I hope future posts are going to provide examples of right-wing illiberalism, whose prevalence should be extremely obvious in the US right now. (Less so in Canada only because the right hasn't been in charge - though one might note how Poilievre is not promising to make the CBC less ideologically biased, but rather to shut the whole thing down because it disagrees with him.) I think the case you're trying to make about liberal norms would be a lot stronger with illustrations of how both sides are violating them.
Well, these posts are largely the result of my reading about current events and finding it reminds me of Plato & Thucydides. In the current case, I simply don't know of any professional organisation that has behaved like this from the right, especially not in Canada; perhaps an example could be found in the US, though I can't think of one off the top of my head. The next post is based around a rhetorical motif, and again, I simply haven't come across that motif in a way would code as left wing. Of course I do not think that contemporary illiberalism is only a left-wing phenomenon.
In some weeks I will get to the subject of tyranny, and I will probably engage with government policy there.
Yeah, I don't think right-wing illiberalism is particularly pronounced in professional organizations as such - but your blog's general topic clearly goes a lot further than professional organizations. (If there even was such a thing as a professional organization in Plato's time, I'm not aware of it.) Right-wing illiberalism is pretty blatant in the government of the United States right now, and I would argue that overall it has far more power than every professional organization put together. Perhaps the most striking recent example (though there are endless others) is the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the bureau produced employment statistics that (though as accurate as we have the tools to measure) were unflattering to Trump. It has been a norm for many decades that accurate data collection is important to governments of any party - until now.
If you're starting with professional organizations as one set of examples and moving to government later, that's fine - but your story will be startlingly and unnecessarily incomplete without the right-wing illiberalism of the US government (and perhaps to a lesser extent those of Hungary, Turkey, India, probably Italy).
Fair enough, though I'm not setting out to give a complete account of contemporary illiberalism here. That would be (merely) empirical; I'm trying to get at the ideas that are driving things (which is what I think Plato & Thucydides are doing, and where I see points of connection with them).
I did try to suggest in the post itself that there is a reason I'm focused here on professional organisations. Trump is one guy, and his prominence is at least partly due to contingencies (especially in 2016, but not only there). When you see the same sort of thing happening in disparate organisations, on the other hand, there a lot less luck involved. You could remove this or that particular actor and still get a similar result. In that respect it's a better way to measure what's moving things. It's also harder to combat over the long term, as a particular president nearing 80 will not be driving events indefinitely. (It is a fair question whether I'm at odds with Thucydides in this approach, but my answer would not be short.)
Trump can also be a good way of getting at what's moving things, but I would not be so interested in whether he has "far more power than every professional organization put together," as you put it - again, there's contingency in one person getting to a position of power. I would instead look to things like the fact that his supporters stay with him however many norms he breaks, for THAT tells us something about the current state of things, and the weakness of those norms today: there was a time when people would not have followed a norm-breaker at all, and it was not so long ago. (Of course whoever has power right now may determine where things are going to go, but I'm more interested in understanding where we are now.)
So when I get to tyranny I may or may not talk about the illiberalism of the right. Living in the UK, I find myself with no shortage of local material from the current government - nor would I lack material in Germany or Canada or the US (etc.).
I don't think the prominent role of a single individual means it all comes down to contingency. There's a reason Hegel spends significant time in the Philosophy of History talking about world-historical individuals. The 2016 election by itself could be taken as contingency; combined with the 2024 election that seems far less plausible. Especially when illiberal ideas like Trump's are rising in Germany, France, the UK, etc. and are already dominant in Hungary and Turkey and India.
And yes, I think you're absolutely right that it's key to focus on the way his supporters stay with him as he breaks so many norms: the only thing I might disagree with is the "however" phrasing, because I don't think they stay with him in *spite* of the norm-breaking but *because* of it. That's why I think things like the Trump phenomenon are an essential part of the story you're telling: if you're looking at the breakdown of an old Cephalus-style social order, they are part and parcel of it.
I agree that the Trump phenomenon is part and parcel of the contemporary breakdown story, as you say, but that's true of many, many other things as well. For each episode I take from Plato and / or Thucydides, you could write dozens of posts, each with its own set of contemporary examples (already I've had people tell me "this is like ... today"). Certainly Trump is on the biggest stage, but I don't think he's always the best way to get to what's characteristic of our own time.
I can show why by being a bit more explicit about the contingency I've been on about. If I say that norm-breaking is characteristic of our time, and that an indication of this is that Trump did X, my case rests on one person actually becoming president to be able to do X. Someone can then point out that if he hadn't won in 2016, he would never have become president, and thus wouldn't have been able to do X, so his doing X is to a significant degree NOT characteristic of our time, but is just the result of the accidents playing out just right (something even more true of 2024, when he turned his head at just the right moment in Butler, PA). If I find multiple professional organisations doing the same kind of thing, it stands on a different level: the head of one of those organisations might have been removed before all this, but we'd still be in more or less the same place.
Of course there are plenty of respects in which Trump does point to characteristic realities, as you suggest, although one could always give other examples: your however / because remark could be applied to much of humanities academia for the last two generations.
Again, more significant than Trump himself is all the support that people provide to Trump for his norm-breaking - and for that matter, the similar support given to Orbán, Erdogǎn, Modi etc. Trump is nothing without his supporters, and they are not contingent.
The point I'm trying to make is larger than one country. Namely, that the story you're telling so far implies (by omission) that the norm-breaking and illiberalism are only left-wing phenomena, which they clearly aren't. Given the renewed power of the left/right divide in contemporary ideas, I think any version of this story that examines only one of those sides is extremely one-sided. It's like trying to tell the story of the march of ideas in the 20th century without mentioning Communism.
