If Liberals Won't Protect Borders, Fascists Will
"If liberals will not protect the borders, then fascists will", This is attributed as a quote from Erich Fromm. But, as often happens, he never said this specifically—it's paraphrased, or you could even say memeified. But of course Erich Fromm expressed this idea many times.
For example, I have saved in my quotes folder from his book "Escape from Freedom":
"If the economic, social and political conditions on which the whole process of human individuation depends, do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense of genuine expression of human emotional and intellectual potentialities, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden."
Essentially, if leaders in a free society want to avoid losing liberal values, they need to protect them from barbarians, otherwise illiberal methods of fighting the threat of barbarism will seem like the lesser evil.
But really, of course, this isn't just about border protection. It seems to me that one of the biggest phenomena of our time is that people have almost forgotten how to do the simplest and most obvious things in a whole bunch of situations. And because of this, everything has become much more complicated. But we'll either learn to do it some completely different way, but still simply. Or it will all collapse, but then there will be another great filter.
Tags: books, philosophy, politics, quotes