On Monday, September 19, 2022 at 12:13:39 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> On Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 4:34:42 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > "Liberalism aimed to free people to discover and express their individual identities, apart from coercive interference. But by uprooting people from historic communities and social roles, the radical right predicted, liberalism would trigger an anxious preoccupation with group belonging. The triumph of liberalism would therefore coincide with its collapse. By pressing people to ask, “Who am I?” its social logic would lead them back to the most basic human question, “Who are we?” At its heart, the radical right was a response to this spiraling crisis of belonging. It argued the crisis could not be solved by returning to conventional national or religious identities, since that would merely restore a sick patient to a condition when its symptoms first appeared. The solution to the crisis would require Western culture to unlearn a millennia-long mistake, sustained by centuries of Christian belief, that attempted to ground its legitimacy outside of itself. Political life does not depend on truths or values that transcend our identities, the radical right claimed, or on a biblical vision of human unity. It depends on recognizing that human identity, at its most primordial level, is something inherited. To an age of growing individualism, this movement’s message was powerfully dissonant: Your identity does not belong to you alone. It joins you forever to those of your kind, and separates you forever from those who are alien. To know and to affirm this inheritance is to live a meaningful life; to deny it is the greatest tragedy; to be denied it the greatest injustice." (From the Introduction of "A World After Liberalism"
> >
> > https://www.amazon.com/World-after-Liberalism-Philosophers-Radical-ebook/dp/B098RF76YH?asin=B098RF76YH&revisionId=f62dfff2&format=1&depth=1
> >
> > According to Mathew Rose, Liberalism is as successful as it is self-destructing. Rose then introduce 5 thinkers who might dominate the
> > post-liberal world. But his book does not focus on the most intriguing
> > question.
> >
> > Can Liberalism reborn like the legendary Pheonix?
> > IF YES, under what condition and how long would it take?
> From his perch of being a Council member of National Endowment For Humanities(NEH) and Senior Fellow and Director
> of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life, Mathew Rose seems to have resigned to the inevitably rise
> of a new conservatism and a world after (Western) liberalism.
>
> "We are living in a postliberal moment. After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds.
> Its most serious challenge does not come from regimes in China, Russia, or Central Europe, whose leaders declare the
> liberal epoch is “at an end.”1 It comes from within Western democracies themselves, where intelligent critics, and not just
> angry populists, are expressing doubts about its most basic norms.
>
> Critiques of liberalism are as old as liberalism itself, of course, and its ideas have never gone unchallenged. For centuries,
> philosophers have questioned it from all sides. They have blamed it for increasing inequality and exploitation, and for
> corrupting culture and religion. They have been especially skeptical of its vision of human beings as rights-bearing individuals
> who are defined by their ability to choose. But if our moment is not novel in every respect, it is jarringly new to some of us.
> The idea that human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, or cultural pluralism might be rejected out of principle, and
> not blind prejudice, is bewildering to many. They are ideas associated with antiquated books and defeated causes—with people
> living in the past, not looking toward the future.
>
> A new conservatism, unlike any in recent memory, is coming into view. Ideas once thought taboo are being reconsidered; authors
> once banished are being rehabilitated; debates once closed are reopening. There is disagreement about how this intellectual space
> opened up, but there is no doubt who is filling it. Nationalists, populists, identitarians, futurists, and religious traditionalists are
> vying to define conservatism in ways previously unimaginable. To a remarkable degree, they dissent from an orthodoxy that
> seemed settled as recently as 2016."

Stephen M Walt 's January 19, 2022 article is prescient. He was correct in calling NATO/EU foreign policy based on liberalism flawed and illusional.
"The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse. Russia is poised to invade and demanding airtight guarantees that NATO will never, ever expand farther to the east. Negotiations do not appear to be succeeding, and the United States and its NATO allies are beginning to contemplate how they will make Russia pay should it press forward with an invasion. A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.

