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natecham | 7 years ago

Or we have been willing to admit to ourselves that our view of perfection was flawed and that these forms of liberalism are a better step in the direction towards our ultimate goal, whatever that may be.

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woodandsteel|7 years ago

No, leading liberal thinkers like Burke and Berlin have been perfectly clear that perfection is not possible. In fact, the whole US Constitution is a set of compromises based on the belief that human nature will always be imperfect. My impression is you don't know much about liberal political philosophy.

natecham|7 years ago

You're right, I haven't read much about liberal political philosophy, I was trying to reason this based on intuition and experience and I 100% agree that concessions about human nature need to be made.

I shouldn't have used the term perfection, as I didn't mean it in the short-sighted, self-serving and ideological form, rather than in the sense of our ultimate goal of how to best organize the human race despite our imperfections.

Is there a term for that objective, perhaps harmony? I'm going to do some reading of what "perfection" means from a political philosophical sense as the definition I came up with let me down in my response.