The Liberalism of Refuge

Key Question Being Explored in This Insight:

Why are liberal societies still admirable despite their flaws, for providing refuge, limiting power, and enabling new opportunities?

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Institution: Yale University

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Why are liberal societies still admirable despite their flaws, for providing refuge, limiting power, and enabling new opportunities?

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 20, 2024

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This video discusses the resurgence of skepticism towards liberalism over the past several years, highlighting debates from both the left and right regarding its validity. The author reflects on their initial doubts about liberalism and suggests that while skepticism can be beneficial, current criticisms may have exaggerated the issues within liberal societies.

The discussion transitions into the notion of "refuge" as a key attribute of liberalism, emphasizing that liberal societies aim to protect individuals from the ambitions of power-seeking elites, whether in political or economic realms. This video critiques common narratives surrounding liberalism, such as the concept of "autopsy" (diagnosing liberalism's failures) and "demonology" (assigning blame to liberalism for societal issues), arguing that these approaches overlook the positive aspects of liberalism.

The author suggests that liberalism should be viewed through the lens of offering refuge, which can foster an environment where individuals are less vulnerable to dominant powers. This video perspective includes historical reflections on the roles of markets and capitalism as mechanisms to provide mobility and escape from oppressive forces.

The piece concludes with a call to recenter the discussion around the noble and generous aspects of liberalism, particularly its capacity to offer refuge to those in need, thus countering fears that liberalism solely promotes self-interest. The author uses examples from American history to illustrate this point, advocating for a reframed understanding of liberalism as a moral vision that champions support and safety for individuals within society.

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Here are five key points from the video on liberalism:

1. **Skepticism and Critique of Liberalism**: The video addresses the growing skepticism towards liberalism from both the left and right, reflecting a shift in public discourse over the past several years. There is a noted tendency for critiques to take the form of "autopsy," examining supposed failures of liberalism, and "demonology," attributing various societal issues solely to liberal ideology as an abstract entity.

2. **Historical Convideo of Liberalism**: The author discusses how, following the fall of communism in 1989, there was an overconfidence in liberal democracy and markets, which has since been challenged by a resurgence of skepticism and fundamental doubts about liberal societies. This needs to be balanced with an understanding of the historical virtues of liberalism, which have often been overlooked amidst the critique.

3. **The Concept of 'Refuge'**: A core argument is that the essence of liberal societies lies in creating a "refuge" against the ambitions of power-seeking individuals (often referred to as "princes"). This strategic provision of refuge allows individuals in a society to avoid being fully subject to the prevailing power dynamics, thus promoting stability and safeguarding personal autonomy.

4. **Liberalism and Markets**: The video posits that markets, while often associated with capitalism and inequality, serve a crucial political function in liberal societies by allowing for the mobility of value and enabling individuals to escape oppressive circumstances. The author argues that markets should be evaluated based on their capacity to maintain this function versus creating new forms of oppression.

5. **A Moral Vision for Liberalism**: The author concludes by advocating for a reimagined focus on the noble aspects of liberalism, particularly the moral imperative to offer refuge. This draws upon historical references and the aspirations expressed by foundational figures of liberal societies, suggesting that promoting the offer of refuge can inspire a higher, more altruistic aim within liberal politics.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video regarding liberalism and its critiques:

1. **Skepticism about Liberalism**:
- "There have been a lot of debates about liberalism in the public arena over the past five to seven years, and a lot of skepticism about liberalism has come up from various quarters, from left and right parts of the political spectrum."

2. **Historical Convideo**:
- "In the wake of 1989 when communism seemed to have fallen, and it seemed that liberal democracy might be really the only game in town... there was a kind of confidence, maybe an overconfidence in parts of liberal societies."

3. **Doubts about Liberalism**:
- "...the doubts have been overstated, and... we’ve actually lost track of what have historically been some of the motivating virtues of liberalism."

4. **Genres of Criticism**:
- "In recent discussion, it does seem as though autopsy and demonology have become the main sort of genres of writing about liberalism."

5. **Autopsy and Demonology**:
- "Autopsy, that's diagnosing why liberalism failed... demonology... is to see this entity, this ism liberalism as somehow the cause of all our political and even moral problems."