The great tragedy is this entire affair was avoidable. Had the United States and its European allies not succumbed to hubris, wishful thinking, and liberal idealism and relied instead on realism’s core insights, the present crisis would not have occurred. Indeed, Russia would probably never have seized Crimea, and Ukraine would be safer today. The world is paying a high price for relying on a flawed theory of world politics."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/

On Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 8:04:06 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> On Monday, September 19, 2022 at 12:13:39 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > On Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 4:34:42 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > > "Liberalism aimed to free people to discover and express their individual identities, apart from coercive interference. But by uprooting people from historic communities and social roles, the radical right predicted, liberalism would trigger an anxious preoccupation with group belonging. The triumph of liberalism would therefore coincide with its collapse. By pressing people to ask, “Who am I?” its social logic would lead them back to the most basic human question, “Who are we?” At its heart, the radical right was a response to this spiraling crisis of belonging. It argued the crisis could not be solved by returning to conventional national or religious identities, since that would merely restore a sick patient to a condition when its symptoms first appeared. The solution to the crisis would require Western culture to unlearn a millennia-long mistake, sustained by centuries of Christian belief, that attempted to ground its legitimacy outside of itself. Political life does not depend on truths or values that transcend our identities, the radical right claimed, or on a biblical vision of human unity. It depends on recognizing that human identity, at its most primordial level, is something inherited. To an age of growing individualism, this movement’s message was powerfully dissonant: Your identity does not belong to you alone. It joins you forever to those of your kind, and separates you forever from those who are alien. To know and to affirm this inheritance is to live a meaningful life; to deny it is the greatest tragedy; to be denied it the greatest injustice." (From the Introduction of "A World After Liberalism"
> > >
> > > https://www.amazon.com/World-after-Liberalism-Philosophers-Radical-ebook/dp/B098RF76YH?asin=B098RF76YH&revisionId=f62dfff2&format=1&depth=1
> > >
> > > According to Mathew Rose, Liberalism is as successful as it is self-destructing. Rose then introduce 5 thinkers who might dominate the
> > > post-liberal world. But his book does not focus on the most intriguing
> > > question.
> > >
> > > Can Liberalism reborn like the legendary Pheonix?
> > > IF YES, under what condition and how long would it take?
> > From his perch of being a Council member of National Endowment For Humanities(NEH) and Senior Fellow and Director
> > of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life, Mathew Rose seems to have resigned to the inevitably rise
> > of a new conservatism and a world after (Western) liberalism.
> >
> > "We are living in a postliberal moment. After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds.
> > Its most serious challenge does not come from regimes in China, Russia, or Central Europe, whose leaders declare the
> > liberal epoch is “at an end.”1 It comes from within Western democracies themselves, where intelligent critics, and not just
> > angry populists, are expressing doubts about its most basic norms.
> >
> > Critiques of liberalism are as old as liberalism itself, of course, and its ideas have never gone unchallenged. For centuries,
> > philosophers have questioned it from all sides. They have blamed it for increasing inequality and exploitation, and for
> > corrupting culture and religion. They have been especially skeptical of its vision of human beings as rights-bearing individuals
> > who are defined by their ability to choose. But if our moment is not novel in every respect, it is jarringly new to some of us.
> > The idea that human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, or cultural pluralism might be rejected out of principle, and
> > not blind prejudice, is bewildering to many. They are ideas associated with antiquated books and defeated causes—with people
> > living in the past, not looking toward the future.
> >
> > A new conservatism, unlike any in recent memory, is coming into view. Ideas once thought taboo are being reconsidered; authors
> > once banished are being rehabilitated; debates once closed are reopening. There is disagreement about how this intellectual space
> > opened up, but there is no doubt who is filling it. Nationalists, populists, identitarians, futurists, and religious traditionalists are
> > vying to define conservatism in ways previously unimaginable. To a remarkable degree, they dissent from an orthodoxy that
> > seemed settled as recently as 2016."
>
> Stephen M Walt 's January 19, 2022 article is prescient. He was correct in calling NATO/EU foreign policy based on liberalism flawed and illusional.
> "The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse. Russia is poised to invade and demanding airtight guarantees that NATO will never, ever expand farther to the east. Negotiations do not appear to be succeeding, and the United States and its NATO allies are beginning to contemplate how they will make Russia pay should it press forward with an invasion. A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.
>
> The great tragedy is this entire affair was avoidable. Had the United States and its European allies not succumbed to hubris, wishful thinking, and liberal idealism and relied instead on realism’s core insights, the present crisis would not have occurred. Indeed, Russia would probably never have seized Crimea, and Ukraine would be safer today. The world is paying a high price for relying on a flawed theory of world politics."
>
> https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/

Foreign policy: Realism and Liberalism

"At the most basic level, realism begins with the recognition that wars occur because there
is no agency or central authority that can protect states from one another and stop them
from fighting if they choose to do so. Given that war is always a possibility, states compete
for power and sometimes use force to try to make themselves more secure or gain other
advantages. There is no way states can know for certain what others may do in the future,
which makes them reluctant to trust one another and encourages them to hedge against the
possibility that another powerful state may try to harm them at some point down the road.

