LIBERAIS E LIVRES (3): Para terminar um esclarecimento. Quando falo de liberalismo refiro-me a uma tradição intelectual com raízes no liberalismo clássico (Adam Smith, Locke, Stuart Mill). Com continuadores no século vinte como Popper e Hayek. Que considera ser a Open Society a melhor alternativa à vida em comunidade do Homem e que deve ser defendida dos seus inimigos. Que tem raízes profundas no mundo anglo-saxónico (EUA e Inglaterra), mas que é menos influente na Europa continental (de tradição mais jacobina e francesa). Que não pode ser reduzida ao anti-comunismo (e já agora ao anti-socialismo) mas que o é assumidamente. E que não é facilmente interpretável pela dicotomia esquerda-direita. Deixo algumas provocadoras citações de Hayek que têm alguma aplicação a esta nossa discussão (na qual o nosso camarada de tripulação PC tem, reconheço, um ponto):
The expression "liberty under the law", which at one time perhaps conveyed the essential point [of a free system] better then any other, has become almost meaningless because both "liberty" and "law" no longer have a clear meaning. And the only term that in the past was widely and correctly understood, namely "liberalism" has, as a supreme but unintended compliment been appropriated by the opponents of this ideal. (da obra «Rules and Order»)
...within a spontaneous order the use of coercion can be justified only where it is necessary to secure the private domain of the individual against interference by others, but that coercion should not be used to interfere in that private sphere where this is not necessary to protect others. Law serves a social order, i.e. the relations between individuals, and actions which affect nobody but the individuals who perform them ought not to be subject to the control of law, however strongly they may be regulated by custom and morals. (da obra «The Mirage of Social Justice»)
...the main difference between the order of society at which classical liberalism aimed and the sort of society into which it is now being transformed is that the former was governed by principles of just individual conduct while the new society is to satisfy the demands for 'social justice' ... the former demanded just action by the individuals while the latter more and more places the duty of justice on authorities with power to command people what to do. (da obra «The Mirage of Social Justice»)
... after a period of ascendancy of conceptions which have made the vision of an Open Society possible, we are relapsing rapidly into the conceptions of the tribal society from which we have been slowly emerging. (da obra «The Mirage of Social Justice»)
The submergence of classical liberalism under the inseparable forces of socialism and nationalism is the consequence of the revival of those tribal sentiments. (da obra «The Mirage of Social Justice»)
The only moral principle which has ever made the growth of an advanced civilization possible was the principle of individual freedom, which means that the individual is guided in his decisions by rules of just conduct and not by specific commands. (da obra «The Political Order of a Free People»)
Ethics is not a matter of choice. We have not designed it and cannot design it. ... The rules which we learn to observe are the result of cultural evolution. (da obra «The Political Order of a Free People»)
Socialist ideas have so deeply penetrated general thought that it is not even only those pseudo-liberals who merely disguise their socialism by the name they have assumed, but also many conservatives who have assumed socialist ideas and language and constantly employ them in the belief that they are an established part of current thought. (da obra «The Political Order of a Free People»)
If our civilization survives, which it will do only if it renounces those [constructivistic rationalist] errors, I believe men will look back on our age as an age of superstition, chiefly connected with the names of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. I believe people will discover that the most widely held ideas which dominated the twentieth century, those of a planned economy with a just distribution, a freeing ourselves from repressions and conventional morals, of permissive education as a way to freedom, and the replacement of the market by a rational arrangement of a body with coercive powers, were all based on superstitions in the strict sense of the word ... the twentieth century was certainly an outstanding age of superstition. ... Ironically, these superstitions are largely an effect of our inheritance from the Age of Reason, the great enemy of all that it regarded as superstitions. (da obra «The Political Order of a Free People»)
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