6. **Long-standing Critique**:
- "The word liberalism with the ism attached was first coined by opponents... who wanted to characterize liberal beliefs in individual autonomy and consent."

7. **Refuge as a Concept**:
- "The notion of refuge... helps to explain some of the features of liberal societies that otherwise seem puzzling or frustrating to us."

8. **Political Power and Refuge**:
- "The liberal insight is that forms of government and society are best if they create refuge from the very people that they empower."

9. **Limits in Democracy**:
- "...there are limits to the authority that a duly elected government should have, that there are rights... that should be protected against any government no matter how much the majority supported it."

10. **Communities and Individual Choice**:
- "...the mere option to leave which liberal societies prioritize... does not mean that liberal societies produce a dangerous and unfulfilling superficiality."

11. **Historical Convideo of Liberalism**:
- "In the history of political thought, the analogy to marriage has been important... even when you open the door to making changes in society... most people most of the time prefer to stay where they are."

12. **Economic Framework**:
- "Markets were historically introduced and remain a political technology... to liberate value from land... and allow people to flee."

13. **Desire for Refuge**:
- "Offering refuge is something actually quite magnanimous... it requires you almost to overflow, and capacity so that you have some of yourself and your resources to offer to others."

14. **Asylum and Historical Roots**:
- "The notion of refuge was important to George Washington... who spoke of the hope that we would all be able to sit in safety."

15. **Noble Aspirations of Liberalism**:
- "Focusing on the offer of refuge can provide liberals with something high and noble and beautiful, really to rally around."

These quotes encapsulate the main themes of the video, highlighting critical perspectives on liberalism, historical convideo, the importance of refuge, and the potential for liberal societies to aspire to something noble and meaningful.

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There have been a lot of debates about liberalism in the

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public arena over the past five to seven years,

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and a lot of skepticism about liberalism has

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come up from various quarters, from left

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and right parts of the political spectrum.

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And in truth, I was originally drawn into political

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philosophy by my own doubts about parts

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of theories of liberalism.

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But, it seemed to me that in recent years, some

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of the objections to liberal societies have been stated in a

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particularly dramatic form.

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And real deep doubts are gathering about,

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liberal societies and liberal democratic governments.

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Doubts seemed to go too far.

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So, you know, in the wake of 1989 when communism,

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seemed to have fallen,

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and it seemed that liberal democracy might be really the

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only gay in town there were, there was a kind

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of confidence, maybe an overconfidence

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and parts of liberal, societies,

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especially markets and the spread of markets.

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And at that point, it was helpful

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to have skepticism about liberalism in the public arena,

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to keep us from a sort of overconfidence.

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But, but today we're in a different place.

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Um, it seems to me that the doubts have been overstated,

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and that in public debate, we've actually lost track of

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what have historically been some of the, motivating

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virtues of liberalism.

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And, so in this piece, the liberalism of refuge, I try

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to put forward at least one interpretation of a kind

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of moral vision that liberals should stand up

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for, in my view.

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Uh, and that I think has been forgotten.

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I begin the piece, by saying that in recent discussion,

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it does seem as though, autopsy,

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and demonology have become the main sort of genres

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of writing about liberalism.

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Here's what I mean, autopsy, that's diagnosing,

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why liberalism failed, which was the name

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of an important book by political theorist, Patrick Danin,

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that came out at a number of years ago.

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And there've been more writings in that vein.

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And there the assumption is

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that liberal societies have really already produced

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their own demise.

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And the only question is, is how to diagnose

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the, the causes of that.

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So that's autopsy. And then I mentioned demonology, too.

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There's another way of writing about liberalism,

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which has become more

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and more common, which is to see this entity,

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this ism liberalism as somehow the cause

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of all our political and even moral problems.

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And liberalism itself, is often,

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defined in a very loose way or, or not at all.

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There's a tendency, in writing about politics

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to find isms these abstract entities

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and give them an enormous

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Power and agency and history.

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And that really is what, you know, much earlier, ways

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of thinking did with, with demons.

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Demons were abstract entities that you could not really see

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or define, but that were the source of,

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of our evils in our lives.

