Rob > Recent Status Updates

This is demoralizing in many ways. There are the ways I’ve observed and the ones that were, up to now, unimagined, such as in policy. I can only read this in bursts. Doctorow is a great explainer!

On Liberal Feminism, Walzer brings in the question of whether multiculturalism is bad for women. He has in mind I think that official toleration of intolerant (though oppressed or minority) groups are harmful to the individual rights of women. I guess I confuse multiculturalism with toleration, and for me the whole argument has been turned on its head by the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision (2020) and others.

Continues to be thought provoking and occasionally maddening. Sections on communitarianism and socialism bring to mind a recent DSA vote against endorsing a candidate who had received the endorsement of the police, a decision that struck me as bad policy and illiberal. Walzer is helping articulate the “why.”

Liberal Socialism: Walzer's bona fides are admirable, as a past editor of Dissent magazine. But his views on recent events perhaps were ill-considered. This is understandable as he hadn't lived through any of a second Trump term or seen that Jeremy Corbyn's ousting would allow Kier Starmer in, but his sharp dismissal of Corbyn gave me some pause and dampened my enthusiasm. Yet liberal values allow for disagreement.

I've just listened to a panel discussion with left-of-center academics who aimed a number of criticisms at "liberals" and I wondered who they were talking about? Market neoliberals, professional politicians, middle class liberal democrats? Unclear, I picked this book up after, and it is a refreshing defense, but always using "liberal" as a modifier, as the title suggests.