[JacksonGariety]

This is the problem generally known as liberalism. Hobbes said the foundation of the state was the arbitrary Will of the individuals in the state. Modern states are thus founded on caprice. The solution is as JFK said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

[jahewson]

This begs the question, what is it that my country wants to do, and who decides that?

[JacksonGariety]

In my view it should be decided by a class of philosophers. People who from an early age were possessed of a duty to the whole.

[johnny_canuck]

I'm curious if you have any recommended reading on the criticism of liberalism?

[JacksonGariety]

I prefer Hegel’s critique. In his Philosophy of Right. It’s a difficult read but very much worth it. This is from the Editor’s Introduction:

“Hegel's liberal critics are in the habit of saying that he does not believe in founding a social order on the conception of individual rights. The element of truth in this assertion is that Hegel thinks personal right, apart from a developed system of ethical life, is an empty abstraction; he believes that a social order founded (as in liberal political theory) on such abstractions will be unable even to protect individual rights, much less to actualize the whole of concrete freedom. In fact, Hegel thinks that the greatest enemy of personal and subjective freedom is a 'mechanistic' conception of the state, which views the state solely as an instrument for the enforcement of abstract rights; for this sets the state up as an abstraction in opposition to individuals. In Fichte's theory, for example, Hegel sees the state as a police power whose only function is to supervise and regulate the actions of individuals through coercive force. The only real guarantee of freedom is a well-constituted ethical life, which integrates the rights of persons and subjects into an organic system of customs and institutions providing individuals with concretely fulfil­ling lives.” (p. xvi)