Not sure about this. I wish you (and Lindsay) could have a more fruitful dialogue with Hazony as I expect you have more in common than you would admit. At least you share the critique of the present state of affairs. I think Hazony sees liberalism as being grounded in a conservative social order. Modern liberalism has rather blown that apart and without the shared virtue, there is tyranny. And I think we can over-romanticise liberalism, which also reflected an uneasy tension between the will of the ego and the good of the people. As for ‘the cultural safeguards of liberal institutions, the Reformation would have been remembered not as a movement, but as a massacre’ - what does this mean? Where were the liberal safeguards for Thomas More or Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace? Post hoc doesn’t prove a point.
Not sure about this. I wish you (and Lindsay) could have a more fruitful dialogue with Hazony as I expect you have more in common than you would admit. At least you share the critique of the present state of affairs. I think Hazony sees liberalism as being grounded in a conservative social order. Modern liberalism has rather blown that apart and without the shared virtue, there is tyranny. And I think we can over-romanticise liberalism, which also reflected an uneasy tension between the will of the ego and the good of the people. As for ‘the cultural safeguards of liberal institutions, the Reformation would have been remembered not as a movement, but as a massacre’ - what does this mean? Where were the liberal safeguards for Thomas More or Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace? Post hoc doesn’t prove a point.