Never did that [made inaccurate generalities]

sigh OK. Let’s go through your comments:

Communism gives rise to privileged ruling class and tends to take worker’s rights away when in theory it is supposed to equalize and support worker’s rights, planning an economy to distribute goods equally creates inefficiencies

Democracies create plutocracies

Fascism leads to cronyism

Anarchism leaves gaps for might makes right-thinking

Monarchies claim divine right and then falls to civil war and assassinations who then claimed the same divine right rule

So let’s agree that these are quite literally generalities. Can we start there. You are not speaking about literally any specific historical event, you are talking in generalities.

So now the question is are they “accurate”. I think I could change my characterization here to be more precise - your generalities are uselessly accurate because they are imprecise. Let’s take your claim that “Fascism leads to cronyism”. This is true in much the same way that driving cars leads to sex. It’s accurate, but it’s not explanatory. In all of the history of liberal democracy, cronyism has not only consistently emerged, but literally every place liberal democracy emerged it emerged from a state that was rife with cronyism.

The same is true with your accurate but uselessly imprecise statement about liberal democracies and plutocracies. Liberal democracies emerged from monarchies, which were, in practice, mostly indistinguishable from plutocracies. Liberal democracies that emerged from plutocratic monarchies replicated the plutocratic structures they inherited. They did not create the plutocratic structure that existed before them, therefore while yes, it’s true that every day everything in society is created anew, it is useless to generalize that democracies create plutocracies.

Now, I can imagine ways you could attempt to defend that your generalities are both accurate and precise enough to be useful. I think you’d fail to convince me, but I’d welcome your attempts. But so far, all you’ve done in the face of criticism is say “nuh-uh!”

Let’s move on from your imprecise generalities to the next thing.

Literally did the opposite [of establishing that you believe history has no bearing on theory]

So here’s what you said:

You’re talking about the ends of Liberalism but never from the basis of the philosophers and minds who came up with the concept

You said a lot more about this, but this is the foundation. You are saying we cannot form an analysis about liberalism by analyzing the history of its implementation but only by analyzing the history of who thought what first. That’s called idealism - the primacy of thoughts over material reality. So when I dig into the history of how Liberalism was developed by people who were literally financially invested in the slave trade, and you say that Liberalism is about natural rights, one of us is going to have to contend with reality. I know what the philosophers have written about natural rights. I also know what they were actually doing at the time and what the people they were in discourse with were doing and how Liberalism was developed in a dialectical process between the thoughts of men and their material motivations. That’s called a historical perspective. What you’re doing is called an idealist perspective.

Which leads to this:

No I did not [state a single position that liberalism’s foundation is abstract universal rights]

So here’s what you said:

The foundation of liberalism is natural rights, the rule of law and personal autonomy

All three of these things are abstract concepts. Natural rights are treated as “universal” in Liberal philosophy (although who is included in the universe is conveniently up for debate). The rule of law, as developed in the Liberal tradition emerges as an explanation of what the role of the state should be, to wit, it should be limited to those things that protect the natural rights of citizens. That is to say, the foundation of the abstract concept of “the rule of law” has, as its foundation, the abstract concept of “natural rights”. Locke explicitly argued that a legal system can only qualify as “the rule of law” if it explicitly exists to defend the natural rights of individuals. And what did the collection of these natural rights sum to? Personal autonomy. In fact, if a list of natural rights was shown to not fully support some abstract conception of personal autonomy, then it was considered an incomplete list of natural rights.

So yes. You stated a single position about the foundation of liberalism, specifically that is the foundation of liberalism is the abstract concept of natural rights, which inhere to the abstract class of abstract moral being considered “in scope”, the abstract concept of laws that exist explicitly to protect those natural rights, and the abstract concept of personal autonomy which is the abstract moral end of the abstract concept of natural rights.

I don’t know how much clearer I can be on this one, so I’ll move on.

it’s almost like you’re on drugs when you’re reading.

It does feel that way when someone refused to accept your base axioms and you have only ever had to deal with people who 100% agree with your base axioms. It’s impossible to actually have a meaningful debate if the participants can’t agree on the definitions of terms. It’s just as hard if they have totally different views of history. But, that’s why critical theory is so important while being so difficult. We’re only a century into critical theory, and it challenges things that most people don’t consider up for debate. It feels very much like that’s what’s happening here. And the rest of your screed is evidence for my conjecture.

This entire thread has you doing laps disconnecting the historical context liberalism came from claiming it has this nefarious start of merchants basically lying. Your historical context is skewed and really just absolutely incorrect.

So this is exactly what I mean. I am not disconnecting the historical context liberalism came from. I am connecting it to more aspects of the historical context than you are. You have not made any specific claims about specific authors, specific movements, their political relationships, and their economic relationships - in short, you have told me what a “History of Liberalism” textbook might say is the “history” of liberalism, but you have not provided any actual historical context.

Meanwhile, when I say that John Locke not only believed that natural rights only existed for white Europeans, that’s somehow disconnected from the historical context and absolutely incorrect? Was it in fact the case that Locke was an investor of the human trafficking monopoly of England (Royal Africa Company )? Yes. It was. This is historical fact. So when Locke said that men have natural rights and that the state should exist to protect them, he meant rich white European men. When he wrote the constitution of the colony of Carolina for the English nobility, he wrote that European men would have absolute authority over his negro slaves. Personal autonomy for people considered people. Everyone else was property.

You, like every other propagandized liberal, can tell me that that historical context isn’t relevant but I don’t find that convincing. I think it’s pretty clear that what I am doing is providing historical context that supports a position that contradicts your position, and therefore your response is that I’m “on drugs”, potentially brain damaged, moving the goal posts, and “just absolutely incorrect”. You don’t debate the points at all. You just don’t like the conclusion and therefore I must be wrong. That’s called begging the question.

Merchants wanted the wealth they were hoarding to translate into power

That’s skewed and wrong.

Then why did they charter their own cities from royalty and create a rule that peasants who lived in their cities for a year and a day without being caught by their lords would be considered citizens? It’s because they had a huge amount of wealth, nobility wouldn’t give them any political power, merchants weren’t allowed to raise their own standing militias, and merchants couldn’t just hire a peasant out from under a lord. You could try arguing the history instead of doing this automatic gainsaying like you’re in a bad rendition of a Monty Python skit.

Merchants wanted their wealth to translate to power, so they developed a new political theory for where power should come from

Stupid perspective.

Very well reasoned! I will consider the historical context you’ve provided here and think hard about my position.

No, I think my position is still sound and I’ll tell you why. They all wrote explicitly about it. Dudley North, Barbon, Daniel Defoe, the Whigs. The amount of political pamphlets printed by the merchants who owned printing presses is huge. They explicitly wrote that the wealth of merchants and financiers should be the guiding force of states and that the monarchies were the wrong expression of power for a state. This is the historical context that more abstract writers were working in, most of them in the employ of these same merchants and financiers.

So they started to invent abstract concepts to disconnect power from reality so they could reassign power

Stupid

Another devious rhetorical gambit, but one which I must rise to meet lest I be considered a sophist. Let me bring this argument you have made from history and philosophy into my field of view and address it with all the respect it deserves.

Unfortunately I’ve run out space to continue writing. I do regret that I can’t continue to engage with your very thought provoking arguments.

I think you get the point. I leave you with the words of a very wise person:

you can’t discuss theory, you can’t even discuss. You cry, insult, removed, complain, you’re nasty and immature and really just fucking stupid