Liberalism sees world politics differently. Instead of seeing all great powers as facing more
or less the same problem—the need to be secure in a world where war is always possible—
liberalism maintains that what states do is driven mostly by their internal characteristics and
the nature of the connections among them. It divides the world into “good states” (those that
embody liberal values) and “bad states” (pretty much everyone else) and maintains that
conflicts arise primarily from the aggressive impulses of autocrats, dictators, and other
illiberal leaders. For liberals, the solution is to topple tyrants and spread democracy, markets,
and institutions based on the belief that democracies don’t fight one another, especially
when they are bound together by trade, investment, and an agreed-on set of rules.

After the Cold War, Western elites concluded that realism was no longer relevant and liberal
ideals should guide foreign-policy conduct."

On Friday, November 11, 2022 at 1:46:21 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> On Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 8:04:06 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > On Monday, September 19, 2022 at 12:13:39 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > > On Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 4:34:42 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> > > > "Liberalism aimed to free people to discover and express their individual identities, apart from coercive interference. But by uprooting people from historic communities and social roles, the radical right predicted, liberalism would trigger an anxious preoccupation with group belonging. The triumph of liberalism would therefore coincide with its collapse. By pressing people to ask, “Who am I?” its social logic would lead them back to the most basic human question, “Who are we?” At its heart, the radical right was a response to this spiraling crisis of belonging. It argued the crisis could not be solved by returning to conventional national or religious identities, since that would merely restore a sick patient to a condition when its symptoms first appeared. The solution to the crisis would require Western culture to unlearn a millennia-long mistake, sustained by centuries of Christian belief, that attempted to ground its legitimacy outside of itself. Political life does not depend on truths or values that transcend our identities, the radical right claimed, or on a biblical vision of human unity. It depends on recognizing that human identity, at its most primordial level, is something inherited. To an age of growing individualism, this movement’s message was powerfully dissonant: Your identity does not belong to you alone. It joins you forever to those of your kind, and separates you forever from those who are alien. To know and to affirm this inheritance is to live a meaningful life; to deny it is the greatest tragedy; to be denied it the greatest injustice." (From the Introduction of "A World After Liberalism"
> > > >
> > > > https://www.amazon.com/World-after-Liberalism-Philosophers-Radical-ebook/dp/B098RF76YH?asin=B098RF76YH&revisionId=f62dfff2&format=1&depth=1
> > > >
> > > > According to Mathew Rose, Liberalism is as successful as it is self-destructing. Rose then introduce 5 thinkers who might dominate the
> > > > post-liberal world. But his book does not focus on the most intriguing
> > > > question.
> > > >
> > > > Can Liberalism reborn like the legendary Pheonix?
> > > > IF YES, under what condition and how long would it take?
> > > From his perch of being a Council member of National Endowment For Humanities(NEH) and Senior Fellow and Director
> > > of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life, Mathew Rose seems to have resigned to the inevitably rise
> > > of a new conservatism and a world after (Western) liberalism.
> > >
> > > "We are living in a postliberal moment. After three decades of dominance, liberalism is losing its hold on Western minds.
> > > Its most serious challenge does not come from regimes in China, Russia, or Central Europe, whose leaders declare the
> > > liberal epoch is “at an end.”1 It comes from within Western democracies themselves, where intelligent critics, and not just
> > > angry populists, are expressing doubts about its most basic norms.
> > >
> > > Critiques of liberalism are as old as liberalism itself, of course, and its ideas have never gone unchallenged. For centuries,
> > > philosophers have questioned it from all sides. They have blamed it for increasing inequality and exploitation, and for
> > > corrupting culture and religion. They have been especially skeptical of its vision of human beings as rights-bearing individuals
> > > who are defined by their ability to choose. But if our moment is not novel in every respect, it is jarringly new to some of us.
> > > The idea that human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, or cultural pluralism might be rejected out of principle, and
> > > not blind prejudice, is bewildering to many. They are ideas associated with antiquated books and defeated causes—with people
> > > living in the past, not looking toward the future.
> > >
> > > A new conservatism, unlike any in recent memory, is coming into view. Ideas once thought taboo are being reconsidered; authors
> > > once banished are being rehabilitated; debates once closed are reopening. There is disagreement about how this intellectual space
> > > opened up, but there is no doubt who is filling it. Nationalists, populists, identitarians, futurists, and religious traditionalists are
> > > vying to define conservatism in ways previously unimaginable. To a remarkable degree, they dissent from an orthodoxy that
> > > seemed settled as recently as 2016."
> >
> > Stephen M Walt 's January 19, 2022 article is prescient. He was correct in calling NATO/EU foreign policy based on liberalism flawed and illusional.
> > "The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse. Russia is poised to invade and demanding airtight guarantees that NATO will never, ever expand farther to the east. Negotiations do not appear to be succeeding, and the United States and its NATO allies are beginning to contemplate how they will make Russia pay should it press forward with an invasion. A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.
> >
> > The great tragedy is this entire affair was avoidable. Had the United States and its European allies not succumbed to hubris, wishful thinking, and liberal idealism and relied instead on realism’s core insights, the present crisis would not have occurred. Indeed, Russia would probably never have seized Crimea, and Ukraine would be safer today. The world is paying a high price for relying on a flawed theory of world politics."
> >
> > https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/
> Foreign policy: Realism and Liberalism
>
> "At the most basic level, realism begins with the recognition that wars occur because there
> is no agency or central authority that can protect states from one another and stop them
> from fighting if they choose to do so. Given that war is always a possibility, states compete
> for power and sometimes use force to try to make themselves more secure or gain other
> advantages. There is no way states can know for certain what others may do in the future,
> which makes them reluctant to trust one another and encourages them to hedge against the
> possibility that another powerful state may try to harm them at some point down the road.
>
> Liberalism sees world politics differently. Instead of seeing all great powers as facing more
> or less the same problem—the need to be secure in a world where war is always possible—
> liberalism maintains that what states do is driven mostly by their internal characteristics and
> the nature of the connections among them. It divides the world into “good states” (those that
> embody liberal values) and “bad states” (pretty much everyone else) and maintains that
> conflicts arise primarily from the aggressive impulses of autocrats, dictators, and other
> illiberal leaders. For liberals, the solution is to topple tyrants and spread democracy, markets,
> and institutions based on the belief that democracies don’t fight one another, especially
> when they are bound together by trade, investment, and an agreed-on set of rules.
>
> After the Cold War, Western elites concluded that realism was no longer relevant and liberal
> ideals should guide foreign-policy conduct."