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And liberalism, along with other isms, capitalism,

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racism, et cetera, are often seen to be these,

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enormously powerful forces.

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I'm not denying that there are phenomena,

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that are described by these words,

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but with liberalism in particular,

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the debate has become unhelpful, I think.

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And I notice in the piece that actually the word liberalism

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with the ism attached was first coined by, opponents

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of the liberals in early 19th century Europe,

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especially in Spain, it seems, but,

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but quickly spreading elsewhere, who wanted to characterize

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liberal beliefs in individual autonomy and consent.

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And representative government as a kind

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of heresy soms were also heresies.

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Um, and, critics,

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from the Catholic Church

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and elsewhere labeled, liberal societies as a,

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as a new kind of heresy.

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I just think that, there's a, a kind of shadow debate

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that goes on between these terms often instead of,

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isolating more substantive issues.

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Um, and,

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and this notion of refuge, which maybe we can come to now,

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is, is one through line that I think helps to explain some

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of the features of liberal societies that

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otherwise seem puzzling or frustrating to us.

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The fundamental starting point,

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or liberals historically, has been the insight that most

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of us are subject, to a relatively few

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in societies who are ambitious power seeking.

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These are the individuals that the, Renaissance

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writer Machiavelli, refer to as princes or aspiring princes.

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We're all subject to them to their battles for glory

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and power and influence.

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Some of them go into politics,

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some of them go into business.

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And the question is, how can we reduce our vulnerability

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to these powerful elites?

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And the liberal insight is that, forms of government

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and society are best if they create refuge

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from the very people that they empower.

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So a few examples from the history of political thought.

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Uh, monarchies obviously empower royal families,

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kings, queens princess.

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Um, but you can't have a liberal monarchy.

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Certain theorists argued if in your society

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with a monarch, you also had other nobles or parliaments

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or other, centers of power

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that maybe couldn't challenge the monarch

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or complete sovereignty over the society,

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but they could offer a degree of, of protection

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and shelter from, efforts by the monarchs

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to impose their view.

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And so Montesquieu was one philosopher

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who made this distinction and,

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and distinguished,

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despotic regimes from monarchical regimes by suggesting

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that, a kind of liberal monarchy could exist so long

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as there were shelters, from the full extent

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of, of royal power.

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Similarly, a case has been made about democracies.

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So in democracies, the people,

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or really the individuals who have claimed

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to represent the people to speak for them are empowered.

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And of course, we want them to be empowered.

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That's the meaning of a democracy. So

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that popular will can be put into law, but,

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but still a democracy can be more

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or less liberal, depending on whether there are,

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protections from the current

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instantiation of the popular will.

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So one group might win an election,

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one party might win an election,

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but what happens to all those people, often a large part

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of the society that voted against that party?

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To what extent should they be subject

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to the particular program of the winners?

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Well, to some extent, we wanna say

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that's why we have elections,

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but in liberal democracies, we often, we also think

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that there are, limits to the authority that,

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and legitimacy that even,

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a duly elected government should have,

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that there are rights, for example,

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that should be protected against any government no matter

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how, how,

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much the majority supported it in the last election.

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And so a liberal democracy offers associations,

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divisions of power, checks

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and balances, a a vital civil society.

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All those features of liberal societies can be understood

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as, as efforts to offer a kind of refuge to people,

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from the reigning power at the moment.

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So all that is just about internal refugees.

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That is, refuge is almost a sort of metaphor.

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The idea is that when you're in a liberal society,

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your whole life is not fully subject,

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to the reigning power seekers.

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Now, because offering refuge is a part of liberal societies,

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it often makes sense.

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I suggest to, for those societies to err on the side of

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offering refuge to, those fleeing

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terrible situations in other countries too.

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Now, I don't make that the criteria

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whether a society is liberal.

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It's, it's more of a, a, a tendency, that is,

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if you see the moral core of liberal societies as this offer

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of refuge so that people can live,

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unmolested by political power as much as possible, then

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you'll likely be more sympathetic to the plight of refugees

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who are fleeing the reverse situation elsewhere.

