David Kaiser's post, some time ago, re Soros, etc.
This was my favorite quote from Soros (in Kaiser's post):
"Popper’s hidden assumption that freedom of speech and thought will produce a better understanding of reality is valid only for the study of natural phenomena. Extending it to human affairs is part of what I have called the 'Enlightenment fallacy.'"
A great insight. Commenting on Kaiser's current post, one might also call it the Free Press Fallacy, or even, say, The Drew Pearson Fallacy.
I would just call it The Karl Popper Fallacy, and let people wonder how far I mean to go on that.
I would add, to the elements of Soros' Enlightenment Fallacy, a faith in free, open, Smithian, (and eventually global), markets.
Yet, this addition sets me off from Soros and his, otherwise, and in other contexts, quite globalist tendencies.
Most liberals are not nationalists, deep down, but rather anti nationalist globalists, nowadays. It was not always so.
Let's put it this way, the Nazis gave nationalism an unnecessarily ugly rap.
(The Bolshevics somehow avoided this type of bad rap, largely because of the gross ignorance and naivete of Western regimes, and their conservatives, and their liberals.)
I would just advert, momentarily, to a great small book by Butterfield, in the enlightenment context, The Whig Interpretation Of History. (Maybe I'm just stuck, Tory like, on Regius Professors of History, or just stuck on Regius anything.)
In a similar vein, the ideas of the Founding Fathers, as Bailyn has pointed out, owed more to radical Protestantism, and the common law, (one could also add commercial self interests, including, preponderantly, smuggling, tax evasion, and slavery) than to enlightenment ideas per se.
Term search, if so inclined eg: Popper, Lorch
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