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I think this is probably about the best steel-man one could reasonably expect.
Are liberalism/the Enlightenment the same thing, in your view? Connected things? Entirely separate things?
Is the US a liberal democracy? Was it one prior to the civil rights act? Prior to suffrage? Prior to the abolition of slavery? If we reversed some or all of these policies tomorrow, would we still be a "liberal democracy"? Is "liberal democracy" applied based on objective criteria, or do we judge a nation relative to its contemporaries?
More to the point, do we label based on the ideological approach to policy, or do we judge based on the policies chosen and their outcomes?
I'm certainly willing to let you take credit for everything since the enlightenment and French/American revolutions, but shouldn't that credit be for the bad things that sprang from the ideology, not merely the good? And shouldn't we be rigorous in questioning whether any thing, good or bad, is actually attributable to the ideology, not merely coincident? Take Literacy, for example.
...And of course that was only the continuation of previous policies among protestants, going back to the Reformation itself, if I'm not mistaken. Is Christianity part of the Enlightenment/Liberal Vangaurd? Does its centuries-old drive for universal literacy, valuing of education, philosophy and science get some credit for the water we swim in as well?
The Soviets promised most of the things on that list, claimed to be motivated by Enlightenment principles while doing it, and insisted strenuously that they were delivering. Of course, we know they were "illiberal" thanks to hindsight, despite the fact that most of their unimpeachably liberal contemporaries completely failed to recognize that fact for a generation or two. Do you see the problem?
...I fear this is not cohering into a legible argument, only a series of disconnected gripes.
I think the term "liberal", by itself, doesn't actually mean much. I think the way people typically use it is as a synonym for Enlightenment ideology. The problem with this is that Enlightenment ideology has repeatedly resulted in wildly illiberal outcomes, and the most successful "liberal" societies have not actually hued very closely to Enlightenment ideology in a number of very important ways, among them a deep and abiding connection to the Christian faith. I note that societies that lacked or removed this connection in favor of pure Enlightenment ideology did very, very badly indeed, and I note that as Christian faith has passed the tipping point into serious decline, even anglosphere countries have found themselves in a protracted crisis of rising illiberalism.
I think the general argument you're sketching the outlines of papers over these realities in ways that are easy to miss if one simply goes with the cultural zeitgeist. Enlightenment ideology takes credit for outcomes it did not solely or sometimes even mainly create, and it ditches all responsibility for harms it very clearly causes. The Enlightenment is certainly one of the sources American Culture has drawn from, but it has drawn even more heavily from others; when it comes time to tally benefits and harms, all the benefits are tallied to the Enlightenment, whether it caused them or not, and all the harms are tallied to the others, whether they were responsible for them or not. Then too, one can simply ignore or define away harms in the present, and likewise for benefits in the past; history is just writing, after all, and statistics are famously malleable.
I think the above is how the liberal triumphalism you're describing is generated, and I think it's a fair start at describing why it is doomed to collapse.
You're rapidly going to outstrip my knowledge of history and philosophy. I was (un)fortunate enough to attend a college that let me avoid anything that wasn't a science class. No liberal arts education where I'm from.
I may be about to reveal my ignorance, but I associate the Enlightenment with a period of history and liberalism with a political/social philosophy. I suppose 'Enlightenment values' may have significant overlap with liberalism, but I imagine the latter has developed significantly in the past few centuries.
It's not a binary, thus the need for 'democracy indices' and the like. As well argue whether Jefferson was a racist/abolitionist, JK Rowling a feminist, so on and so forth.
As for absolute versus relative scales, why not both? I'm humble enough to expect that my descendants will think me barbaric in one way or another, which in turn makes me more sympathetic towards my forebears. Nevertheless, chattel slavery seems like an objectively open-and-shut case for us to judge, no?
I'd answer yes to all of those questions, but each step was an improvement in degree rather than a categorical change.
Both. Everything in moderation, including consequentialism and deontology.
Yes, but your argument cuts both ways. The Crusades, witch trials and inquisitions, antisemitism/islamophobia, all the sectarian conflicts through the centuries. People have done twisted things in the name of ideology...since the development of language, I imagine? Insofar as your goal is to elevate Christianity at the expense of a secular Enlightenment, I'm not buying it. If you're trying to reduce the argument to a relativistic 'Well, everyone does bad things sometimes, ideology isn't all that important after all' I think you have a stronger leg to stand on, but I still disagree.
We're trying to boil massively complex systems down to four axes; Christian/non-Christian and liberal/illiberal. Clearly we'll never explain the variance in every society, but regardless, I still think there's a signal in the noise insofar as liberal democracies are concerned. Perhaps the biodeterminists are correct, and the US is successful due to superior genetic stock. Or Jared Diamond, /r/badhistory darling, has the right of it and the US would have ascended purely by dint of it's natural resources, livestock, etc etc. You'd like to believe Christianity has been a force for good in the world as it flatters your biases, I prefer a secular one as it flatters mine. How could we ever definitively answer that question? The 'winner' of this debate would likely be based on the intellect/knowledge/effort of it's participants rather than any objective underlying truth.
How about those Soviets? Their RETVRN to traditional Christian values hasn't exactly sparked a Golden Age. Not to mention the piles of nominally Christian nations resulting in wildly unchristian outcomes.
You look at a half century of evaporating church membership and associate that with 'decline.' Meanwhile, the generation that came of age in that time witnessed the triumph of the west in the cold war, unprecedented wealth creation and improved outcomes nearly across the board. Are we just coasting on the religiosity of the Greatest generation?
Furthermore, the supposedly more liberal United States of a hundred years ago, while undeniably more Christian, was not particularly well-disposed towards Islamic/Chinese immigrants, Catholics, etc.
It's a fair criticism, and the road to stagnation is paved with complacency/triumphalism. Moar liberalism and 'Getting out the vote' is not the cure to every problem in our society, nor am I arrogant enough to think that liberal democracies will be the law of the land until the heat death of the universe.
But if you actually want to change someone's beliefs, you need to offer them an alternative. I believe that much of the good in the West (universal suffrage, literacy, unalienable rights, etc) represents progress in the same way that walking -> chariot -> automobile -> airplane does, regardless of it's provenance. I believe that in the postwar period, a group of great statesmen and bureaucrats had a vision rooted in...enlightenment/Christian values and were really Onto Something. Since then, much of the world has copied our playbook and caught up to varying degrees. I don't believe this represents decline; rather, it's just an opportunity to hit on the next civilizational phase change...which undoubtedly will take progressives of one flavor or another.
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