral standards will be emergent.
The entire justification for limiting the state stems from it being considered a barrier to individual freedom. If you are seeking to maximize individual freedom, you inevitably end up conflicting with social norms.
Individual freedom from tyranny, not from existence. That's why Rousseau goes off into pure illiberalism when he starts screaming about even bodily constraints of the mind being a form of repression. Liberalism doesn't see gravity as oppression. Individual freedom is what allows you to morally order yourself in the society you are in. Meaning you'll end up co-operating with, or even building, social norms for you and your community. Liberalism allows you to actually engage in a moral order, rather than having a tyrant proscribe morality at the point of a gun, while himself abiding by no morals at all.
What do you do when societal norms are "sexist" and "racist" then, i.e. businesses refusing to have blacks or women or whatever as workers or customers?
What do you do when societal norms are "sexist" and "racist"
No idea what these means. Honestly, it means basically anything.
. businesses refusing to have blacks or women or whatever as workers or customers?
Do something different with your business. This is what happened for centuries before the Civil Rights movement. What would always basically happen is that racial discrimination laws were typically local. They'd be enacted when there was an influx of migrants (of whatever group), and would normally be repealed within 40 years at the local level as those groups had completely integrated by that time.
Yours doesn't serve whites? Great, mine does. If you're my neighbor? I'll tell you that's dumb and silly. If we're good neighbors, and my moral ordering is right, I should be able to convince you something about my moral framework while I'm living it. Especially over the next 4 decades.
This is what happened for centuries before the Civil Rights movement.
And the Civil Rights and feminists movement emerged in part because that wasn't "working." Feminists, for example, concluded that they needed to not be financially dependent on their husbands in order to maximize their freedom thus resulting in anti-discrimination laws and welfare state expansion.
Yours doesn't serve whites? Great, mine does.
You're ignoring two things here. If you violate social norms with your business, other businesses can work against you. Thus, your supply chain, advertising opportunities, etc. can become compromised. Secondly, you are assuming that those who are being discriminated against have enough straightforward access to accommodating businesses so as to not be fucked.
I don't even know why we are arguing this in extract terms. History has played out in accordance with what I've been saying. There is little need for abstract theory here.
The dirty work necessary to maintain society still needs to be done so you end up with a fractured society wherein people are trying to offload the burdens onto others in order to endlessly "liberate" themselves. The dirty work never goes away so someone is always lacking "liberation."
This is the harsh lesson we should have collectively learned by 1970, as the cultural revolution was petering out..
Whenever the Bible talks about women ruling over a nation or people it's in a negative sense, as in a curse for wickedness or symptom of an immoral society. The Bible is clear that women in the general sense are not meant to rule over men, and when they do, bad things happen. I don't believe this is because women are evil (sorry, Imp) but because their nature is counter-productive to governance. They are easily deceived and manipulated and their natural priorities and motivations aren't in-line with the proper role of government which is to execute blind justice, without being swayed by bias, emotion or prejudice, and to protect it's people from the outside threats by waging war.
When the next society is sifting through the remains of western civilisation I hope somehow somewhere they find the warning:
Feminism is cancer.
Considering that “female empowerment” did in the Romans and the Greeks, I doubt it.
The issue here is that women rely on men to provide and protect them, and when they don't have that, they rely on the state for provision and protection. This is what sets the authoritarian system off. Women won't stop seeking provision and protection because it is an innate ordering of preferences by women to focus on those. The allure of freedom involves the allure of the benefits of agency. Men are going to be pre-disposed towards that agency, so the concept of limiting the power of the state to allow men to succeed is appealing to men, but only appealing to married women who want their husbands to succeed.
Women, on the other hand, will not be so driven in their agency to prefer liberty over security & provision. The most liberating thing a woman can do is have a good man in her life to provide and secure for her. At that point, she will then have the ability to build a family, a home, and a community (which will be her most meaningful work in life). But, that's a long hard road, and it only works if the project can be defended while it's being done.
Authoritarianism gives women the illusion of security and safety draped in a lie of accountability. In reality, a specific man is the best way a woman can have accountable safety and security.
It's a problem with liberal ideology. It's predicated upon individual rights and social norms of treating others as individuals. Thus it has no internally consistent grounding for excluding "those" people. This is why women eventually ended up with civic participation.
Liberalism is also hostile to social norms and expectations. It compels people to maximize "do what I want" leisure time and options and thus to attack things like the gendered expectations necessary to maintain families and even, for some, the expectation to work at all.
The dirty work necessary to maintain society still needs to be done so you end up with a fractured society wherein people are trying to offload the burdens onto others in order to endlessly "liberate" themselves. The dirty work never goes away so someone is always lacking "liberation."
You bring up good points but at the end of the day I don't think this is a problem with liberalism itself, but rather the difference between a grounded application of liberal principles versus ungrounded idealism.
Voting rights in the USA used to be tied to property ownership. This supposedly disenfranchised many women because most women didn't own property at the time, but the rational basis for limiting voting rights to property owners was sound, and it should have remained that way. This was still liberalism, but it was liberalism grounded rationally to support the American system of government, taking into account people's personal investment in the system and the rights that correspond with that investment.
The problems arose when people began to argue that there should be no restrictions placed on voting in the name of equality. This is an idealistic notion but one not grounded in reality, and we can see the fallout of this blind idealism in the political pandering to non-contributors in society, since their vote is worth just as much as those who are actually contributing and invested in this country's future.