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It was first drawn into political theory, really

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by the strength of some powerful, criticisms

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of liberalism, especially the idea that it,

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liberal societies prioritize individual choice in a way that

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can leave us, prone to,

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a kind of loneliness, feeling alone in a way

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that can dissolve traditional communities religions.

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Um, there's a, a communitarian

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concern about liberal societies

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that is powerful and deservedly so.

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I think, however,

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however, this concern has been inflated in recent times

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to suggest that the mere presence of refuge,

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or to put it differently, the mere option to leave

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a particular community, a particular marriage even,

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or other human relationships, the mere option to leave,

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which liberal societies prioritize so

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that no one is trapped in oppressive situations.

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Some critics suggest that the mere option to leave

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itself dissolves, community and tradition

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and leaves us atomized individuals powerless against

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governments and unhappy.

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And I think that overstates the argument.

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Um, you know, in the history of political thought, the,

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the analogy to marriage has been important.

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So that liberal theorists sometimes were those who often

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made the case for allowing divorce.

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Liberal theorists in the realm of religion made the case

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for the multiplication of different religions,

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different sects of religions, so that you could leave

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one church and, and, and try another.

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Now, the extreme version of that, that we surf superficially

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between different religions

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and as a result just become unserious without the benefits

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of attachment community in any particular religion.

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That does seem negative for many people,

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but it's just not the case historically

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or empirically

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that liberal societies always have produced that kind

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of superficial surfing, as though all

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of life were a shopping mall

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and we were, coasting through,

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and just choosing consumer goods.

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People do seem to produce new communities,

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new religious sects, new relationships,

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that can sustain them ethically.

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It was important to John Locke, kind of the pa pa,

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patron saint of, of liberals, of liberal philosophers.

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It was important to him to say that, people are not

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so easily got out of their usual forms.

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That's his way of saying that even when you open the door

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to making changes in society,

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or to leaving your current community for a better one,

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most people most of the time prefer to stay where they are.

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They are tied to their families,

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to their lives, to their work.

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It really takes, in the phrase that Locke used

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and that the Declaration

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of Independence in the United States uses a long train

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of abuses and us patience, to get people

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to leave behind their communities.

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And I think we, we underestimate the power of,

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of these human ties when we, worry

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that liberal society simply by allowing people to escape,

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oppress oppressive circumstances, open the door to a,

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a dangerous and unfulfilling superficiality.

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Liberal societies are associated with, spread of markets

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and with capitalism, and we all know that capitalism

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can lead to the accumulation of enormous wealth

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and a few hands to enormous inequalities.

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Um, I don't think liberals should deny that.

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I think the notion of refuge

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that I'm putting forward offers us a criterion

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that we can use to judge when capitalism is working

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well and when it's not.

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And, and the key point here is to recognize that markets

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were historically introduced

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and remain, a political,

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technology.

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The purpose of markets originally, one purpose of them was

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to make, human value value mobile

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that is to liberate value from land, which is where,

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and futile times most value was trapped, really, so

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that whoever controlled the land, controlled the value

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markets, make mobile, make mobile value,

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and therefore allow people to flee

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one, one place to another.

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Markets more generally, allow for the order

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of a society to be upset.

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In fact, this is what some, the complaint about markets seem

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to, threaten the stability of traditional communities.

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That's true. But they also, in the course of doing that,

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allow people, to flee

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who whoever's in charge in those particular communities.

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Now, if we keep that political function of markets in mind,

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we can see that sometimes markets offer a sort

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of necessary leavening, of political authority.

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And other times, if they are instead producing new

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oppressively, enormous accumulations of power,

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then they're not really fulfilling that political function.

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And they should be, you know,

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polies should be broken up.

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Corporations should be split up.

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So this way of looking at markets, I think,

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is actually productive

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and reminds us of their political function

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and offers a criterion that we can use

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to judge when markets are working well politically

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and when they're instead sort of, contributing

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to the problem that liberals are always, focused on,

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which is, the undue accumulation of power in a way

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that people can't escape from.

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I am the piece by talking about using a kind

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of old fashioned word nobility,

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to describe this perspective.

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And I do that on purpose because in many

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of the debates about liberalism, one can detect

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that one deep concern about liberal societies is

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that they seem to offer nothing really high to aim for

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that they focus us on our focus,

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us on our own self-interest, that they make us,

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materialistic and selfish.

