Modern Liberal Society - Immoral and Lawless
These are harsh words on liberalism, so it is worth emphasizing to begin with that liberalism is not of a piece, and the liberalism I criticize is very much the liberalism shorn of its metaphysical underpinnings to become a conventionalist, individualist, and sophist doctrine of politics and power. Since I am a consistent critic of liberalism, I need to make it clear before proceeding further that I am not illiberal but post-liberal. That is, I recognize the achievements of liberalism with respect to the dignity and worth of each individual. At the same time, in line with long standing socialist critique, I seek to push further than an abstract, formal, and legal equality to a substantive equality. In my theoretical work I have sought to confront liberals with the potential – and in practical actual – contradiction between liberal values and principles on the one hand and liberal institutions and social arrangements on the other. The realization of values and principles of liberty and autonomy require other-than-liberal institutions. Further, in valuing liberal commitments to the freedom of the individual, I also emphasize that natural rights are not conventional, something conferred by, and just as easily withdrawn by the state, but are dependent on natural law. Lose that natural law based on God, and rights are merely conditional upon power. I want what liberalism, at its best, wants. I don’t think liberal institutions and practices deliver those principles and values, and I don’t think those values and principles can be properly grounded in a liberal ontology that falsely separates the individual and the social. So whilst many may shudder at my fairly intemperate language aimed against liberalism, fearing it places me on the side of the world’s authoritarians and totalitarians, I say that it is the inadequacies and failures of liberalism as an individualism and a conventionalism that is leading people to embrace surrogate and ersatz communities and false collectivities in response. I reject both sides of that antithesis born of a false ontology.
I proceed now to my main argument.
Modern liberal society Immoral in the first instance and lawless in the second. That is a controversial statement given the freedom and tolerance in conditions of plurality which characterizes modern society. Those fleeing persecution by authoritarian regimes will certainly disagree with my words. I have nothing against pluralism, otherness, and difference; on the contrary, I wish to establish the framework and infrastructure enabling such things. So let me clarify. The ‘neutrality’ or agnosticism of liberalism on ‘the good’ – the idea that there is no unitary or singular good that is to be discerned and taught – only a pluralism in which individuals and goods see and express various goods from their own perspectives, interests and preferences, reduces law and authority to a policing function, away from an educative function that socialises individuals in accordance with truth and goodness. Such things, and the notion of a common good, and the shared language, morality and culture that go with it, are considered oppressive of individual liberty, difference and otherness. I’m seeing the character of people being judged in terms of their conformity, or otherwise, to certain views on issues of diversity. I have no problem with the equal treatment of all people, and my philosophical position draws on a tradition that was the origin of that view; I do have objections to an authoritative, regulative and, in time, legislative insistence upon conformity in the name of equality and diversity. That is a false 'common good,' a hidden substantive good smugled in in legalist form.
It is in this sense that I make the point that liberal society and culture is immoral in the first instance. Agnostic on the good, liberalism adopts a fake neutrality with respect to a plurality of goods and viewpoints. This neutrality is fake since the view correlates precisely with liberal institutions and values. I’ve examined that question at length elsewhere and can do no more than restate here.
I realize that my comments make me appear harsh and intolerant, so let me establish some context. My comments here are provoked by an article in The Times.
Bruno Waterfield, Brussels
July 30 2018
And immoral in the day.
I don't care for drink and drugs, licence, selfishness, hedonism, I have seen such things rot society from within and ruin the lives of many, ending them prematurely. I've long since given up trying to get this point through to liberal friends, who think people mature enough to make thier own choices, and in time learn from their mistakes. The problem is that the rest of us have to suffer these dfrom the consequences of these mistakes, having long since learned any lessons that need to be learned. They are deaf to the problem, and are blind to the way others are on the receiving end of the anti-social consequences of their hallowed principles of liberty, difference and otherness. This nonsense has consumed the liberal left and cut them off from the bulk of ordinary folk and their real concerns in everyday living.
In my experience - all-too personal experience at the moment - these comments apply right across western society. There is only so much the authorities can do, and are prepared to do, in the context of the comprehensive moral and social failure that is liberalism.
