[HN Gopher] New Technologies, New Totalitarians
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       New Technologies, New Totalitarians
        
       Author : paulpauper
       Score  : 5 points
       Date   : 2024-02-27 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.noahpinion.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.noahpinion.blog)
        
       | cjs_ac wrote:
       | > Liberalism has successfully faced down many opponents over the
       | past four centuries. Reactionary monarchism, colonial
       | imperialism, fascism, and communism (or at least, the 20th
       | century variety) all fell by the wayside, and I'm pretty sure
       | Islamism is in the process of doing so as well.
       | 
       | This seems to using the word 'liberalism' to describe all the
       | ideas from the Early Modern Period to the progressive present day
       | that persist in the contemporary West. Is this how Americans
       | perceive liberalism?
       | 
       | Context: I'm an Australian who lives in the UK, so my
       | understanding of liberalism is an economic theory that originated
       | in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and became
       | associated with specific social reforms relating to the cultural
       | beliefs of the middle class (in the pre-WWI sense of the term).
       | 
       | > Hitler would have certainly liked to do this -- he certainly
       | tried to get ethnic Germans on his side when he took over
       | neighboring countries -- but he lacked the technology and the
       | global economic reach to bend German Americans to his will, so he
       | didn't even try.
       | 
       | An awful lot of Germans in other parts of the world supported the
       | Nazis without needing special encouragement.
       | 
       | > The liberal principle of sovereign national borders is at
       | stake, as is the liberal belief that nationhood and citizenship
       | matter more than race.
       | 
       | Again, this doesn't sound like liberalism, but rather the idea of
       | the State that originated with the Treaty of Westphalia.
       | 
       | Overall, I agree with the conclusions, but there's a curious
       | America-centred-end-of-history feel to many of the arguments.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-27 23:02 UTC)