So to understand why Liberalism is contradictory, we have to understand what

liberalism believes. liberalism initially began with theorists like Locke, arguing for an
emphasis on individual rights (and by extension individualism), equality *before the law*,
the right to freedom of speech allowing for an open marketplace of ideas to flourish, and
the establishment of fair and just court systems existing outside of the
monarchy/autocracy/whatever system existed at the time (which in almost every
western country was very much corrupt).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Then we begin to move towards Mill's version of liberalism. Mill's version incorporated a
kind of utilitarinism, although it is important to note that Mill's arguments for liberalism,
when examined, tend to actually contradict utilitarinism as properly understood (keep
this in mind when we return to him). Mill argues that if we provide individuals with rights,
ensuring their liberty and ability to act freely, we will have a much better world. This
begins and ends with an ideological statement (again, remember this as we move on).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm (if you wish to read it)
Liberalism and Utilitarianism by Brink

Finally, we move to Rawls' additions to the world of liberalism. Rawls' most famous
thought experiment is referred to as the "original position". Effectively, get a group of
people, put each one behind a curtain so none of them can see each other and then tell
each one "imaine you have not been born yet. you have no idea what race,
socioeconomic status, religion, health condition, etc will be." Then you instruct them to
build a society. Rawls argued that individuals will act according to a kind of altruistic
egoism (which is the foundation of a huge amount of the pro-individualism on the Left
even though the Left tends to reject individualist capitalist markets and prefers things
like social democracy).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/

So, now let's begin to understand the problems with these statements.

First, the universalism of the original ideology is impossible. What I mean more
specifically is that in any polity with diversity of thought (so, all of them), it is impossible
for every individual to be free. More explicitly, increasing the freedom for one
individual/group will necessarily decrease the freedom for another. Why? We discuss
this in terms of rights.

Let us assume that freedom means "the ability to act unhindered by external
constraints". That's all fine and good until you realize you exist in a society and that
while yes you have the absolute freedom to go rob a bank (as Sartre said) you also
realize that if you do, you will go to jail. This is called a constraint. And yet, we don't tend
to view laws against robbery as a constraint on liberty (unless you are a *hardcore*
voluntarist but that ideology has its own slew of problems). Why not? Because we tend
to argue that while we have constrained this group, the constraints on robbers, hackers,
murderers, rapists, and other criminals *empowers* the rest of the population to live with
less fear. So, now we understand what "freedom" and "rights" do: they have two
modalities, empowerment and constraint. Every single right, every single law, they all
empower and constrain different groups. So, we now see that most people's conception
of freedom has some degree of unprincipled exceptions. Which is more basically to say
that while we all believe in "freedom" we still believe certain people dont deserve that
freedom.

But the problem with freedom goes far beyond just “oh well, of course rapists don’t
deserve the freedom to rape people”. Let’s consider this hypothetical situation:

a gay person walks into a bakery owned by a religious individual and asks for a cake.
whose freedom wins? the gay person to get a cake at the bakery close to their home?
or the bakery owner who wishes to follow their religion? freedom and equality are just
shiny words designed to hide the fact that our society does what every society has done
throughout history: choose who to empower and who to constrain. when we make
freedom a goal in and of itself, everyone is able to make an equal claim that they
deserve freedom. But again, whose freedom wins? In this way, we must begin to
understand that freedom/equality/tolerance/rights (and therefore liberalism both modern
and classical) becomes logically inconsistent and contradictory. We are somewhat
aware of this with the whole tolerance of intolerance question. And its also easy to see
when we question someone who likes equality. what does equality mean? everyone's
opinions are equal? should "bigots" opinions be equal? probably not. what people say
when they say "i support equality" is not "i believe in equality of opinion" but rather "i
believe in a very specific set of empowerments and constraints for certain groups and
individuals who I believe should be empowered and others I believe should be
constrained". Again, we hide behind these shiny words that mean nothing. Freedom as
a political goal merely deteriorates into tyranny of the majority of the government body
(whether that be the people, congress, or the supreme court).

The libertarian “answer” to this dilemma is that the gay individual has no “right” to
demand a business owner serve them. But all this does is make a blanket decision to
empower those with material power and constrain those without said material power.
You are still making an implicit decision to empower and constrain specific groups within
the society. By “not doing anything” you have allowed (and in effect, *chosen*) a
specific set of societal conditions to emerge.

So, we now understand that freedom cannot be universal. We now understand that
most of the major disagreements in the West are about which groups we should be
empowering and which we should be constraining. And we also understand the
stubbornness from each side because each side makes a compelling case that they
deserve freedom. Because, who *doesn’t* deserve freedom? Once we get past
criminals I’m sure a lot of people differ on who deserves freedom.