'Amsterdam is an “urban jungle” where lawlessness rules and the police have lost control, according to the city’s complaints watchdog.In comments that have not surprised his countrymen, Arre Zuurmond, the ombudsman, has painted a grim picture of a city that is one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations.“The city centre becomes an urban jungle at night,” he told Trouw newspaper. “Criminal money flourishes, there is no authority and the police can no longer handle the situation.”
All I can say to this is: 'come and live here!' Same thing - individuals engaging in criminal behaviour openly flout the law and openly express their contempt of law, authority and the police. I am speaking here from personal experience. There is no respect for the law and no fear of authority - criminal individuals are free to prey on the weak, the vulnerable, whoever they care to target, with impunity. They don't believe they will be caught, they don't believe they will be punished even if they do get caught. The authorities are completely over-stretched - social disorder is the norm and is getting worse.
There is no self-control in the first instance and no effective legal and institutional control in the final instance - only a typical liberal half-measure and half-way house that inevitably divides in on itself. In the implosion, it is the less well-off, those whose limited pockets leave them with less choices, who suffer the immediate consequences of a society having to live in accordance with impossibly abstract liberal principles. Liberals are safe in their suburbs, preaching in high moral tones about liberty and diversity from a safe distance. We should swap locations to see the full extent of liberal hypocrisy. I have a biting contempt for those smug, well-off, middle class megaphones of human rights and diversity who have left so many real folk defenceless and in fear in face of the myriad miscreants who stalk the land. I went out and investigated this face-to-face, door-to-door, and found good, decent folk living in fear, having abandoned all hope in politics, police, law and authority. As a socialist, I re-affirm to my commitment to human rights as substantive in a social context, not merely abstract, formal, and legal in an unequal and unfree society. My criticism is radical, then, not reactionary, I affirm values beyond current parameters.
The immorality of the position lies in the failure to teach and cultivate the moral virtues in the first instance, treating morality as merely a series of value judgements and subjective preferences, with no objective standard available by which to evaluate the personal choices of individuals. Individuals are free to choose the good as they see fit. The problem is that without an objective moral standard, those subjective choices are empty. There is no way of differentiating between good and bad, right and wrong. So long as there is no immediate personal harm to others, individuals are free to do as they like. The result is that individuals are left alone with their personal likes, wants and desires, a position which dissolves morality into subjectivism. An attempt to teach morality as a systematic code of ethics that binds, obligates and, indeed, motivates each and all is ruled out as prescriptive, judgmental, oppressive of liberty, difference and otherness, and repressive in its implications. I call that view immoral, in that it systematically and consciously rules out attempts to train and socialize individuals in accordance with moral standards. Such standards are implicated with dominant power relations and culture, it is claimed, and are to be uprooted in the cause of emancipation.
The result is that society is deficient not only in a shared moral culture but also in personal moral responsibility. The emphasis is upon individuals choosing the good as they see fit. This is a licence that invites individuals to shed personal moral constraints and inhibitions in the name of individual freedom. There is, therefore, a failure to teach personal self-control and moral discipline in the first instance. A healthy and functioning society is largely voluntaristic in character, self-governing and self-policing in its behaviour and action. The greater the internal moral and social coordination of human affairs through personal moral effort and right relationships, the less recourse there needs be to the impersonal legal and institutional sphere. And that implies a common culture and shared moral language, a unitary notion of the good. Remove that and we are no longer talking ethics, something which puts individuals in tune with the moral compass, but a form of hygiene or policing, a light touch legalism that does not educate and orientate, but merely holds the ring between competing individuals at a distance.
