Sean Carroll

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

I'm your host, Sean Carroll.

I've been guessing that many Mindscape listeners grew up and or live in some version of a liberal democracy.

That is to say, some society where there was at least lip service given to the ideals of individual liberty.

and the right of different people to vote and create the government and pick their representatives, and some kind of equality of dignity of individual human beings.

It all sounds good, right?

It all sounds almost cliché.

These are things that would be very, very hard to sort of

really strongly object to, you know, that we don't have many people out there.

There are certainly some, but there's not that many people out there who are saying, you know what, people are not created equal.

Some people are just deserving of more in the world than others.

You're beginning to hear more of those voices out there, but they're still in a minority.

But when you think about it, this sort of liberal package, liberal in the broadest philosophical sense of the term, so not just liberal conservative in the matter of

contemporary US politics, but liberalism in the sense of these basic ideals of individualism, liberty, and so forth.

It's an audacious idea because you're saying that people can be different.

They can be radically opposed to each other in certain ways, in terms of certain values, in terms of certain thoughts about how people should live and the good life and things like that.

and nevertheless live together in harmony.

Liberalism is a philosophy that is meant to be universal.

It's meant to be for everyone.

No matter what other things you believe, you can and arguably should give other people the rights and dignity that liberalism says they should have.