The Illiberal Conception of Freedom 1

To remember

• resurgence of authoritarian regimes
• illiberal conception of freedom > traditional conception of human nature = in slavish bondage to the flesh, to nature, to the world > can only be freed from this bondage through the cultivation of the spirit.
• according to Plato > Democracy, in seeking to place personal freedom above and before all else, inevitably degenerates into tyranny because it places demagogues in power who ultimately destroy the institutions that raised them to high office.
• Spinoza: human will = in bondage to emotion > man = prey to his emotion + man not his own master > lies at the mercy of fortune
• idea of a spiritual discipline leading to an inner freedom = actually opposed to “true” human freedom.
• David Hume ridiculed traditional forms of spiritual discipline in western tradition
• definition of man as a social animal = met with general assent
• middle of the twentieth century = idea of freedom = to mean “doing your own thing,”

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Preceding

Lots to be said about freedom

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Additional reading

• Republican Party tinkering on fascism

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Related

1. Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
2. He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
3. Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
4. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
5. Medieval schools of philosophy – Averroism…
6. Baruch Spinoza
7. Spinoza Defends Himself
8. Be The Cause. Inspiration From Spinoza.
9. When Spinoza Met Marx. Experiments in Nonhumanist
10. David Hume
11. Leo Strauss, Spinoza, and an enlightened faith
12. The Controversial Debate Over Stand Your Ground Laws
13. “Age of Consent Laws: Balancing Protection and Autonomy Across the World”
14. You Hold The Key To Your Happiness
15. Existentialism: A Tool For Gaining Personal Freedom
16. A Reasoned Argument in which I try to set out my views in response to personal freedom and control.
17. FAQ – Enlightenment
18. David Hume on the Problem of Induction
19. David Hume on escaping an overheated brain
20. Hume’s Ethics: Assisted Suicide
21. Empiricism- John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume
22. Lying to Ourselves
23. In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable

Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon

Wednesday

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On 17 April 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech to the EU parliament in which he stated, “There is a fascination with the illiberal, that is growing all the time.” Since being elected French president Macron has campaigned passionately and tirelessly for reforms in the EU, and while Macron seems to be pretty “woke” to the actual problems facing the EU, his “solution” to this problem is not anything controversial from an EU standpoint, but rather the familiar EU talking point that, if the EU isn’t working quite as well as way hoped, then the solution is more EU. In other words, Macron is doubling down on the EU. To be fair, Macron is also insisting upon changes in the EU that might make a small difference, but at a time when closer European unity is so controversial that EU leaders don’t dare put it to…

View original post 1,749 more words

Expecting the E.U. to stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan

Reshad Jalali and his family eventually fled for Europe in 2006. Now Jalali faces his biggest disappointment of all, watching the Taliban return to the streets of his home country while many in his adopted continent appear more consumed by the potential for another refugee crisis, rather than in the fate of the Afghan people.

“As an Afghan living in Europe, I’m shocked at what I have heard,”

says Jalali, who now lives in Brussels and works as a Policy Officer at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a collective of NGOs.

“I was expecting the E.U. to stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan rather than focusing on the narrow topic of migration.”

We may not overlook the fact that the European Union has a huge stake in Afghanistan’s past and future, given than most E.U. member states are also NATO allies and they have together pumped €4 billion in development aid into the country.

How its leaders now respond to the prospect of rising numbers of Afghan refugees will be a key test of how the bloc has absorbed the lessons of 2015, when the Syrian civil war sparked a movement of more than 1 million people into Europe.

writes Charlotte McDonald-Gibson in Time Magzine.

So far, the European response has oscillated between compassion for the fate of ordinary Afghans trapped under Taliban rule, and fear at the potential consequences at home. This was typified by French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech on Monday evening, when he spoke about both the need to

“protect those who are in the greatest danger” and “protect ourselves against large migratory flows”.

The tone had been set earlier in the month, when the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, and Greece sent a letter to the E.U. executive urging them to continue deportations of Afghans with rejected asylum claims, arguing that halting expulsions “sent the wrong signal”.