And the final problem with freedom specifically is that it leads us to reason using logical
fallacies. More specifically the bait-and-switch and *most* specifically, the motte-and-
bailey. The bait and switch is a fallacy wherein we espouse a popular ideal without
explaining the hidden downsides.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

The motte and bailey is a fallacy in terms of argumentation and goes like this:

person A espouses a controversial opinion.

person B calls out person A on said opinion.
person A claims that the opinion actually rests on a universally accepted axiom
person B accepts said axiom (its universally accepted) and cannot debate it
person A claims victory without ever defending their position.

A motte and bailey is a form of this where you have a stable “motte” that represents the
universally accepted axiom (freedom or rights) and then the bailey is this constantly
expanding set of positions that, when challenged, retreat to the motte, but then come
out again and keep expanding.

More explanations: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ (this one is
an ideological explanation/application of the idea. Me using this article is in NO WAY an
endorsement of the ideology of the author. I merely believe it does a good job
explaining applications of this fallacy).

We see this in terms of freedom and rights. People keep arguing for more freedom or
more rights and then when they get challenged on it (because these new freedoms for
these groups will constrain the freedoms for other groups) they retreat to the Motte of
“freedom is a goal/everyone deserves rights”.

And what about equality? equality has two problems. First, let’s take what I call “weak”
equality and contrast it to “strong” equality. “weak” equality is the classical liberal
position of “equality before the law”. “strong” equality is the modern liberal position of
“equality of opportunity”. Let’s discuss weak equality first. Weak equality seems to be
compelling: who doesn’t agree with equality before the law? it’s the law. we voted for
representatives to make it and everyone should be treated fairly in court (flashback to
reading The Mockingbird). But this obscures the problem: who writes the law? What I
mean to say is that, the people writing the law still have to decide which rights are
enshrined in the law. Which means they are still deciding who gets to be free and who
doesn’t. 50 years ago, a gay person and a straight person would be treated the same
under the law, but gay marriage was illegal and therefore being treated equally under
the law means that the straight person would be fine and the gay person would be a
criminal. By hiding behind “the law” classical liberals obscure the processes by which
the law is created, and therefore obscure the ever-present mechanism of
empowerment/constraint that all societies focus on.

Then we get to strong equality. And it is here we will begin to incorporate and criticize
the more modern variants of liberalism as according to Mill and Rawls and their
followers. Strong equality argues for equality of opportunity? Partially this has to do with
an idea that all people deserve the same chance to succeed (you didn’t help/hinder your
parents before you were born so why should your parents help/hinder you after your
birth?). Now, strong equality actually ends up being one of the most logically coherent
and understandable ideas within the cohort of liberalism. What I mean is that, it does
not suffer from the same problems of logical fallacies and contradictions as “freedom” or
the general concept of “rights”. So, while I do not inherently believe in strong equality
(mostly from the pov that it is practically impossible), I still believe this is a goal that can
be incorporated into a generally logically consistent argument.

So, let’s take a break and look back at the two main concepts of liberalism that we have
criticized:
freedom as an ideology.
equality as an ideology.

freedom remains ideologically inconsistent and incoherent because many people can all
agree that “freedom” is good and believe in “equality before the law” and equal rights,
but will come up with vastly different sets of policies to ensure this. hence we get talk of
“real freedom” as opposed to just “freedom”. (just like when philosophers and theorists
write about self interest they use the term “enlightened” self interest which basically
means “you agree with me about what the *real* self interest is”).

Soft equality obscures the process of empowerment/constraint that occurs when the law
is made and therefore suffers from the same problems as freedom. But strong equality
actually does not suffer from these problems, partially because it makes an
unapologetic stance that the best way to build a society is to allow for equality of
opportunity which demands a very specific, not-vague-at-all, set of policies in order to
build a world where individuals have said equality of opportunity.

But what if we could step beyond the ideological ground? What if there is an argument
to be made that liberalism must be supported, not from an ideological ground, but
because it works *best*. This is where Mill begins to come in and argue for liberalism
from a utilitarian pov, or at least, he tries. The problem comes when the utilitarian
defense of liberalism still begins with a set of assumptions that only make sense if one
has already endorsed liberalism. Why is it that equal rights will lead to a better world?
How do we define better? Can we be certain it will lead to economic growth? can we be
certain it won’t lead to the atomization of society? How can we be sure that liberalism
works? Now, a defender of liberalism from said pov will take you by the arm and point to
the entire Western world, showing you the sheer amount of progress that has been
made. And, certainly, there has been a significant set of positive changes that have
occurred. We are more cognizant of racism and sexism and aim to eliminate said
scourges, technology and standards of living have dramatically improved, wars are at a
near all time low in modern history, etc. But that obscures the negative side of these
changes.

