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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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That's one of the fundamental questions on the American right at present: Does classical liberalism necessarily produce a level of pluralism it cannot survive?

Speaking for myself, straightforwardly, obviously, unavoidably, yes.

Classical liberalism as it is commonly understood and described is built on axiomatic assumptions about the possible range of human values, and those assumptions are observably wrong because the observable range of human values is significantly wider. You can track the obvious cross-sectional ways in which those assumptions have decayed by degrees across our entire society over time, and how our institutions and social structures have decayed with them.

Classical Liberalism increases tolerance. Increased tolerance creates values-diversity, and then values-incoherence. Values incoherence creates conflict, which reduces tolerance. Perhaps this cycle can be retarded or bypassed in some ways or in some circumstances, but certainly classical liberalism cannot do it because it cannot even begin to adequately frame the problem. It believes tolerance is a moral precept, axiomatically, but Tolerance Is Not A Moral Precept.

and those assumptions are observably wrong because the observable range of human values is significantly wider.

Absolutely. Classical liberalism doesn't account for evil, which is understandable since it's the little-autistic-kid-asking-why-not of political ideologies[0] (and why people who aren't autistic little kids, at least at heart, tend to run into trouble with it). The whole 'life/liberty/pursuit of happiness' thing is a pretty clear example of this; for evil women, pursuit of happiness involves oppressing men, vice versa, and etc. for any combination of ingroup and outgroup you like.

In other words, it's an ideology for/by Abel, and as such doesn't put much effort into protecting itself from Cain (or at least denies his ability to do wrong... and really, if Cain should murder him, what Abel has done is generally pleasing to God; what horrible afterlife consequences should he fear? Would it not be a sin for Abel to devote resources to self-defense against his brethren rather than his normal business?).

Perhaps this cycle can be retarded or bypassed in some ways or in some circumstances

This cycle is usually retarded/bypassed by having so many resources that the limiting factor on their exploitation is manpower.
Or "$", for short.

You'll note that the pattern of classical liberalism within Western Great Powers tends to come with a new frontier and new technology to exploit it. This means that the population of those countries can get out of PvP mode (zero-sum) and go into PvE (positive-sum) mode, and once that happens, the people spec'd into PvP- the existing power structures- get pushed out because it's harder to rent-seek under these conditions. The US, for most of its history, has spent most of its time in PvE mode, and it shows- all of its cultural memes (including classical liberalism itself) are predicated on the PvE worldviews.

In a PvE environment, you actually can say "just build your own" and it not be in bad faith (and when PvPers say it today, they can't say it decoupled from the concept of PvE being the ideal- more proper snobs, stereotypically the Brits, have a different response to this; Americans will interpret this response as "no, because you're a nigger", because that's what it means). Values-incoherence is not something that can really be stopped if the ruling elements of a population wanted to[1], because if they did they'd be outcompeted by their enemies (internal or external) that did allow it.

Economic contractions, however, push the population towards PvP. Institutions become more powerful, rent-seeking becomes more important as a way to maintain personal wealth [which is where purity spirals come from, and in extremes, will cause the population to sell itself into more and more intense forms of slavery just to get a meal]. Values are mediated by those that still have resources, or can amass them, and those people would really hate if some other system that proved their values were wrong emerged (or allowed anyone the means or motivation to get around their resource monopolies)- hence why they wage holy war on them.

[0] As opposed to paternalist politics; these can be either mother-privileging (progressive) or father-privileging (progressive boogeyman/traditional). This is also what I'm generally trying to get at when I say "trads and progs are the same just with a different gender valence" and point out that liberalism and progressivism are very different things. One might even notice that paternalist politics are obsessed with fighting deontological evils (as a means to assert values-coherence); liberals only really have the consequential one (and as such can't assert values-coherence; "correct" is not a political identity).

[1] The one major exception to this is China, who declined to send colony ships anywhere specifically for this reason. What developed in the New World would fundamentally not be China any more, and unlike Europe they could afford to do this- they had everything they wanted at home. Which would remain true right up until they got curb-stomped by the English, and that was evidently only temporary.