The problem is that without the moral commitment and character training individuals in right conduct and self-control, there is nothing but self-seeking individuals pursuing their own good, seeing others as either obstacles to those goods, or seeking to use them as instrumental means to personal ends. The result is a society of predators, pursuers and possessors. The breakdown of morality in the first instance leads to the necessity of an imposed legalism and authoritarianism in the second. An external police replaces an internal self-policing. The problem, however, is that society is so complex and intricate that there is simply no way that an external policing can ever succeed without being rooted in the firm bedrock of moral self-constraint. We don’t teach it anymore, we don’t cultivate the virtues, we reject notions of common good as oppressive of difference and otherness, and we leave individuals free. And that individual freedom soon realizes consequences which generate a collective unfreedom. Within the instrumental relationships of a competitive, commercial, monetary society, the inevitable happens – individuals become rivals and enemies to each other, civil society becoming a sphere of universal egoism and antagonism. There is a social breakdown which causes resort to external order.
The problem is that the demands from within a civil sphere imploding in its amoral, and immoral, atomism and egoism sooner or later will necessarily overwhelm the resources – the time, the skills, the expertise, the money – of the external sphere of law, order and authority. We start with immorality and we end with lawlessness. And it starts at the top with government and law taking its order from the imperatives of a private economy.
Liberal modernity is an immoral society; it is now lawless. We are prevented from teaching morals in accordance with common standards in the first instance; we are prevented from intervening effectively in the legal and institutional sense in the final instance. The result is a mutual self-cancellation, the self-annihilation of a society that is prevented from developing the capacity to defend itself against the aggressive self-seeking strategies of free-riders and free-loaders, many of whom are consciously and explicitly outside of the law, breaking it with impunity. Police, press, politicians seem to have given up on this, keeping out of the social and moral implosion, observing and advising at a safe distance, letting those individuals who can learn the hard lesson, learn it – you are on your own and will have to take care of yourselves as best you can, keep out of trouble, keep your heads down, stay safe, don’t constitute a public, don’t stand together, don’t fight back, because the bad guys out there are many and organised, work by intimidation and take brutal revenge. If you get isolated from the herd, you are in trouble, because the politicians and police have lost control and show little inclination to get it back.
Modern liberal society is immoral and lawless. At some point, the ordinary folk in this world will have to reclaim the common ground and reconstitute their communities around realities, not the fantasies peddled in the e-world. We need to exchange real control for remote control. We need to re-forge the little platoons that bind individuals together to form a people, a culture, a home.
Additional, 20th November, 2018
Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation Ken Marsh said police could start letting violent suspects go if the risk is too high.
It has come to a point where the police are telling us that if society doesn’t care, if people pass on by, or film assaults for social media entertainment, and government do nothing other than cut resources, then it is not worth officers putting their bodies on the line – no-one cares, the worst elements of society now prevail.
Ken Marsh said: "Are we now in a society where, if we think we can't detain somebody, we just let them go? It's just not worth it.
"We're going to come to a point where we're going to start pushing messages out to our colleagues: 'Risk-assess it dynamically and, if you think you can't detain a person, just let them go.'
"We don't come to work to get assaulted, and if we're not going to be backed up in what we're doing then what is the point?"
“Society has changed, people think it’s OK to drop kick a police officer in broad daylight because they have impunity - nothing really happens.”
Liberal society is immoral in the first instance and lawless in the second. We don’t teach right and wrong, good and bad, for fear of being prescriptive and being insensitive to, even repressive of, difference. And as we are told, every six year old knows the difference between right and wrong. So we take a hands-off approach and sit back for the natural goodness of each and all to emerge naturally and spontaneously. But, of course, every society has a dominant way of life that teaches and inculcates certain character traits – competition, might is right, dog-eat-dog, the division between winners and losers in the rat race. Rats are actually very loyal creatures. But not the kind we breed in these conditions. But to those who reject the need to cultivate the virtues I simply say this, if everyone does indeed know the difference between right and wrong without the need for moral training, then the wretches who behave like this are beyond hope, beyond rehabilitation, and beyond redemption. They behave as they do despite knowing better. It’s time for liberals to make their mind up on this, because if they insist on redemption on one end, having freed individuals of their inhibitions in a permissive society at the other, then they have to accept the entire metaphysical and moral structure in which redemptive possibilities are an integral part. If we deny that in favour of a view of natural goodness, then such characters as these are naturally bad and beyond redemption. And society shouldn’t have to be subject to the blight they cause.