Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

Ruthless authoritarianism

As evidenced by the 2010 Health Care Summit, the governing philosophy of the current Administration is one of paternalistic authoritarianism.  After giving the semblance  of listening to different perspectives, progressive policy makers conclude that health care is too important to leave to individual decision making and requires a top-down approach from the central government. As [...]

James Burnham on liberalism and decline

James Burnham’s Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism proposes the thesis that modern liberalism is the ideology of a society in decline; its doctrines motivate and justify the contraction of Western civilization and reconciles us to it.
In the chapter “Liberalism vs. Reality” Burnham observes that liberals feel uncomfortable [...]

The Whole Foods boycott and modern liberalism

Commenting on the call for a boycott of Whole Foods by liberal activists, Donald J. Boudreaux draws attention to the double standard of modern liberals when it concerns voting with one’s dollars:
How hypocritical. Persons who seek greater government control over health care proudly exercise their ability to vote with their dollars to avoid patronizing a [...]

Classical liberalism without philosophy

In a blog post for the New Republic Alan Wolfe writes: “What my critics call modern liberalism is instead the logical and sociological outcome of classical liberalism.” He further writes in another blog post that “A liberal society, I believe, is one that allows room for free markets, but also allows room for many other [...]

John Rawls and the sin of merit

For those who have always suspected a strong religious undertone in the writings of John Rawls, the following piece by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel will come as a revelation. Reflecting on Rawls’s senior thesis “A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An interpretation based on the concept of community” they write:

…the [...]