The evils of liberalism

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I’ve blogged about this before and I’m sure I will again, but what is Nick Cohen’s problem with liberalism? He has never spelt it out beyond complaining that reality rarely meets the ideal, but that is true of all ideologies, and yet he returns to the subject again and again.

This week, Kate Winslet’s Number One Fan is attacking “Europe” (whatever that is…) for not being as liberal as it claims to be. In doing so, he cites Simon Jenkins – an arch Tory – and Franco Frattini – Sylvio Berlusconi’s personal appointee to the European Commission. He laments the prohibition of Holocaust denial and laws to prevent criticism of religion, both of which are predominently advocated by socialist parties. He suggests at the end that the people of Europe are becoming contemptuous of hypocritical politicians who espouse liberal ideals yet fail to observe them in practice, yet that is an argument for more liberalism, not less.

More to the point, this Euston Manifesto supporter fails to come up with something even vaguely resembling a leftist alternative. Indeed, that manifesto includes plenty of exhortations to freedom which, last time I looked, was the alpha and omega of liberalism. Euston can be read as a wholesale surrender of the left to come up with a better model for society than liberalism after two centuries of wasted effort. Yet for Cohen, it continues to be the root of all evil.

I should probably stop reading these columns as Cohen has become so idiosyncratic now that they are seldom worth the time. But one day I would love to see him attempt to come up with answers. Polly Toynbee may be consistently wrong, but at least she tries. The polemicist schtick has got old, Nick.

Comments

8 responses to “The evils of liberalism”

14 May 2006

Simon

The Eustons are socialists who have been mugged by reality but are refusing to hand over the wallet.

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14 May 2006

John Angliss

I think you’ll find the number of socialist parties advocating Holocaust denial is zero or very close to.

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14 May 2006

James

Sorry, misunderstanding there. I meant to type the prohibition of holocause denial. Very clumsy. Now corrected.

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15 May 2006

neil Craig

” Euston can be read as a wholesale surrender of the left to come up with a better model for society than liberalism”

I think that is overstating it. Euston appears to be a dozen guys meeting in a pub with a number of media contacts.

In any case the wholesale surrender of the left happened years ago but it was to the Greens. There was no economic philosopher, not even excluding Adam smith, who more favoured economic progress than Marx – his whole thesis was built on it. However with the economic failure of the Soviets left wing socialism adopted the whole Luddite line (anti nuclear, GM etc, pro-small technology) as the only viable alternative to capitalism.

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15 May 2006

James

Euston appears to be a dozen guys meeting in a pub with a number of media contacts.

Yeah, but they don’t see it like that.

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15 May 2006

Tristan Mills

I become increasingly aware of the ways the word freedom being used, often it means things which I don’t associate with freedom.

Perhaps his problem with liberalism is that at its heart it prefers to let people decide what is best for them, rather than the intellectual (or columist) deciding for them. That’s the problem many on the ‘left’ have with it.

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17 May 2006

Matthew Winnington

I read the article as well in The Observer. He’s just a cliche, an old quasi-authoritarian Leftie who believes that it’s the job of the so called ‘liberal-left’ (as he always refers to it) to tell people how to act. In the same way as the Maoists & Stalinists he avows to despise (now) he cries foul whenever anyone goes against his cherished values that eveyone, in his head, really believes in.

On what he has against us, he & his ilk don’t understand us (thus their hijacking of liberal whenever they refer to the left, when they don’t even know what it really means). They think that any Liberal party should have been swallowed up into the greater ‘progressive’ force of Socialism or Labourism (as they believe that Liberalism is merely a part of those movements) & that our continued existence is a travesty & gets in the way of the fight with the ‘forces of Conservertism’.

Makes himself look really ignorant & stupid whatever.

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19 May 2006

Angus J Huck

I think there is an economic philosopher who at least rivals Marx’s belief in economic progress, and that is Lyndon LaRouche, who advocates unlimited economic growth.

A lot of what LaRouche says is crazy, but he is on to something when he points out that limiting growth is most likely to hit the Third World hardest. Green Party policy would make world poverty worse, not reduce it. Indeed, I consider the Green view that people of colour are better off living in the Stone Age a kind of genteel, condescending racism typical of Victorian anthropologists. (Unless Greens want us ALL to live in caves, which some might well do!)

I agree with Nick Cohn (no E) when he points to the hypocrisy of certain sections of the Left attempting to manipulate Islamic radicalism while purporting to be secular liberals. But I do not share his support for the Iraq war. Islamism is evil, but it is not so evil that we are obliged to condone an imperialist war of conquest waged by a kleptocratic elite. Besides, the Iraq war has actually strengthened the position of Islamic conservatives in Iraq. I suspect that Cohn’s position on Iraq is tempered by his support for Israel (ditto a few other people).

The strange thing about Simon Jenkins is that he is a most uncharacteristic Tory. His views are generally liberal (with a small L), and he is markedly interventionist on environmental and planning matters. He is no friend of elites, either (how many Tories would dare to say that the government should have done nothing to eradicate foot & mouth?).

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