A tipping point of tyranny

What prevents systems from capsizing are the virtues of liberality and liberalism (in the sense christened in the 1770s). So long as enough people disapprove both of illiberality, as systematized, for example, at Twitter, Facebook, and Google-YouTube, and of anti-liberalism, the system can right itself and avoid capsizing. Election integrity is vital, of course.

We are accustomed to thinking that modern democracies are always like a pendulum—a swing far in one direction is balanced by a swing back in the other direction. But the descent into tyranny can mess with the whole pendulum mechanism, preventing the counter-swing. We are concerned that the mechanisms that, thankfully, have thus far prevented us from reaching the tipping point and capsizing are being dismantled. The dismantling is being done to some extent intentionally, by despots and wannabe despots, who act variously from greed, depravity, delusion—God knows what!

Politics is always a matter of lesser-evil, but our point is not directed at only the greater-evil. In the US context, we observe illiberality and anti-liberalism among some who vote Republican and some who vote Democrat. The people who advocate the seizing of control of the government often do it for (what they see as) the best reasons: achieving the good society. One function of liberalism is to call out, and oppose, the governmentalizing of social affairs, even when it is done with the hope of putting the “right” people in charge. …

It is not just dystopian fiction—Orwell’s 1984, Richter’s Pictures of a Socialistic Future, Huxley’s Brave New World, Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”—that has furnished us with the image of a once-liberal civilization now capsized. Some of the great liberal writers have warned us against the very real march toward a capsized civilization, writers including Alexis de Tocqueville, Hilaire Belloc, C.S. Lewis, and F.A. Hayek. May we heed their warnings.