By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanized or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.
– TS Eliot
Liberals may be surrounded at all sides but it has done little to shut them up. From the ramparts, a gaggle of gargoyles, their expressions at once haughty, ludicrous and insane, unload their protestations: we are still right, it’s the world that has gone wrong!
There is little doubt that these liberals, in a post-Iraq War, ’08, Brexit and Trump world, are besieged. Online, a hefty portion of what passes for political discourse is directed at attacking the “new” centrists. It is genuinely bewildering, however, how anyone could’ve made it through Iraq, ’08, Brexit and Trump and remained a liberal. Iraq
— source counterpunch.org | Luke O’Brien | May 7, 2021