The other thing I did this weekend was listen to @mikeduncan's series on the 1848 revolutions.
They're very good. Two salient lessons:
1. A lot of our "freedoms" fell out of an extremely illiberal past, and understanding the political utility of those freedoms . . .
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maybe requires the illiberal context of their establishment 2. This was a fantastic case study in preference cascades and coordination problems by liberals and radicals, and struggles by conservatives to stymie cascades. Listen after reading
@timurkuran's https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674707583/2 replies 1 retweet 8 likesShow this thread -
Still mulling this stuff over. What's remarkable about 1848 is how intelligible the politics are. Like--maybe it was the first time today's Western political factions erupted in conflict. Radicals, liberals, conservatives.
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Some thoughts on those factions. It seems like the conservatives have had the worst of it since 1848. Chalk it up to WWI, and the fact that conservatives were--I guess just quasi-medieval. Their right-authoritarian successors haven't ever managed to recapture . . .
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the same nigh-impregnable political heights of the old kings and aristos, and my tentative hunch is to classify people like Mussolini and Hitler with the radicals. ("National socialism" is a good summary of the demands of 1848 radicals, in fact!)
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Conservatives in places like the United States are basically just especially order-focused liberals. Which is unsurprising, because it sure looks like liberalism ate the world. The bourgeois didn't complete their takeover of the political world in 1848 but the trend . . .
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has been toward a near-total victory in the West. Liberals wanted, basically, constitutional government; civil order; and strong protections for personal property. These are the norms everywhere in the West, and frequently abroad. The norms are so strong . . .
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that even governments and societies that ignore them feel obliged to at least adopt the appearance. For example, consider the following: NORTH KOREA HAS A CONSTITUTION AND CALLS ITSELF A REPUBLIC North Korea is obviously a hereditary authoritarian dictatorship, and . . .
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this is an extremely 1848 liberal outcome :D
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not during the middle ages! and they're our direct ancestors, imo US revolutionaries were just cosplaying as romans
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End of conversation
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