Liberty Is Not Enough - Liberal Democracy Got Us Here, Egalitarian Democracy Has A Chance Of Getting Us Out Of It

I DO NOT HAVE A TV and am largely off-line these days so did not hear the interview Joe Scarborough did with the Canadian novelist and essayist Margaret Atwood, unfortunately most known for her "Gilead" an American theocratic dystopian fantasy which, being a scary story, is far more popular than the "Gilead" novels of her fellow (and I say far superior) essayist and novelist, Marilynne Robinson.    Both are worth reading but the latter far more so.  Atwood has written far better stuff than "Handmaidens Tale" I wish people would read some of her other things, though most of those who know anything about it probably, in the modern way, watched the show and never knew about the books. 

I really liked what she said about the experience of those of us old enough to remember epidemics before vaccines were developed in such abundance, I'm always in favor of facing the good old days were pretty bad. 

I agree with much that Atwood says but her championing of "liberal democracy" is something I can't agree with because it is what got us where we are, now.  What I understand as "liberal democracy" is essentially the laissez-faire libertarian conception of "rights" and "liberties" which does not begin with any higher moral purpose than "freedom" in which laws that are made apply to the billionaire and the destitute and that's the "level playing field" that we are to live in as if the billionaires and the media and the publishing industry that a Margaret Atwood is a part of will allow anything except what benefits them at the cost of others to result. 

The destruction of truth, which Atwood bemoans and hopes is receding is a product of such "liberties" such "freedom."   

She poses the question as to what the alternative to "liberal democracy" is, the one I propose is, as readers of these posts knows, egalitarian democracy.   Part of that may make the Atwoods of the world uneasy because part of that is facing the truth that government must be involved in the pursuit of moral goals or it founders in the cesspools of amorality which the billionaires, the Trumps, the Bushes, the Susan Collins, etc. flourish in.

Government either has a moral purpose higher than the ones 18th century philosophy - almost entirely a product of the upper class - would have favored or it devolves into gangsterism and oligarchy.  America's worst aspects are a product of such unequally held "liberty" such as allows the rich to corrupt everything.   The pursuit and achievement of the common good, of the COMMON WEALTH, of individuals having equal access to having a good life, a peaceful life for themselves, their families, their communities is certainly among the most important things that results from knowing the truth and the truth making us free.   Any government, any theory of government which stops short of those goals, of the moral imperative to achieve those and merely rests on the "liberty" the "freedom" of individuals to do whatever they want to, no matter who else it afflicts is too little and will, eventually get to where the United States has been and may be soon again.