Let’s take a look at a lot of different elements in modern society:

Trust:
https://medium.com/@slowerdawn/the-decline-of-trust-in-the-united-states-
fb8ab719b82a#.n6gscir9p
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-trust-their-institutions-anymore/

Trust is an EXTREMELY important aspect of a cohesive society. High-trust societies do

much much better than low-trust societies. AND there is significant evidence in studies
(including those by Robert Putnam, the head of Harvard’s school of social policy
research and an avowed progressive and frequent NPR guest) that our support for
things like diversity actually LOWER trust (adding further support to the diversity +
proximity = conflict theory). He also demonstrates that we have seen a dramatic loss of
social capital and bonds between individuals as our culture becomes atomized:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/communitysurvey/docs/exec_summ.pdf
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam is a must read. Grab a pdf on gen.lib.rus.ec

Feminism and women’s happiness:

Gains in women’s rights haven't made women happier. Why is that? | Life and style |
The Guardian
Feminism, Social Change, and Women’s Happiness | Psych and Society
Has Feminism Made Women Happier? A Comprehensive Review | Psych and Society
Why feminist wives are unhappy.
Research on the happiness of married women shows that the traditional model still has
a lot going for it.

Now, this is not to say I endorse returning entirely to traditional gender roles. Nor do I
believe we should reestablish the patriarchal conditions of centuries past. But I would
argue there is something to be said about having roles defined for us. I argue that one
of the most significant problems today is the so called “second puberty” which seems to
occur after college. I argue this is because we do not have well-defined trials and
passages to adulthood. We no longer can have a boy go out and hunt an animal and
bring it back and be declared a man. nor can we have girls engage in marriage to
become women. But we do need some very well defined ways for an individual to
demonstrate they have virtue ad humility. Personally I believe one can turn to the school
of role ethics as opposed to the virtue ethics or deontology that remain so dominant in
western thought.

Modernity affecting the way we think in negative ways:

While there are some people who believe that this increase in diagnosis merely comes
from a greater willingness to diagnose patients as well as greater awareness of the
illness, there are others who argue that the cause is actually biological. I'll fish up some
studies but there is evidence that heavy internet users are actually engaging their fight-
or-flight mode virtually all the time while on the internet. There is also evidence
suggesting that the instant gratification of phone calls, internet research, and video
games has negatively affected our reward centers. This is all tied to the fact that our
Sympathetic nervous systems have been thrown completely out of whack and that has
significant negative repercussions if true.
:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TgkbBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=
dopamine+instant+gratification&ots=zpYKgAzmjY&sig=tLR5FhurAV3kZDt38jgkKCwozd
k#v=onepage&q=dopamine%20instant%20gratification&f=false (talks about dopamine
and instant gratification)
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Survival-Instinct-Killing-ebook/dp/B008BM4LHM (I know
this is like a scientific self help book and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt
but its basic observations are valid regarding internet use and our fight-or-flight
adrenaline responses)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system (basic reading regarding the
sympathetic nervous system)

Massive rise in out-of-wedlock birth:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/zoey-dimauro/johns-hopkins-57-percent-children-
born-millennials-are-out-wedlock
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lavar-young/children-out-of-wedlock_b_868193.html
http://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/how-broken-families-rob-children-
their-chances-future-prosperity (in fact, this article I include not because I think the
Heritage Foundation is anything more than capitalist apologists but because it makes a
good argument from the equality of opportunity pov that we need to fix this)

This is very very bad. Out of wedlock birth is linked to a huge number of problems for
children which become a huge number of problems for everyone else in society. They
also rob children of their equality of opportunity to compete.

Compound this with studies like this:

http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/does_divorce_make_people_happy.pdf
http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/does-sleeping-around-make-people-happier
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/02/sexual-hookup-culture.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12115-012-9595-z?LI=true

And we begin to see a problem: not just the one conservatives decry as the “loss of
traditional family values”, but the one of *atomization* (which most “libertarian”
conservatives would end up accelerating, although there are some social conservatives
who see this and seem to get it. almost no social liberals do. thats not to defend social
conservatives in all cases. how one can understand the benefits of marriage and then
deny it to gay people confuses me.)

Also funny to note, the vast majority of evidence suggests that to maximize happiness
you should stick with 1 partner, be faithful to them, and lose your virginity later (the
people who lost their virginiity in their early 20s I believe were the happiest compared to
those who lost them in their teens and after the age of 24/25. I can’t find this specific
study at the moment but I will find it and post it). So, if we believe in utilitarianism, that
would mean we would actually want to encourage conditions like this, which would
necessarily infringe on some liberties. And again we see the inherent contradiction in
Mill’s writings. If he truly believed in utilitarianism as opposed to an ideological “utility”
defense of liberalism, he would see that liberalism stands opposed to utilitarianism in
many places.

