Alexander wrote:

The lack of strong principles either side of politics strikes me as a key reason for the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn. There are a lot of people just relieved to have a politician who obviously stands for something and believes what he says.

 ​I agree. I'm no fan of Corbyn (though I'm not necessarily opposed to some of his schemes, like nationalising the railways - British Rail was bad but the privatised railways have actually managed to be worse), but he does have an authenticity that has long been missing from British politics in the age of spin doctors and sound bites. One only has to compare him to the Blair creature or Mr, Slippery, our current PM. Also, he might shake up British politics, by losing so badly.

 I'm not sure we really disagree. In that post and before I made it clear I think the conservative, especially the traditional conservative, cannot subscribe to free market liberalism in its entirety. But he does agree with the free marketeer that too much government interference is a bad thing and that there does need to be plenty of room for private property and private entreprise. The conservative can even admire and utilise the genuine insights of free market economists. The conservative case against free market liberalism doesn't mean the conservative is a socialist or even social democrat. It doesn't mean the conservative simply wishes to blend social democracy and free markets.

 In some ways the conservative is more suspicious of the state than the free market liberal, in that the conservative is a decentralised and localist by principle. The conservative believes in the central importance to all human society of what Burke called the little platoons, or the intermediate associations like family, community, church, and so on. The free market liberal doesn't afford the same status to these associations, especially if they seem to get in the way of individual autonomy. But the centralised state can also be a menace to such associations if it doesn't respect their autonomy and authority, which is one reason why the conservative, as well as the free market liberal, wishes for limits to the role of the state in society. 

I agree that the global-capitalist economy has wreaked havoc on much that conservatives hold dear, but then so has the state. Indeed, the global-capitalist economy is bound up with the modern state. In a different sort of economic system a bit of free trade is not a bad thing. I don't think we should excessively worry about the merchant. That is a peculiar Western paranoia you don't find in other cultures. Even that stern moral Dr. Johnsonn could say men are never so innocently occupied as when they are making money.  

What the conservative wants is neither free market liberalism nor social democracy nor a splitting the difference between these. He wants something genuinely different - the general principles (not necessarily the whole schemes) that are behind quite a few different schools of thought (distributism, agrarianism, Schumacher's movement, and so on) but amount to much the same thing.  

Chomsky is an anarchist, specifically an anarcho--communist. You could argue such radical positions do have some foundation in liberalism in the broad sense. You could even argue Marxism is in some sense an off-shoot of liberalism, but I would not call anarchists liberals without some compelling argument to show they should be called liberals. 

It is true that there is more and more radicalism within contemporary left-liberalism, though I'd still differentiate out and out anarchists or Marxists from liberals. Much identity politics comes not from old fashioned liberalism but from radicalism and Marxism. And identity politics has come more and more to dominate liberalism. I would agree with you if you are saying liberalism, as in contemporary left-liberalism, is hard to define and to delineate into its various aspects and divisions. 

Leaving aside right-wing or classical liberalism and the questions of liberalism within Anglo-American conservatism and focusing only on left-liberalism (which is how Americans tend to use the term in everyday political dicussion and probably how Dr. Feser was using it) there are contemporary liberals who, even though they are what is called new or social liberals rather than classical liberals or what Yanks call libertarians, are strongly committed to older liberal values like free speech and less government interference in peoples' personal lives (though they might be social democrats in economics). These sorts of liberals would be keen on feminism and all the usual sorts of identity politics and social issues, but they balk at measures that are illiberal to support them, like much that occurs on campuses in both Britain and the US, draconian hate speech rules, and so on. I would hazard a guess that some of the reason they balk at these measures is they don't share the more radical, even Marxist derived, conceptual baggage, like class struggle (even when the classes are not economic groups but lmen and women, straights and non-straights, whites and non-whites) and constant preoccupation with power-relations. The old fashioned liberal still tends to see things in traditional individualistic terms, socially if not economically. The solution to the oppression of women is let all have freedom and equality, understood in old fashioned (new or social) liberal terms, and there to be a general live and let live attitude in society. This sort of liberal will criticise freely (unless they fear for their personal safety) aspects of Islam and Islamic civilisations they consider illiberal.

Then there is the sort of liberal who is more indulgent to the radicalism bound up with much identity politics. This sort of liberal is, indeed, often a blend of old fashioned (new or social) liberal and radical, though he doesn't know it. This sort of liberal is less likely to criticise Muslims. He tends to look at things in terms of social power and considers Muslims oppressed non-whites, non-Westerners. He is reticent to criticise even the illiberalism of groups he considers oppressed. This seems to be the sort of liberal Dr. Feser has in mind. He is criticising their hypocrisy. This sort of liberal is influential. He is the usual sort of liberal or left-liberal these days, at least in Britain and Australia. Here he is left-liberal establishment - The BBC-Guardian - and most run of the mill liberals. I don't think America is that different. You could argue that Dr. Feser should have defined his meaning of liberalism a bit deeper, but I do think he is clearly talking about the dominant form of left-liberalism in the modern West. 

I also don't see that pointing out the hypocrisy of the dominant form of left-liberalism necessitates advocating for conservatism. I'm a Platonic univeralist. I have the greatest respect for Islam and traditional Islamic civilisation. I consider it as divine and sacred as Christian civilisation or any other. But I still notice left-liberal hypocrisy surrounding it.
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Ah, but that is identity politics. Palestinians are considered the underdogs, the oppressed by left-liberals and much of the left. Therefore, they are treated as the generally in the right and Israelis in the wrong regardless of the facts.

seigneur wrote:

Reading closer, Feser provides two direct identifiers to the liberalism he is talking about. One is Hillary Clinton and the other is French Revolution. What would you say, what's the connection between these two? My point is that if these two have a connection, then Chomsky fits into the mix just fine.

My judgment is that Dr. Feser was talking about the politically correct sort of liberalism I mentioned when he referred to those hypocritical on Islam. Perhaps he could have been more explicit. He does, though, change to critiquing broader liberal principles (on Church and State, etc). If there is confusion here it isn't really Dr. Feser's fault, I'd say. Contemporary left-liberalism is confused. It combines old fashioned (new or social) liberal (which itself blends classical liberalism with aspects of socialism) with increasing radicalism. I suppose if he were writing a book or a journal article, Dr. Feser would have to really try and make sense of the mess of modern liberalism, but his approach works in a blog post. He does describe the dominant strain of left-liberalism reasonably well.

Hmm. What would you say the facts are? Do for example Chomsky and Finkelstein present facts or narrow ideological talking points when they discuss the topic?

Well, Etzelnik was referring to a particular kind of liberal, but I would say the truth is both sides are to blame for the contemporary problems but that the Palestinians are more so. The Palestinians have been offered almost all they claim quite a few times and rejected it. The Palestinians support terrorism and Hamas. The Israelis have their share of the blame, especially in building settlements. I recognise that some of the settlements are necessary to give Israel defensible borders, but Israel has greatly increased its settlement building beyond this, and seems to use them as a punitive measure against the Palestinians. But, still, the Israelis have sought an agreement and the Palestinians have refused.