The Background and Context of Moral Libertarianism

Chapter 8. Don't Just Look At The Surface One thing about how people, including prominent journalists and public intellectuals, are reacting to the recent shifts towards illiberalism in parts of the Left, is that they too often react to what is on the surface, without digging deeper and truly understanding the phenomenon. This means that they often propose maladaptive solutions, that both actually cause harm to people, and further encourage the illiberal faction of the Left. We need to remember that what are dealing with is a worldview and ideology that have deep academic roots. It had developed over multiple generations, with influences from multiple schools of thought from multiple countries (mainly France, Germany, Britain, America). We need to acknowledge that we are dealing with a very complex system of philosophy (theory) and activism (practice). Postmodern criticalism is certainly much more complicated than liberalism itself, or other ideologies that we are 54