And this is all on top of the already highly problematic economic situations, but I think
there has been enough reporting on that in the past.

SO, we have demonstrated that liberalism and utilitarianism stand opposed to one
another in many places and that a truly utilitarian ideology would reject certain tenets
and policies of liberalism. We also know that liberalism is logically contradictory and
inconsistent because while it argues for equality before the law and makes the case that
“all people” deserve freedom, this does not play out in reality, since it is impossible for
all people to have freedom, and so many factions of liberals will disagree on what the
real freedom is, meaning there is no such thing as “real” freedom and the only reason
something passes is because the majority agree with it. That is the same problem
“hard” equality suffers from, although we demonstrated that “soft” equality escapes this
problem (although it too would likely need to be combined with the utilitarianism and the
observations of the studies, papers, and articles I cited above and it can be criticized
from the pov of role ethics).

Now, how about the final parts of liberalism? I will list out the major ones I will discuss
and in some cases criticize: the marketplace of ideas, the social contract, and the
original position from Rawls.

First, the marketplace of ideas. The support for this originates as “a rationale for
freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market.
The "marketplace of ideas" holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas
in free, transparent public discourse. The "marketplace of ideas" concludes that ideas
and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread
acceptance among the population.” [stolen from the wikipedia article for the marketplace
of ideas]

But we have a problem: does this actually work as intended? Will people be convinced
by the “superiority” or “inferiority” of ideas and ideologies? And how can one determine
such superiority? Now we see a set of problems of knowing. Let’s begin with the
presence of cognitive biases in decision making:

https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.9oqojcs0h
**SEE the two other studies I will attach and post that discuss decision making within
groups and on an individual level. they are in the context of international relations but
are still accurate and understandable. They come from a Levy and Thompson work
regarding decision making**
https://ufile.io/27571 - Levy Thompson chapter 5
https://ufile.io/0452f1 - Levy Thompson chapter 6
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/adam-kingsmith/cognitive-bias-politics_b_3077740.html

And if you think cognitive biases only affect the *proles* and could not possibly affect an
enlightened being such as yourself, think again. There is evidence the effect of cognitive
biases actually INCREASE as IQ increases and that being aware of the existence of
cognitive biases may actually make you LESS effective at catching them in your thought
processes:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=west%20stanovich%20meserve
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid
http://keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning_files/Stanovich_CDPS_2013.p
df

SO, we can now very confidently predict that the marketplace of ideas will fail, and that
the freedom of the press, of expression, and of speech will not make it work. Also, it is
important to note that given these studies, technocracies would likely do even worse, as
these “experts” would all have the same thought processes and come to the same
conclusions, ignorant of the biases they have. In fact, the Levy and Thompson works
regarding decision making demonstrate that these biases may get WORSE when they
are surrounded by like-minded thinkers.

So, my engagement with the social contract will be short simply because I’m still trying
to figure out the specifics on if the social contract itself is meaningless or if just the idea
of the consent of the governed is meaningless. What I mean, is the consent of the
governed does not confer authority on the state. We like to point out that, if the people
are good and believe in liberalism, they will not consent to a tyranny and will instead
only consent to a good government. Which is true. But what if the people aren’t good?
what if a noble and honorable leader attempts to govern a society of criminals and
good-for-nothings? And what if said criminals and leeches do not consent to him, but
consent to an aggressive, jingoistic, anything-goes, tyrannical leader? Can we even
define “tyranny” as anything beyond “a government that ‘good’ people would not agree
to”? So, it is clear consent of the governed on its own does not confer authority to a
government. Authority is much more complex. But I am not entirely confident how the
social contract would function in that instance, so I will leave that alone for now.

And finally we criticize Rawls’ original position. The Rawlsian original position thought
experiment, as described above, suffers from the Problem of Abstraction. What I mean
is, one cannot use his thought experiment to build policy, because it presupposes a set
of conscious individuals who logically cannot exist and therefore will come to
conclusions not representative of the conclusions that can, must, and will be reached by
actual people. No person exists outside of their unique historical circumstance (thank
you Hegel). You require parents to exist, you require assistance as a baby or you will
die, you exist in a social framework learning language and norms as you grow up, you
see the world through the lens of those around you learning to assign things meaning
based on what your culture tells you, etc etc. To claim one can shed their culture, their
history, their family, and everything that makes them, them, and then come to
conclusions in a thought experiment that can be applied when everyone returns to their
historical circumstances is absurd. Therefore, one can reject any and all conclusions
coming from the Rawlsian original position experiments as well as the altruistic egoism
that characterizes his thought.

So, I think that is enough for anti-liberalism v1. I am happy to examine more closely
specific tenets at a future time.