I hope future posts are going to provide examples of right-wing illiberalism, whose prevalence should be extremely obvious in the US right now. (Less so in Canada only because the right hasn't been in charge - though one might note how Poilievre is not promising to make the CBC less ideologically biased, but rather to shut the whole thing down because it disagrees with him.) I think the case you're trying to make about liberal norms would be a lot stronger with illustrations of how both sides are violating them.
Well, these posts are largely the result of my reading about current events and finding it reminds me of Plato & Thucydides. In the current case, I simply don't know of any professional organisation that has behaved like this from the right, especially not in Canada; perhaps an example could be found in the US, though I can't think of one off the top of my head. The next post is based around a rhetorical motif, and again, I simply haven't come across that motif in a way would code as left wing. Of course I do not think that contemporary illiberalism is only a left-wing phenomenon.
In some weeks I will get to the subject of tyranny, and I will probably engage with government policy there.
Yeah, I don't think right-wing illiberalism is particularly pronounced in professional organizations as such - but your blog's general topic clearly goes a lot further than professional organizations. (If there even was such a thing as a professional organization in Plato's time, I'm not aware of it.) Right-wing illiberalism is pretty blatant in the government of the United States right now, and I would argue that overall it has far more power than every professional organization put together. Perhaps the most striking recent example (though there are endless others) is the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the bureau produced employment statistics that (though as accurate as we have the tools to measure) were unflattering to Trump. It has been a norm for many decades that accurate data collection is important to governments of any party - until now.
If you're starting with professional organizations as one set of examples and moving to government later, that's fine - but your story will be startlingly and unnecessarily incomplete without the right-wing illiberalism of the US government (and perhaps to a lesser extent those of Hungary, Turkey, India, probably Italy).
Fair enough, though I'm not setting out to give a complete account of contemporary illiberalism here. That would be (merely) empirical; I'm trying to get at the ideas that are driving things (which is what I think Plato & Thucydides are doing, and where I see points of connection with them).
I did try to suggest in the post itself that there is a reason I'm focused here on professional organisations. Trump is one guy, and his prominence is at least partly due to contingencies (especially in 2016, but not only there). When you see the same sort of thing happening in disparate organisations, on the other hand, there a lot less luck involved. You could remove this or that particular actor and still get a similar result. In that respect it's a better way to measure what's moving things. It's also harder to combat over the long term, as a particular president nearing 80 will not be driving events indefinitely. (It is a fair question whether I'm at odds with Thucydides in this approach, but my answer would not be short.)
Trump can also be a good way of getting at what's moving things, but I would not be so interested in whether he has "far more power than every professional organization put together," as you put it - again, there's contingency in one person getting to a position of power. I would instead look to things like the fact that his supporters stay with him however many norms he breaks, for THAT tells us something about the current state of things, and the weakness of those norms today: there was a time when people would not have followed a norm-breaker at all, and it was not so long ago. (Of course whoever has power right now may determine where things are going to go, but I'm more interested in understanding where we are now.)
So when I get to tyranny I may or may not talk about the illiberalism of the right. Living in the UK, I find myself with no shortage of local material from the current government - nor would I lack material in Germany or Canada or the US (etc.).
I don't think the prominent role of a single individual means it all comes down to contingency. There's a reason Hegel spends significant time in the Philosophy of History talking about world-historical individuals. The 2016 election by itself could be taken as contingency; combined with the 2024 election that seems far less plausible. Especially when illiberal ideas like Trump's are rising in Germany, France, the UK, etc. and are already dominant in Hungary and Turkey and India.
And yes, I think you're absolutely right that it's key to focus on the way his supporters stay with him as he breaks so many norms: the only thing I might disagree with is the "however" phrasing, because I don't think they stay with him in *spite* of the norm-breaking but *because* of it. That's why I think things like the Trump phenomenon are an essential part of the story you're telling: if you're looking at the breakdown of an old Cephalus-style social order, they are part and parcel of it.
I agree that the Trump phenomenon is part and parcel of the contemporary breakdown story, as you say, but that's true of many, many other things as well. For each episode I take from Plato and / or Thucydides, you could write dozens of posts, each with its own set of contemporary examples (already I've had people tell me "this is like ... today"). Certainly Trump is on the biggest stage, but I don't think he's always the best way to get to what's characteristic of our own time.
I can show why by being a bit more explicit about the contingency I've been on about. If I say that norm-breaking is characteristic of our time, and that an indication of this is that Trump did X, my case rests on one person actually becoming president to be able to do X. Someone can then point out that if he hadn't won in 2016, he would never have become president, and thus wouldn't have been able to do X, so his doing X is to a significant degree NOT characteristic of our time, but is just the result of the accidents playing out just right (something even more true of 2024, when he turned his head at just the right moment in Butler, PA). If I find multiple professional organisations doing the same kind of thing, it stands on a different level: the head of one of those organisations might have been removed before all this, but we'd still be in more or less the same place.
Of course there are plenty of respects in which Trump does point to characteristic realities, as you suggest, although one could always give other examples: your however / because remark could be applied to much of humanities academia for the last two generations.
Again, more significant than Trump himself is all the support that people provide to Trump for his norm-breaking - and for that matter, the similar support given to Orbán, Erdogǎn, Modi etc. Trump is nothing without his supporters, and they are not contingent.
The point I'm trying to make is larger than one country. Namely, that the story you're telling so far implies (by omission) that the norm-breaking and illiberalism are only left-wing phenomena, which they clearly aren't. Given the renewed power of the left/right divide in contemporary ideas, I think any version of this story that examines only one of those sides is extremely one-sided. It's like trying to tell the story of the march of ideas in the 20th century without mentioning Communism.