tagged with liberalism
On the difference between conservatives and liberals, or, why conservatives lie through their teeth while liberals expect the truth to surface:
It is a typically conservative estimate of human beings to see them as sunk in irrational prejudice, incapable of reasoning coherently; and it is a more radical attitude to hold that while we may indeed be afflicted by all sorts of mystifications, some of which might even be endemic to the mind itself, we nevertheless have some capacity for making sense of our world in a moderately cogent way. If human beings really were gullible and benighted enough to place their faith in great numbers in ideas which were utterly devoid of meaning, then we might reasonably ask whether such people were worth politically supporting at all. If they are that credulous, how could they ever hope to emancipate themselves? Eagleton, Ideology (12)
This could less charitably be referred to as the difference between authoritarianism and democracy. I intend to continue to pitch my tent with the radicals.
On the difference between liberalism and socialism:
One reason for judging socialism to be superior to liberalism is the belief that human beings are political animals not only in the sense that they have to take account of each other’s need for fulfilment, but that they achieve their deepest fulfilment only in terms of each other. Eagleton, After Theory (122)
I’ve heard whispers about rescuing the word “liberal” from the prison where the media have kept it these last forty years or so. But what of socialism? It would do us a lot of good to restore both terms to our political dialog. It’s infuriating that socialism has become synonymous with communism, which is, of course, synonymous with evil. (And what a renaissance that word has seen of late? Someone ought to study the frequency with which the word evil appears in public discourse both before and after the 2000 election. I’d lay money on an exponential increase.)
