Is here.
Holmes claims that the left has largely abandoned liberalism. To back this claim, he offers a depressing litany of examples, which I will not recite here. Instead, what I found particularly interesting is the way that Holmes blames post-modern philosophy for leading the left away from the Enlightenment values of free speech and individual liberty.
It is from reading Scruton and Holmes that I have come to see post-modernism as something other than a minor intellectual diversion.
I don’t get the impression that the modern SJW mob member is a moral relativist or nihilist. Instead, they seem manically driven by an overactive sense of the indubitable righteousness of their crusades and absolute, universal Truth of their moral outlook and conception of social justice. Most have no familiarity with the jargon or logic of postmodern arguments; those rationalizations are almost exclusively for those with the tastes of elite academics.
Arnold wrote: “He raises the possibility that the crucial battlefield for the future of liberty can be found in the philosophy seminar room. ”
I was under the impression that postmodernism was rejected by philosophers, as it assumes a relativism that they debunked long ago. Instead it flourishes in university departments of literature.
The cited descriptions of libertarianism seem quite at odds with what I’ve encountered over the decades.
You, and Holmes, are right the big battlefield is in the universities.
“Who needs freedom when you have power, prestige, and money? ” << this you quote from Holmes, and is the key.
Gov't funding of college/ prestige institutions of centralized semi-socialized "magic thinking" has become a huge problem. And the top SAT scoring students go to the indoctrination centers, so as to get "good jobs", and come out with socialist econ ideas and SJW activist crusading zeal.
We need computer – AI monitored competency tests of knowledge, and perhaps getting rid of the "Education" on resumes. (Not likely yet). Gov't jobs should specify skills more, and credentials less.