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We are concerned just with our own comforts,

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and, and with stability.

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There's a bit of truth to that.

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But I do think that focusing on the offer of refuge,

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can, can be a counterweight, to those concerns.

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Many of the critics of liberalism focus on our, our seeking

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of refuge, that we are fearful creatures

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and self-interested, and there's something low about us,

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just wanting safety and comfort.

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But I think we should also focus on, on the o other side,

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the offer of refuge that liberal societies make.

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Offering refuge is something actually quite, magnanimous

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and it requires you to have a certain degree of stability.

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Um, but it requires you almost to overflow,

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and capacity so that you have some of yourself

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and your resources to offer to others.

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And, and that's an almost aristocratic magnanimous point

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of view that liberal societies take on

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when they offer refuge.

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And I point out near the end of the piece, how how common

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that language of offering asylum

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or refuge was amongst those who founded the United States.

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I mean, there are towns and, and, Texas

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and elsewhere in the United States named, asylum,

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the notion of refuge was important

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to George Washington, who's favorite biblical verse.

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Um, spoke of the hope that we would all be able to sit,

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in peace, under our own vine and fig tree,

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and that the country would offer to groups

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that had not found that sort of safety,

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just that kind of hope.

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Uh, as he wrote in a famous note to the, the Jews

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of Newport, Rhode Island, for example.

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I do hope that focusing on the offer of refuge

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can provide liberals with something high and noble

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and beautiful, really to rally around,

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and to not think of their philosophy liberalism as merely

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a synonym for self-interest.

The Evolving Debate on Liberalism: A Call to Rediscover Its Virtues

00:00:00 - There have been a lot of debates about liberalism in the public arena over the past five to seven years, and a lot of skepticism about liberalism has come up from various quarters, from left and right parts of the political spectrum. And in truth, I was originally drawn into political philosophy by my own doubts about parts of theories of liberalism. But, it seemed to me that in recent years, some of the objections to liberal societies have been stated in a particularly dramatic form. And real deep doubts are gathering about,

00:00:38 - Doubts seemed to go too far. So, you know, in the wake of 1989 when communism, seemed to have fallen, and it seemed that liberal democracy might be really the only gay in town there were, there was a kind of confidence, maybe an overconfidence and parts of liberal, societies, especially markets and the spread of markets. And at that point, it was helpful to have skepticism about liberalism in the public arena,

00:01:12 - But, but today we're in a different place. it seems to me that the doubts have been overstated, and that in public debate, we've actually lost track of what have historically been some of the, motivating virtues of liberalism. And, so in this piece, the liberalism of refuge, I try to put forward at least one interpretation of a kind of moral vision that liberals should stand up

Reassessing Liberalism: Autopsy and Demonology

00:01:41 - and that I think has been forgotten. I begin the piece, by saying that in recent discussion, it does seem as though, autopsy, and demonology have become the main sort of genres of writing about liberalism. Here's what I mean, autopsy, that's diagnosing, why liberalism failed, which was the name of an important book by political theorist, Patrick Danin, that came out at a number of years ago. And there've been more writings in that vein.

00:02:12 - that liberal societies have really already produced their own demise. And the only question is, is how to diagnose the, the causes of that. So that's autopsy. And then I mentioned demonology, too. There's another way of writing about liberalism, which has become more and more common, which is to see this entity, this ism liberalism as somehow the cause of all our political and even moral problems.

00:02:45 - defined in a very loose way or, or not at all. There's a tendency, in writing about politics to find isms these abstract entities and give them an enormous Power and agency and history. And that really is what, you know, much earlier, ways of thinking did with, with demons. Demons were abstract entities that you could not really see or define, but that were the source of,

The Critique and Historical Context of Liberalism

00:03:15 - And liberalism, along with other isms, capitalism, racism, et cetera, are often seen to be these, enormously powerful forces. I'm not denying that there are phenomena, that are described by these words, but with liberalism in particular, the debate has become unhelpful, I think. And I notice in the piece that actually the word liberalism with the ism attached was first coined by, opponents

00:03:50 - especially in Spain, it seems, but, but quickly spreading elsewhere, who wanted to characterize liberal beliefs in individual autonomy and consent. And representative government as a kind of heresy soms were also heresies. and, critics, from the Catholic Church and elsewhere labeled, liberal societies as a, as a new kind of heresy.

