An Introduction to Classical Liberalism

New Discourses

Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 132 The American system, Classical Liberalism, is under attack. In fact, it is at risk of failing. Its attacks come from both the Left and the Right, and they succeed, as Solzhenitsyn put it, "because we do not love freedom enough." If we truly love liberty, as we should, we would understand the philosophical underpinnings of our system like they're second nature. As is evidenced from the attacks upon it, though, few truly understand what Classical Liberalism is and what it believes. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay lays out an introduction by going through his recent essay (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/11/basis-of-classical-liberalism/ ) on the foundations of Classical Liberalism and then introducing the listener to the brilliant summary of Jonathan Rauch in his 1991 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (https://amzn.to/3T9q79P ). Join him to understand what it is we are fighting to preserve, and why. Get James Lindsay's new book, The Marxification of Education: https://amzn.to/3RYZ0tY Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2023 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Liberalism

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hey everybody this is James Lindsay and you are listening to the new Discourses Podcast
0:25.0	And I want to do something I mean it I don't like doing this I don't love doing this as a as a podcast but I do it a lot and what I want to do is I want to go through an essay I wrote on
0:36.4	new discourses recently that was extremely popular I got incredible feedback
0:40.0	some people got really mad which means it's really good which is titled the basis for
0:44.3	classical liberalism but I want to explore that idea a little further and draw out one of its
0:48.5	conclusions actually drawing it out back to the source where I originally got the idea and introduce you to
0:55.3	one of the most compelling books on classical liberalism and liberal thought that I've read in a long time, very long time, and that book is called
1:06.8	Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rausch.
1:10.0	Jonathan Rausch unfortunately kind of didn't end up heating his own advice and got a nasty
1:15.0	case of TDS and critical care co-vidiously but so it goes that's beside the point the book was written in 1991
1:25.0	kindly inquisitors and is shockingly prescient talking about what was coming in
1:31.2	terms of whether it's woke or political correctness or
1:34.3	whatever you want to call it. So having written this in 1991 which is you know
1:38.7	32 years ago more 33 probably by the time he wrote it and have this much valuable stuff to say
1:45.8	is pretty remarkable when I read it a couple of years ago I was just shocked by
1:51.1	how overwhelmingly clear it is on what classical liberalism really is as a conflict
1:58.5	resolution system, as a, in particular the book is mostly about now what he refers to I think
2:06.2	awkwardly looking back on it now as liberal science I think that liberal science would be a
2:12.3	term especially we capitalize the L and the S, that at least
2:15.7	with its colloquial understanding would be something we look down on as the science, as a form of
2:20.4	scientism. That's not what he means by it. He's searching in the dark for a name
2:25.3	for the broadly fallibleist skepticism that drives Enlightenment liberal thinking in the domain of epistemology as opposed to how market economies arise in the domain of economics and
	...

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