Liberalism has failed. It was a great truce between political factions and (not all that different) value systems. But the value systems are drifting further apart. Conservatives and liberals no longer tolerate each other and technology has made it easier to coordinate and carry out mass illegality.
The future is more authoritarian states that don’t espouse neutrality but firmly embrace a value system and enforce it. We are seeing this already. In the US, the political battle is now between left authoritarians and right authoritarians (grudgingly dragging right-liberals/libertarians with them).
This is awful for people with liberal (left or right) sensibilities because it raises the stakes of politics. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Only authority can hold our societies together at this point.
Democracy will probably survive, but liberalism will not, except in its vestigial form. In America (unlike Europe), the government will not come for you for expressing your opinions, but it will indoctrinate your children against you and it will increasingly limit the exercise of freedom of conscience. It will not arrest you for publishing an article, but it will also not stop monopolist private platforms from censoring you, and will in fact encourage that censorship as responsible.
The future is more authoritarian states that don’t espouse neutrality but firmly embrace a value system and enforce it. We are seeing this already. In the US, the political battle is now between left authoritarians and right authoritarians (grudgingly dragging right-liberals/libertarians with them).
This is awful for people with liberal (left or right) sensibilities because it raises the stakes of politics. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Only authority can hold our societies together at this point.
Democracy will probably survive, but liberalism will not, except in its vestigial form. In America (unlike Europe), the government will not come for you for expressing your opinions, but it will indoctrinate your children against you and it will increasingly limit the exercise of freedom of conscience. It will not arrest you for publishing an article, but it will also not stop monopolist private platforms from censoring you, and will in fact encourage that censorship as responsible.