The six EU member states have warned the bloc’s executive against halting deportations of rejected Afghan asylum seekers arriving in Europe despite major advances of Taliban militants in their country. Those countries agree that

“Stopping returns sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU.” {Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany said in an Aug. 5 letter to the European Commission.}

The insensitivity of the letter at a time when the Taliban were marching on Kabul sparked outcry, and some signatories backtracked. But it was reflective of the increasingly hostile policies in place since 2015, when Europe’s mismanagement of the crisis caused a surge in support for far-right and nationalist parties.

This new security-driven approach has seen E.U- backed missions accused of returning people to life-threatening situations in Libya and illegally pushing back boats which had reached Greek waters.

Afghans arriving in Europe bore the brunt of many of these harsher policies, with leaders reasoning that fatigue had set in about the “forever war” and Afghans could be sent back without much outcry.

Since 2015, around 570,000 Afghans have requested asylum in the EU, the letter from the six EU countries noted, 44,000 in 2020 alone, making Afghanistan the second most important country of origin last year. Strangely enough in the letter the countries admit that they

“fully recognise the sensitive situation in Afghanistan in light of the foreseen withdrawal of international troops.”

They added that an estimated 4.6 million Afghans were already displaced, many of them in the region. A senior EU official said some 400,000 Afghans have been internally displaced over recent months and in recent days there has been an increase in numbers of people fleeing to Iran.

In some cases, people forcibly returned to Afghanistan were killed within months of arriving.

It is through this prism that the Taliban takeover is viewed in much of Europe, with fierce debate over the likelihood of another refugee crisis. Former Portuguese diplomat Bruno Macaes, writing in Politico, claimed another refugee wave “now seems inevitable”, citing Afghan diplomats who told him:

“nothing can stop them – not even tanks”.

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“We should have learned from the past crisis and be mobilized to swiftly react to the situation now,”

says Reshad Jalali. He agrees that supporting displaced people in Afghanistan and the surrounding region is key, but also points to measures that could be implemented immediately within the E.U, including approving all pending asylum decisions for Afghans, speeding up family reunions, and creating more pathways for resettlement.

 

Please read more about it: > Europe Sees a Migration Crisis in the Making in Afghanistan. Have the Lessons of the 2015 Surge Been Learned?

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Preceding

Grounded

Refugees At The Border- A Blessing Or Burden?

Bringers of agony, Trained in Belgium and Syria

The Iranian American Frieda Afary looking with (republican?) American eyes at Iran

Taliban conquest of Afghanistan a clock to turn back years

Worse Than Saigon

Afghanistan: international community statement

Afghan filmmaker Sahraa Karimi

Afghanistan — What It Tells You

A reminder to what could happen to Christians in Afghanistan

Moving heaven and earth to get every last American in Afghanistan back to American soil

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Additional reading

1. If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for
2. Social media a destabilisation tool in the Middle East and Syrian conflict
3. Is ISIS a product of American in-action or a product of direct action
4. Refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and created fear
5. Islamophobic hate crimes rise in UK following terror attacks
6. Summary for the year 2015 #1 Threat and fear
7. 2015 In the Picture
8. At the closing hours of 2016 #1 Looking down at terror
9. 2016 in review Politics #2 Persons of the year

wildfires burning down Amazon forest

We have never seen anything like this before! Right now, Thousands  of wildfires are burning down the Amazon, with black smoke plunging entire cities into darkness…

Ahead of the Group of Seven summit in France, French President Emmanuel Macron called the situation in Brazil an “international crisis” and vowed to make it a priority point of discussion.

As wildfires continue to engulf the Amazon rainforest at a record pace, Bolsonaro, who has called for the development of the Amazon region in his country, has come under immense scrutiny, with advocates saying fires have increased in areas of the world’s largest rainforest where deforestation has also risen.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is telling other nations not to meddle in its growing crisis in the Amazon rainforest as wildfires continue to spread across the region, shortly after he said Brazil didn’t “have the resources” on its own to extinguish the blaze.

“These countries that send money here, they don’t send it out of charity,”

the right-wing president said in a live broadcast on Thursday, Reuters reports.

“They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty,”

he added.

 

The lungs of our planet are choking, but now Brazil’s far-right President Bolsonaro has come under massive pressure to act– let’s use this moment to make sure he protects to forest, before it’s too late! Sign here and share with everyone you know.