On Liberalism and more

SUNSTEIN: Low probability (that liberalism is self-defeating). The likelihood is that

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we’ll be undermined by anti-liberal and illiberal forces, not self-undermining. I think it’s fair to

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say or to worry that liberalism doesn’t create the conditions for its own self-perpetuation,

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so it’s not as if it’s self-undermining, but it doesn’t necessarily maintain itself. The reason is

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that a society that is flourishing needs a lot of stuff in it, including norms of cooperation, norms

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of charity, norms of mutual support. Liberalism, in my view, doesn’t undermine those things,

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but other forces can undermine them, and it’s not clear liberalism has the resources to respond

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COWEN: When you say other forces, do you mean hostile foreign powers? Or there’s something illiberal in societies that is not sufficiently driven out by liberalism?

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SUNSTEIN: I think there’s something illiberal in the human heart.

In these first few minutes of this exchange between the irreplaceable Tyler Cowen and famed legal scholar Cass Sunstein, the sketch of timbers supporting liberalism as a way of life is laid out. The structure must be conducive to all the stuff society needs. The boards must be placed in such a way as to allow the rules to expand out while finding a tension so as not to collapse on each other. The builders need resources, in the form of materials and their labor.

But be aware! The biggest detractor may reside in the human need to hide things from ourselves.