How We Became Aliens: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 9

Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good

Last time, I argued that if liberals still believe in an open society — free, equal, and pluralistic — we must defend reason. It’s the shared “meeting space” that makes the open society possible.

But we must also understand that reason alone isn’t enough.

If we filter all our experience through rationality, we become separated from it, as if we’re not living life, but observing it with scientific instruments.

We become alienated.

It’s a condition familiar to anyone who’s had a modern, reason-based education, especially in the humanities. It has come to define life within the modern, post-Enlightenment worldview.

And as liberals have become ever more educated, it has come to define them. Thanks to the postwar education boom, more and more of them have gone to college.

Meanwhile they have become alien, and alienating, to more and more voters.

Find the full transcript at DastardlyCleverness.com.

— Spencer