For Popper's Open Society

Selected excerpts and notes from the video above:

"What we need and what we want... is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals." 

- Popper

Moralize Politics: Apply ethical standards to political action

Politicize Morals: Enshrine one moral code as unchangeable law

Popper did not deny the existence of objective moral truths, what he denied was the State's right to impose them as fixed certainties.

"Identity has increasingly filled the void left by the absence of shared cultural and moral frameworks. Religion, nationality, and even biological sex have become battlegrounds where individuals seek personal meaning. This cultural transformation began at Universities, but as Andrew Sullivan argues in his essay "We all live on Campus now," it quickly spread into journalism, corporations , and government."

The post-modernists moral relativism was replaced by a new kind of moral certainty rooted in identity and lived experience rather than universal principles. Once truth was recast as power, traditional norms lost legitimacy, and so did the very idea of open disagreement. University politics on microaggressions and trigger warnings reflect a new moral framework in which harm is measured subjectively and debate can itself be construed as aggression. Many students now interpret words as violence, and view disagreement as a for of disrespect or invalidation.

The failure to defend the cultural and civic infrastructure that once gave openness coherence, and provided moral depth. Liberal societies are not adrift because they honored openness too much, but because they ceased to defend the cultural and civic infrastructure that once gave that openness coherence and provided moral depth.

Bureaucratic centralization further weakened community self-government by displacing local initiative. As Uval Levven observes in "The Fractured Republic", a nationalized political culture has increasingly crowded out the middle layers of society, the local associations that once formed the bedrock of civil life. In the UK, local authorities now raise only a fraction of the revenue they spend, leaving them heavily dependent on central government transfers, and limiting their scope for local innovation or accountability. A 2022 report by Center for Cities concluded that Britain has become one of the most fiscally centralized countries in the developed world. As Phillip Blond has argued in "Red Tory", "The state and the market have conspired to hollow out civil society, leaving individuals atomized and communities fragmented."

The decline in civic education. Civic education provides a shared vocabulary about the common good without requiring a shared theology or ethnicity. Civic enfranchisement depends on a shared base of knowledge. Without it, democratic deliberation breaks down.

The erosion has also been cultural.

The model d' Toqueville observed in 19th century America still works. The evidence is particularly striking in Denmark. Denmark consistently ranks among the world's most cohesive and high trust democracies. Its' cohesion stems from strong civic networks supported by public institutions that are transparent, responsive, and widely trusted.

The civic religion must be taught. Over time citizens can come to emotionally identify with a new second patriotism founded upon the Constitution. However, this patriotism must be taught. When schools fail to transmit a common base of knowledge, it would be hard to invent a more effective recipe for cultural fragmentation. Nations need stories they can tell about themselves that are forward-looking, inclusive, and cohesive. A society paralyzed by shame will not survive, nor will one built on nostalgia.

Constitutional patriotism, then, can live in story, education, ritual, and shared public life. In this way, liberal democracies can foster cohesion without succumbing to the exclusionary certainties of the strong gods.

Liberal societies should also recover the civic power of local communities. Excessive centralization has weakened the middle layers of society, displacing voluntary institutions and disempowering citizens. One remedy is subsidiarity, shifting decision making closer to those affected by it. Switzerland exemplifies this with a federal system that gives substantial autonomy to Cantons and Communes and engages citizens directly through referenda. These decentralized models offer a way to restore civic belonging without restoring top-down cultural unity.

Liberal societies also need clear moral and civic boundaries. Mutual tolerance should not be a suicide pact. Immigration can enrich liberal societies- but only if newcomers accept core liberal principles. Inclusion requires clarity. The price for admission to a liberal democracy should be respect for the rules that make peaceful coexistence possible. That includes rejective efforts from any quarter to impose religious orthodoxy, racial essentialism, or ideological loyalty tests.

The current turn towards strong gods reflects a fear that Open Societies can no longer provide meaning. That fear is misplaced. Liberal societies need not imitate sacred authority to inspire belonging, but they must stop outsourcing meaning to the very sources that threaten them. The Open Society will only endure if it is made into something people can believe in again - because it delivers not just rights but prosperity; not just institutions, but ideals worth committing to. The real test is not whether liberalism should resurrect the religious or nationalist certainties of the past, but whether it can rebuild the civic and cultural foundations that allow meaning and freedom to flourish together.

In other words, an Open Society should be based upon economically independent and small, local but fiscally-independent, anti-fragile communities with strongly enforced boundaries operating within a framework mediated by a strong National Constitutionally based civic religion.

Salvador Dali, "The Old Age of William Tell"