Ever since the French Revolution, in modern times, after the onset of the Age of the Democratic Revolutions and the overturning of the Old European Order, Western liberalism has resulted in instability, first in the West, tending to go over into polarizations, tending to go over into terror of the right or left, and then autocracy is returned for a time, but without the old class and religious structure which had underpinned it for centuries. The classic example is Paris in the Terror.
Since 1789, liberalism, liberalism to the point of revolution, is terrorism's twin, really.
You may say, well then, terror is liberalism's ' evil ' twin. Liberalism is good, old empires were bad, all despots bad, blah blah blah. Can't have too much of it; can't have too much of a good liberal thing...killing Louis XVI, and all the nobles, a smart liberal move.
I say rather, the question then becomes, if terror is liberalism's twin, which is the greater evil, after all, too much liberalism or terror?
Paul Berman, actually, put them both together, sortof, Terror and Liberalism, talking in some places about how the liberal worm can turn.
But, Berman is the liberal worm: "...he calls for a new radicalism and a liberal American interventionism to promote democratic values throughout the world-- a vigorous new politics of American liberalism."
Paul Berman, actually, put them both together, sortof, Terror and Liberalism, talking in some places about how the liberal worm can turn.
But, Berman is the liberal worm: "...he calls for a new radicalism and a liberal American interventionism to promote democratic values throughout the world-- a vigorous new politics of American liberalism."
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