What is wrong with the liberal view on world politics?
More often than not, it is Might Makes Right. According to Jeffrey Sach, the US claims to be a
democracy. Yet it acts like a cruel imperialist internationally. He also thinks Biden's biggest mistake
is he sees the world's problem is one of democratic nations against autocratic nations.

https://www.chinatimes.com/opinion/20221111004142-262104?chdtv
"美國哥倫比亞大學經濟學教授薩克斯（Jeffrey Sachs），是聯合國「永續發展解決方案網路」（SDSN）主席。他曾兩度獲選《時代》百大影響力人物，也在全球各國獲頒38個榮譽博士學位。今年6月，有「東方諾貝爾獎」之稱的唐獎，將本屆「永續發展獎」頒發給了這位67歲的學者。對於這位自1972年進入哈佛大學經濟系就長期關注環境、貧窮、社會正義的學者，可謂是對其長達50年專業生涯的高度肯定。

9月底，在《紐約時報》主導的「雅典民主論壇」（Athens Democracy Forum 2022）上，薩克斯又成了全場矚目的焦點。他火力全開，批評美國是一個白人主導、充滿種族主義的國家。過去是蓄奴、執行種族滅絕的國家，為了延續白人文化而屠殺印地安原住民。而到今天，美國仍是老樣子。對內號稱實行民主，在國外則成為無情的帝國主義者。19世紀前世界上最殘暴的國家是英國，自1950年以來，世界上最殘暴的國家就是美國。民主真的能達到良政、善治與為普通人民謀幸福人生嗎？薩克斯提到當代民主制度的最大問題，就是西方國家領導人缺少良好品德（Virtues）。沒有良好品德領導的民主社會，結果就會變成殘暴政權。他認為，拜登總統最大的一個錯誤，就是把目前世界上的問題歸因為民主國家和專政國家的對抗。而現實世上最大的挑戰，其實是所有人類合作，一起克服環境和發展不平等的共同危機。此話一出，立刻獲得在場許多不分種族的年輕觀眾的掌聲。"