Jun 16, 2021
This episode is the second in a two-parter talking about the book A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik. In part two, I'll be talking about Gopnik's observations of why the Right and Left politically dislike liberals.
Some of the things I talk about are:
- Liberals and Conservatives having different temperaments - and that they both share a tragic view of life but the liberal believes in the possibility of incremental improvement over time
- Strong man politics is the norm in the human history, not the aberration. The question isn't "how does it arise" but rather "what has ever kept it from happening?"
- Clan or identity based groups end up having internal schisms (who is the REAL Conservative?). They will build their own out groups internally after they get their way. Because of the panoply of human diversity, there will always be misfits even in closed societies.
- Liberal states are uncomfortable places if you don't want your dogma debated
- Free markets being a liberal invention in their inception, not a conservative one
- Liberals are anti-essentialist and anti-determinist, and this often puts them at odds philosophically and logically with Leftists and Reactionaries.
- Liberals are concerned with what makes humans similar, and understand an obsession with what makes us different is venom
- Liberals are unequivocally committed to free speech, and because of the underlying conceptions around power and cognition, this often puts them at odds with Leftists.