Note to “Cracks in the Liberal Edifice”

Arguably, and above all else, the crux of the matter is that over the course of time, individuals will identify themselves more along cultural, ethnic, and religious lines than anything else. This is the crux of the populist argument against liberalism and even Marxism and their universalist notions. So far, the crux of the populist argument has corroborated reality to a large extent, given that not only have individuals identified themselves more along cultural and ethnic and religious lines over the course of time, but that liberalism in definition and theory is far different than liberalism in application and in practice. In definition and theory, liberalism amounts to freedom and universalism. Which is great. And it is why I considered myself and identified myself as a cosmopolitan urban liberal all this time. But as we see in our recent history in America, in application and in practice, liberalism translated into the kind of money worship and brute global conquest that pushed populism and Marxism or socialism to the fore.