00:04:21 - that goes on between these terms often instead of, isolating more substantive issues. and, and this notion of refuge, which maybe we can come to now, is, is one through line that I think helps to explain some of the features of liberal societies that otherwise seem puzzling or frustrating to us. The fundamental starting point, or liberals historically, has been the insight that most

Power Dynamics and the Liberal Refuge

00:04:54 - in societies who are ambitious power seeking. These are the individuals that the, Renaissance writer Machiavelli, refer to as princes or aspiring princes. We're all subject to them to their battles for glory and power and influence. Some of them go into politics, some of them go into business. And the question is, how can we reduce our vulnerability

00:05:23 - And the liberal insight is that, forms of government and society are best if they create refuge from the very people that they empower. So a few examples from the history of political thought. monarchies obviously empower royal families, kings, queens princess. but you can't have a liberal monarchy. Certain theorists argued if in your society with a monarch, you also had other nobles or parliaments

00:05:58 - that maybe couldn't challenge the monarch or complete sovereignty over the society, but they could offer a degree of, of protection and shelter from, efforts by the monarchs to impose their view. And so Montesquieu was one philosopher who made this distinction and, and distinguished, despotic regimes from monarchical regimes by suggesting that, a kind of liberal monarchy could exist so long

Refuge and Resilience in Liberal Democracies

00:06:30 - of, of royal power. Similarly, a case has been made about democracies. So in democracies, the people, or really the individuals who have claimed to represent the people to speak for them are empowered. And of course, we want them to be empowered. That's the meaning of a democracy. So that popular will can be put into law, but, but still a democracy can be more or less liberal, depending on whether there are,

00:06:59 - instantiation of the popular will. So one group might win an election, one party might win an election, but what happens to all those people, often a large part of the society that voted against that party? To what extent should they be subject to the particular program of the winners? Well, to some extent, we wanna say that's why we have elections, but in liberal democracies, we often, we also think that there are, limits to the authority that,

00:07:31 - a duly elected government should have, that there are rights, for example, that should be protected against any government no matter how, how, much the majority supported it in the last election. And so a liberal democracy offers associations, divisions of power, checks and balances, a a vital civil society. All those features of liberal societies can be understood as, as efforts to offer a kind of refuge to people,

Refuge and the Moral Core of Liberal Societies

00:08:03 - So all that is just about internal refugees. That is, refuge is almost a sort of metaphor. The idea is that when you're in a liberal society, your whole life is not fully subject, to the reigning power seekers. Now, because offering refuge is a part of liberal societies, it often makes sense. I suggest to, for those societies to err on the side of offering refuge to, those fleeing

00:08:37 - Now, I don't make that the criteria whether a society is liberal. It's, it's more of a, a, a tendency, that is, if you see the moral core of liberal societies as this offer of refuge so that people can live, unmolested by political power as much as possible, then you'll likely be more sympathetic to the plight of refugees who are fleeing the reverse situation elsewhere.

00:09:09 - by the strength of some powerful, criticisms of liberalism, especially the idea that it, liberal societies prioritize individual choice in a way that can leave us, prone to, a kind of loneliness, feeling alone in a way that can dissolve traditional communities religions. there's a, a communitarian concern about liberal societies

The Misconception of Refuge: Community vs. Individualism in Liberal Societies

00:09:39 - I think, however, however, this concern has been inflated in recent times to suggest that the mere presence of refuge, or to put it differently, the mere option to leave a particular community, a particular marriage even, or other human relationships, the mere option to leave, which liberal societies prioritize so that no one is trapped in oppressive situations.

00:10:13 - itself dissolves, community and tradition and leaves us atomized individuals powerless against governments and unhappy. And I think that overstates the argument. you know, in the history of political thought, the, the analogy to marriage has been important. So that liberal theorists sometimes were those who often made the case for allowing divorce.

