notebook on liberalism and obsolesence

content/post/the-one,-the-many,-and-the-liberal.md

@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ To be sure, Maritain was a triumphal Liberal. His book is basically posing the q
 
 > "The great problem... is to reconstruct the liberal tradition to make it applicable to an age of technical specialization, bureaucratized power, and mass movements.. .. The revival of liberal hopes depends upon their being attached to specific programs and definite objectives... For the revolution of modernity... has been a moral revolution of extraordinary scope, a radical alteration in what the human imagination is prepared to envisage and demand. ... it has set loose the restless vision of a world in which men might be liberated from age-old burdens, and come to set their own standards and govern their own lives" - Charles Frankel, The Case For Modern Man, 1955
 
-What this means in practice, is a world in which there is a rigid ordering and a clear telos, toward which that order is directed. Only this time, not along the lines of the transcendent One, as understood through Christian Theology, or even Greek philosophy, but as arbitrary expressions of spurious pangs of conscience in individuals with political power, as Thomas Neill writes in 1953:
+What this means in practice, is a world in which there is a rigid ordering and a clear telos toward which that order is directed. Only this time, that ordering is not along the lines of the transcendent One, as understood through Christian Theology, or even Greek philosophy, but as an arbitrary expressions of spurious pangs of conscience in particular individuals with political power, as Thomas Neill writes in 1953:
 
 >  "Liberalism's moral values are likewise derived from the Christian tradition... [it's] strength lay in its taking nourishment from the Christian tradition... But Liberalism changed these ideas, sometimes weakening them, sometimes twisting them to serve different ends... Liberalism kept the old Christian ideas of man's worth, of his dignity, rationality, and freedom, but it rejected the traditional explanation of these ideas in favor of more modern views. Early in the century Liberals paradoxically set forth an ideal that was spiritual in nature, while accepting a materialistic explanation of man and the universe. By the end of the century they asked for social legislation and various forms of protection -- but for servile, nonspiritual ends. Liberalism had renounced its ideals in favor of material comforts... In reducing men to a collective of isolated atoms it stripped them of their supporting associations, and finally it left them standing naked before the State... To the State, then, countless thousands began to turn for protection..." Thomas P. Neill, The Rise And Decline of Liberalism, 1953