I don’t think they’d really defend any enlightenment political philosopher. They’d say something like “we need to move past what these old dudes were saying 300 years ago, it’s not relevant anymore” as if history began when they were born and our society wasn’t the result of the ideation of people who were reading those enlightenment thinkers.
I think a lot of radlibs agree with that too, performatively at least. Would they agree with the steps necessary to instate a new government that is willing to do that, though? Obviously not.
And trying to play their game by moving your citations to currently-living Marxists making very relevant modern observations and critiques will just be waved off. Their position is anti-intellectualism dressed up as practicality.
I mean, they can say that, but none of them are going to discard Locke or, say, Hamilton’s actual positions such as they have survived to the modern day, so I don’t think it really matters.
I don’t think they’d really defend any enlightenment political philosopher. They’d say something like “we need to move past what these old dudes were saying 300 years ago, it’s not relevant anymore” as if history began when they were born and our society wasn’t the result of the ideation of people who were reading those enlightenment thinkers.
but when I suggest throwing the constitution in the trash where it belongs, suddenly I’M the bad guy
I think a lot of radlibs agree with that too, performatively at least. Would they agree with the steps necessary to instate a new government that is willing to do that, though? Obviously not.
And trying to play their game by moving your citations to currently-living Marxists making very relevant modern observations and critiques will just be waved off. Their position is anti-intellectualism dressed up as practicality.
I mean, they can say that, but none of them are going to discard Locke or, say, Hamilton’s actual positions such as they have survived to the modern day, so I don’t think it really matters.