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I don't think the tension between living in a liberal society and holding liberal values (classically defined) while living conservative lives is quite as large a gap as is often suggested. Most religious denominations are quite comfortable with liberal values – for example today the Catholic Church's official position is that religious freedom is good, and I think most religious people (in the USA) are quite comfortable with liberalism as classically defined.
Liberalism, it seems to me, is a problem for a small subset of intellectuals who say "if the rule that you followed led to this, of what use was the rule?" I wouldn't necessarily say this is a bad question to ask, but I think a lot of times it results (or stems from) a sort of terminal thinking, the idea that because a democracy led to bad things, it will lead to more bad things in the future. But of course it's quite possible that (classical) liberalism will snap back – the Americans of the 1760s were liberals, it's entirely possible for classical liberalism to accommodate extremely conservative sentiments.
My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly. But societies evolve in unpredictable ways. And because we know that classical liberalism worked quite effectively (arguably much more effectively) with conservative social mores in the past, if liberal social mores are unsustainable – as they now in many ways seem to be – it's quite reasonable to be optimistic about conservative social mores within the framework of classical liberalism in the future. That's not a RETVRN in my mind – the only way out is through. Likely we will not see a return to 1790. We shouldn't want to! What we should want is a 2040 that is better than a 2024, better even than a 1790. And if conservative social mores are good, then although they might be to some degree different in the age of AI and automobiles, building a better future means building one with conservative social mores.
Perhaps I'm missing your point here – feel free to correct me if so!
It is not going to happen at gun point either.
Look at most serious attempt (so far) of RETVRN of (partly) modernized society back to trad life.
Yes, I mean Iran.
It is total failure on all terms, and especially trad religious ones. And it was not due to ayatollah's softness, due to excessive devotion to "human rights" or "due process". I am not aware of any "trad" engaging with this example, honestly trying to find out "what went wrong" or "who betrayed the revolution".
Good point with Iran. I actually think Ireland is also an interesting example. And unlike Iran, the revolution in Ireland was bottom-up, but Ireland was then quickly hollowed out by secularism just the same as England (despite the role religious tensions played in their departure!)
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Nobody betrayed it the elite keep trucking trying to keep people trad and traditional even as society slips further and further from their grasp particularly in the cities. They all the political power but lack the cultural cache to keep the populace in line with their values and have had to basically abandon the democracy with trad guardrails Khomeini created because the vote is just going to go to the most liberal candidate.
A study would be interesting as the Gulf despite also having a conservative government had a population that remains conservative despite wealth and constant contact with more liberal foreigners. I suspect deep reasons of culture and status and maybe because they never had that liberal core. Once you do it seems it's pretty hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The Europeans tried for a hundred years after the French revolution and never managed it.
The Gulf's government (monarchy) is not conservative. It is an open secret that the Gulf monarchies drink alcohol, and fuck prostitutes. The reason that the Gulf populace is conservative, is because social conservatism is part of their founding national myth; khaleejis (gulf Arabs) literally define themselves as the originators of, protectors of, and most devout followers of Islam.
Islam is incredible intertwined with how Gulf Arabs see themselves, and is the reason for the population's continued conservative. Although, I do have to note that even that is changing. In 2022, Saudi Arabia formally cutoff its association with the Islamic clergy. The population is quickly becoming westernized.
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I very strongly agree with this... I don't think you are missing my point I think we see eye to eye on a lot of these topics.
I suppose what I don't like is a boneheaded and sort of violent approach towards forcing traditionalism back, as opposed to as you say working through democracy or being more reasonable and optimistic about our current society. So again, I think we're on the same page.
And that boneheaded approach will likely fail without buy in from the people. Multiple European monarchies tried throughout the 1800s and weren't able to manage it.
Right, you can debate all day long whether or not it's morally justified to RETVRN by force of arms but it's sort of pointless to discuss the theory when the practice does poorly.
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