This ungrounded idealism is the root of the problem more so than the liberal principles themselves, because every ideology suffers the same problem if you unmoore it's principles from practical reality. This is the same problem that anarchy and communism struggle with; both sound great until you try to put them into practice.
Liberal principles themselves are ungrounded idealism. Equality is a myth. Private actors are more than capable of being tyrants, as even other iterations of liberalism recognized.
George Soros has more investment in the system than you. Should he get more rights?
The way people use the word "equality" nowadays is several steps removed from the liberal principles of legal and political equality. The idea that all people should be equal in every way, in every context, was never part of liberalism.
Fun fact, the word "equality" doesn't even appear in the US Constitution.
Yes, if the law were written that way, but it's not, and for good reason. The US Constitution was written to find balance between the tyranny of the many and the tyranny of the few. If someone was a citizen and owned property, they could vote (because they have a vested interest in the country), but they didn't scale the political influence of voters based on wealth either.
Liberalism is concerned with equal application of the law, not making everyone equal.
I know. "Equal" does appear in the DoI however.
When you say Constitution, are you including the Bill of Rights?
This is just motivated reasoning on both your part and the part of the liberals at the time. Suffrage was doled out this way to produce results friendly to the ruling class, just as it always has been.
In practice, liberalism is concerned with obfuscating power relations and destroying impediments to profits, including traditions, where applicable.
Dol?
Yes, the original ten amendments in particular. The more recent amendments are debatable.
What motivated reasoning? I'm just stating historical fact.
What ruling class? They had to basically force George Washington to be President. There was so little power in the federal government at the time, it was considered a burden... an act of servitude, to serve in Congress.
Can you back this up with anything?
DoI = Declaration of Independence
OK. Don't forget it was a fight to get them in there...
I interpreted you as approving of the fact that only property owners could vote. It's something a lot of right liberals say today.
I don't understand this argument. You are implying that the lack of power in the Presidency means there is no ruling class.
Sure. You can see liberalism obfuscating power relations in a topic we are discussing now, restricted suffrage. This topic obfuscates power relations when it comes up in its usual form because the implication is that society is going to shit because we gave too much power to the wrong type of plebes. In reality, it's going to shit because of the people with the most amount of power.
As I said, to Gizortnik, history backs up my claim that liberalism destroy traditions. What traditions are being preserved by liberalism? How is it even helping?
Most of that isn't true. Liberalism is neither hostile to social norms nor social expectations. Liberalism only requires that the state is not the imposer of those social expectations by taking the place of god and morality, which it can't be.
Liberalism isn't trying to manifest a civil society and maintain it, it instead allows the civil society to exist without the state seeking to fundamentally destroy it.
Frankly, if you remove the state from imposing the elites moral standards, it means the population's own moral standards will be emergent.
The entire justification for limiting the state stems from it being considered a barrier to individual freedom. If you are seeking to maximize individual freedom, you inevitably end up conflicting with social norms.
Individual freedom from tyranny, not from existence. That's why Rousseau goes off into pure illiberalism when he starts screaming about even bodily constraints of the mind being a form of repression. Liberalism doesn't see gravity as oppression. Individual freedom is what allows you to morally order yourself in the society you are in. Meaning you'll end up co-operating with, or even building, social norms for you and your community. Liberalism allows you to actually engage in a moral order, rather than having a tyrant proscribe morality at the point of a gun, while himself abiding by no morals at all.
K
What do you do when societal norms are "sexist" and "racist" then, i.e. businesses refusing to have blacks or women or whatever as workers or customers?
No idea what these means. Honestly, it means basically anything.
Do something different with your business. This is what happened for centuries before the Civil Rights movement. What would always basically happen is that racial discrimination laws were typically local. They'd be enacted when there was an influx of migrants (of whatever group), and would normally be repealed within 40 years at the local level as those groups had completely integrated by that time.
Yours doesn't serve whites? Great, mine does. If you're my neighbor? I'll tell you that's dumb and silly. If we're good neighbors, and my moral ordering is right, I should be able to convince you something about my moral framework while I'm living it. Especially over the next 4 decades.
And the Civil Rights and feminists movement emerged in part because that wasn't "working." Feminists, for example, concluded that they needed to not be financially dependent on their husbands in order to maximize their freedom thus resulting in anti-discrimination laws and welfare state expansion.
You're ignoring two things here. If you violate social norms with your business, other businesses can work against you. Thus, your supply chain, advertising opportunities, etc. can become compromised. Secondly, you are assuming that those who are being discriminated against have enough straightforward access to accommodating businesses so as to not be fucked.
I don't even know why we are arguing this in extract terms. History has played out in accordance with what I've been saying. There is little need for abstract theory here.
This is the harsh lesson we should have collectively learned by 1970, as the cultural revolution was petering out..
I think you nailed it. Well said.
Whenever the Bible talks about women ruling over a nation or people it's in a negative sense, as in a curse for wickedness or symptom of an immoral society. The Bible is clear that women in the general sense are not meant to rule over men, and when they do, bad things happen. I don't believe this is because women are evil (sorry, Imp) but because their nature is counter-productive to governance. They are easily deceived and manipulated and their natural priorities and motivations aren't in-line with the proper role of government which is to execute blind justice, without being swayed by bias, emotion or prejudice, and to protect it's people from the outside threats by waging war.