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The Ezra Klein Show
Judith Shklar was referenced as a political philosopher whose work emphasized that liberals intuitively rank cruelty as the worst vice among human failings. Her writing suggested that liberalism requires self-restraining tolerance to protect citizens from cruel repression and violence, which is a difficult and constraining endeavor.
It seems to me that liberal and humane people, of whom there are many among us, would, if they were asked to rank the vices, put cruelty first. Intuitively, they would choose cruelty as the worst thin...
— Episode: The Blue Wave Cometh?
Episode: The Blue Wave Cometh?
Judith Shklar was referenced as a political philosopher whose work emphasized that liberals intuitively rank cruelty as the worst vice among human failings. Her writing suggested that liberalism requires self-restraining tolerance to protect citizens from cruel repression and violence, which is a difficult and constraining endeavor.
It seems to me that liberal and humane people, of whom there are many among us, would, if they were asked to rank the vices, put cruelty first. Intuitively, they would choose cruelty as the worst thing we do.
This is, to be sure, not the courage of the armed, but that of their likely victims. This is a liberalism that was born out of the cruelties of the religious civil wars, which forever rendered the claims of Christian charity a rebuke to all religious institutions and parties.
The alternative then set and still before us is not one between classical virtue and liberal self-indulgence, but between cruel military and moral repression and violence, and a self-restraining tolerance that fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen, old or young, male or female, black or white. Far from being an amoral free-for-all, liberalism is, in fact, extremely difficult and constraining.