You need something that feels good. Otherwise, what difference would it make? If you’re not wrong, if I’m right, is that important? Traditionally, religion has required hell to understand heaven. This means that it’s close descent, ignorant, or simply someone else believes in a different way.
The same applies to political extremists on both sides. Each defines itself in opposition to others. Conviction is fully pushed up and seduces itself to reversal.
The golden average in politics and religion balances between extremes. But even this ideal depends on the poles it moves. Moderation is not a lack of contradiction, it is engagement with it.
Heracritus observed that opposition often defines each other. Based on this, famous physicist Neils Bohr argued that while the opposition of trivial truths is clearly wrong, it may also be deep and true, whether it is raining or not. Assert that “reality is objective.” The opposite – “reality is shaped by perception” – is also true. It’s not a category mistake, like asking what color je is. Science defines reality through law. Perception shapes how we experience it. Contradictions do not cancel meaning. It deepens it.
This is not just philosophy, it is also psychology. F. Scott Fitzgerald called the test of first-class intelligence “the ability to maintain the ability to function, with two conflicting ideas in mind at the same time.” Maybe it’s a basic skill to keep you sane.
Today, what is labelled “populism” is not as democratic rejection as a rebellion against liberalism, particularly in its pretense of general conservatism. It argues that it defends people’s will against independent elites, but does so by inverting liberal ideals and using free tools (elections, speeches, constitutional protections) to erode the institutions that allow its rise. It suppresses competing visions of common interests, replaces deliberative consensus, strengthens differences, and undermines the very value it claims to protect.
Consider leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orban and Donald Trump. They have risen within a system of electoral democracy, but they simply adopt those same norms to prosecute dissent.
Like a shadow shaped by light, populist imagination relies on rejecting liberalism. The tone is anti-liberal, but it envisions a liberal audience that values ​​participation and awareness. Freedom, fairness, dignity: frame complaints in liberal language. That intellectual support has passed through an elite circle with its own billionaires in Silicon Valley.
The real threat to democracy is not “go anything” that belongs to liberalism, but rather a moral slackening that continues with some claims. It lies in the estimation of the answer closed to the argument. It is the arrogance of conviction, the arrogance of dogma as faith, the arrogance of faith. You may not realize the security and prosperity that liberal order provides until they are gone. It may be too late at the time.
History gives caution in the face of growing nationalism in Christianity. As Justice Hugo Black wrote in the majority opinion that prayers in public schools would be prohibited, “Every time a government forms an alliance in a certain form of religion, the inevitable consequence is hatred, rude, and even complacent of those who have opposing beliefs.
The danger to liberalism is that it adopts the same stiffness it opposes. If the Liberal Party fights fire with fire, reflecting the enemy’s closed tactics, then they too risk burning the foundations of a free society they are trying to preserve.
Conservatism and liberalism began as a rival vision of freedom. Harvey Mansfield, a leading conservative thinker, presents his strong views as arguments rather than as decrees. He condemns “common conservatism,” populism, and the right to resurrection to reject the liberal, rights-based core of the representative government. These movements exchange deliberations of the emotional majority and cast resentment as democratic legitimacy. He argues that true conservatism must defend the liberal constitution: the right, structure and commitment to reason.
Democracy is not a golden meaning, but an ongoing argument maintained by hard-earned trust. The alternative is tyranny, whether justified by God’s authority or popular will. Both erode the trust that democracy needs. The choice remains ours.
Note
“Contradictions are not signs of falsehood, nor are they signs of truth.” – Blaze Pascal, Pensch. Despite his questionable views of human nature, Pascal is praised for his psychological insights.
“Everything becomes present through the opposite.” -Heraclitus, fragment 53 (standard numbering). Heraclitus lived around 535-475 BC. – Prerequisite: Natural Philosopher before Socrates By James Warren (Routledge Reprint 2013).
“…the opposite of deep truth may also be deep truth.” – Rephrased from a personal conversation with Neils Bohr, his son Age told in “My Father.” Neils Bohr: His life and work as seen by his friends and colleagues (1967). Like his father 50 years ago, Aage won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975.
“The ability to retain the ability to function, with two opposite ideas in mind at the same time.” – Crack up (1936), written during an emotional breakdown, not sure if he could continue.
“Every time a government forms an alliance with a particular form of religion…” – in Hugo Black, the majority opinion Engelv. Vitale, 1962, Law and religionPeter Radan et al. , 2004, “School Prayer.” The prohibition against mandatory or organized prayers in public schools remains today’s law. Discussions and explanations regarding individual religious expressions continue.
“Agitation and variability are inherent to the nature of the Democratic Republic, as stagnation and drowsiness are the absolute law of monarchy.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, American democracy -Book I, Chapter XVII (1835; various current republications).
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Harvey Mansfield – That’s what conservatives do Saves liberalism from liberalism.
– Based on his essay “Conservatism and Common Interests,” National Issues (Spring 2023); Interview with Bill Christol (December 19, 2016); Editor of “Interview with Harvey Mansfield.” point (January 15, 2012).
The fate of the union depends on balance
Tip #203 – The second wind
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
