Does Liberal Universalism Lead to Endless War?

Liberal universalism leads to endless war. And we both once again agreed. Although I wonder if we agree for the same reasons. Uh well, as I kind of point out in again in my book, The Total State, uh, the natural desire of kind of this liberal universalism is to bring everything under its control, right? If if people are fungible, if there are these universal principles that apply to everybody, uh, then we don't have to think about cultural particulars. We don't have to understand the traditions or beliefs of people, we don't have to take into account their heritage or beliefs or traditions. We can simply you know you know universally bring them under one idea. And to be fair, this is again, I think an extension of an economic understanding of liberalism before it's even a uh moral understanding of liberalism.

We need to bring under everybody under the same form of contract law before we can actually like trade with people in East Asia, right? Like we need to have this universal understanding of time zones and uh you know how we conduct business and how we do exchange. Things are entirely foreign to other nations, and so we have to bring them into this kind of universal economic system to ultimately create uh you know the this this exchange. And I think the same tends to then flow from the idea of morality. People look at the morality and it can be extended to all these places in all these times. The problem is, of course, that doesn't work. It turns out that history was not over. Francis Fukuyama was wrong. Uh liberal democracy will not reign in perpetuity, and actually different peoples will reassert their way of life and their beliefs.

And so if you want to keep everybody under this liberal hegemony, if you want to keep everybody locked in to this idea of universal human rights, well, you basically have to go to war all the time. You have to force everyone into these systems, you have to compel them in order uh to get them to participate in these systems in the exact same way. It won't just be voluntary exchange. Uh, and so that's why you end up in this constant struggle. Uh but yeah, that's that's essentially where I'm at. Like if if you see liberal universalism as correct, then everything and everywhere has to be liberal universalism. Like, if you see your views as more parochial and uh more specific to a people or a place, then you don't feel this need to make them exist everywhere. You know, it's it's funny to to think that, yeah, like George Bush and the war in Iraq was part of liberal universalism, right?

You know, and and that's actually one of the distinctions between you know Trump foreign policy, which I would have my own problems with to some degree, but you don't you don't see any of that. You know, he has no desire to uh you know push or val push liberal values or make them behave in certain ways, you know, and and to me that's clearly clearly creates better results. We got we got a few words about liberating the Iranians, but up until that point at least. Yeah, you know, liberals can't help themselves. You know, it's it's well it's that's it's so funny. And that that's this maybe gonna i i i it's part of it's something I struggle with because it's it's it's part of the nature of the constitutional liberal to be constitutionally liberal. Yes, you know, and and and and so there's this odd phenomenon where the people who it to some degree embody some of the spirit and essence that I actually like the most find it the hardest to see because their constitution is such that, well, of course everyone would be this way, you know.

Like and again, uh liberal versus libertarian, these are different terms, but I see with libertarians, I see a lot of really good libertarians who are like, oh, well, like, you know, of course this would work for everyone, like why wouldn't it? You know, and that's that that universalistic tendency makes you believe that the way that you are, everyone else could be that way, and it takes a certain amount of you know, emotional maturity or just life experience, or some people never get there to recognize these kinds of differences, and if you don't see those differences, then you're actually more inclined to feel this desire to push them is you recognize the differences, and I think people in New Hampshire tend to recognize that there's some differences about us, then you constrain your vision and you shrink it because you realize, oh, this isn't for everybody.

Right. Uh and and that's oddly less threatening, which is a weird kind of set of facts to wrap your head around all that. You could say libertarianism, but in one state. That's right.