Liberals who aren’t liberal enough

[mitigatedchaos]

<various posts>

<bambamramfan discussing lackluster enthusiasm among people for Liberalism vs harder ideologies>

I think part of the challenge here is that Liberalism has to ignore certain truths, which, like the careful balance of an immune system, is okay when an animal is healthy, but becomes a serious problem when it becomes unhealthy.  So yes, there are ideological contradictions, but those only come out when the system is under stress.

Genes matter.  Even just the difference in lactose tolerance can make a difference in some cases (though not much in the developed world), even if the other stuff is heavily confounded and is probably more driven by the environment than by genetics.  

Culture matters.  Not everything that is bad is outside the realm of culture.  FGM is cultural.  Cultural tolerance as a virtue is cultural.

Religion matters.  The content of the instructions in a religion has an effect on the behavior of religious adherents, much like the content of the Communist Manifesto has an effect on the behavior of Communists.

Atomic Individualism is not what humans are “designed” for.  We actually have to live in societies and cannot all hole up into libertarian autarchic fortresses which are immune to changes in the broader society’s culture and ideology.

When the various groups under Liberalism are sufficiently close, this can all be glossed over, and generally is in order to suppress racism, xenophobia, and so on.  The typical example of violence driven by fighting about genes/culture/religion attacks someone who hasn’t done anything personally.

However, the same ideological tools used to suppress this bad behavior also prevent dealing with larger risks that loom on the horizon.  You cannot have someone saying “Liberalism, except for Islam” - though I’ve seen someone say it quietly - even though the rise of various Ethnonationalists and Nationalists in Europe would probably not be happening if Europe had taken this stance.