00:10:44 - for the multiplication of different religions, different sects of religions, so that you could leave one church and, and, and try another. Now, the extreme version of that, that we surf superficially between different religions and as a result just become unserious without the benefits of attachment community in any particular religion. That does seem negative for many people, but it's just not the case historically

Understanding Community in Liberal Societies

00:11:15 - that liberal societies always have produced that kind of superficial surfing, as though all of life were a shopping mall and we were, coasting through, and just choosing consumer goods. People do seem to produce new communities, new religious sects, new relationships, that can sustain them ethically. It was important to John Locke, kind of the pa pa, patron saint of, of liberals, of liberal philosophers.

00:11:50 - so easily got out of their usual forms. That's his way of saying that even when you open the door to making changes in society, or to leaving your current community for a better one, most people most of the time prefer to stay where they are. They are tied to their families, to their lives, to their work. It really takes, in the phrase that Locke used and that the Declaration of Independence in the United States uses a long train

00:12:21 - to leave behind their communities. And I think we, we underestimate the power of, of these human ties when we, worry that liberal society simply by allowing people to escape, oppress oppressive circumstances, open the door to a, a dangerous and unfulfilling superficiality. Liberal societies are associated with, spread of markets and with capitalism, and we all know that capitalism

Markets as Mechanisms of Mobility and Refuge

00:12:55 - and a few hands to enormous inequalities. I don't think liberals should deny that. I think the notion of refuge that I'm putting forward offers us a criterion that we can use to judge when capitalism is working well and when it's not. And, and the key point here is to recognize that markets were historically introduced and remain, a political, technology.

00:13:26 - to make, human value value mobile that is to liberate value from land, which is where, and futile times most value was trapped, really, so that whoever controlled the land, controlled the value markets, make mobile, make mobile value, and therefore allow people to flee one, one place to another.

00:13:58 - of a society to be upset. In fact, this is what some, the complaint about markets seem to, threaten the stability of traditional communities. That's true. But they also, in the course of doing that, allow people, to flee who whoever's in charge in those particular communities. Now, if we keep that political function of markets in mind, we can see that sometimes markets offer a sort

Refuge and the Political Function of Markets

00:14:28 - And other times, if they are instead producing new oppressively, enormous accumulations of power, then they're not really fulfilling that political function. And they should be, you know, polies should be broken up. Corporations should be split up. So this way of looking at markets, I think, is actually productive and reminds us of their political function and offers a criterion that we can use to judge when markets are working well politically

00:15:00 - to the problem that liberals are always, focused on, which is, the undue accumulation of power in a way that people can't escape from. I am the piece by talking about using a kind of old fashioned word nobility, to describe this perspective. And I do that on purpose because in many of the debates about liberalism, one can detect that one deep concern about liberal societies is that they seem to offer nothing really high to aim for

00:15:30 - us on our own self-interest, that they make us, materialistic and selfish. We are concerned just with our own comforts, and, and with stability. There's a bit of truth to that. But I do think that focusing on the offer of refuge, can, can be a counterweight, to those concerns. Many of the critics of liberalism focus on our, our seeking of refuge, that we are fearful creatures

Embracing the Magnanimity of Refuge in Liberal Societies

00:16:04 - just wanting safety and comfort. But I think we should also focus on, on the o other side, the offer of refuge that liberal societies make. Offering refuge is something actually quite, magnanimous and it requires you to have a certain degree of stability. but it requires you almost to overflow, and capacity so that you have some of yourself and your resources to offer to others. And, and that's an almost aristocratic magnanimous point

00:16:37 - when they offer refuge. And I point out near the end of the piece, how how common that language of offering asylum or refuge was amongst those who founded the United States. I mean, there are towns and, and, Texas and elsewhere in the United States named, asylum, the notion of refuge was important to George Washington, who's favorite biblical verse. spoke of the hope that we would all be able to sit,

00:17:10 - and that the country would offer to groups that had not found that sort of safety, just that kind of hope. as he wrote in a famous note to the, the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, for example. I do hope that focusing on the offer of refuge can provide liberals with something high and noble and beautiful, really to rally around,

Redefining Self-Interest: A Broader Perspective

00:17:42 - a synonym for self-interest.

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