Janet Bufton 🍁🌻
@janetbufton.ca
3.7K followers 492 following 4.2K posts
Canadian mum, 3D liberal in Babylon Writing collected at janetbufton.ca Co-founder, theILS.ca. Contributing fellow @Liberalism.org diversity dynamism democracy Detroit Lions
Canadian mum, 3D liberal in Babylon Writing collected at janetbufton.ca Co-founder, theILS.ca. Contributing fellow @Liberalism.org diversity dynamism democracy Detroit Lions
![Poll results:
75% Woke / 25% Chud
56% Techbro / 44% Neo-Luddite
73% Hopepilled / 27% Doomer
95% Davos / 5% Dubai
YOUR CLOSEST MATCH:
Mark Carney
[photo of Mark Carney]
Prime Minister of Canada (2025-present)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bunwniu7nq7peq4dyypnv4te/bafkreibbztxnfvgeokkjzvxxcvwg5tvfewbnrhoedbhyoalkdckype6ibi)
![I take seriously the Lockean roots of the Declaration (and of _Common Sense_ as well). These have been repeatedly but unpersuasively denied, giving rise to a long debate that takes the form of the question: is the document Lockean and therefore liberal? Or is it Harringtonian or Ciceronian or Machiavellian and therefore civic republican?[3] I don’t propose to rehearse that debate here. Rather, I suggest that the Declaration was Lockean, _and therefore not liberal_, in ways that continue to impede the American struggle for a free society.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bunwniu7nq7peq4dyypnv4te/bafkreibomrd6gcfyyzrqrocrugygo3blmdban66wq4y6qt7z6h7a2mgjuu)
![Greene has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views including the white genocide conspiracy theory,[8][9] as well as QAnon, and Pizzagate.[10][11] She has amplified conspiracy theories[12][13] that allege government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, implicate the Clinton family in murder, and suggest the attacks of 9/11 were a hoax.[14][15][16] Before running for Congress, Greene supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.[17] As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis, and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust,[18][19][20] later apologizing for this comparison.[21] During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised its president Vladimir Putin.[22] Greene identifies as a Christian nationalist.[23]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bunwniu7nq7peq4dyypnv4te/bafkreifib4y4jzty7bqdzkn2iyny2laaakwxdzt3u7uxiimbdpzbpajh6u)
![Highlighted text reads: [Adam] Smith isn’t rejecting systematic reform; the book is nothing if not an excavation of the sometimes obvious, often obscure sources of immiseration that are within our power to change. Rather, as Jacob Levy has argued, Smith is stressing the need for reform to work with, and not against, human attachments, and cautioning against promises to sweep aside the social order. Smith would have us seek fewer Cromwells and more Wilberforces.
Here we arrive at the distinctively liberal element in critical liberalism: an orientation toward iterative reform—what Shklar called “damage control”—that is itself subject to critique. Where the practices of any institutions—markets, states, civic associations, trade unions, even organized religions—promote emancipation as recognized by the emancipated, we can encourage and even celebrate their work. Where their practices harm or protect harm, they should be opposed.
Critical liberals thus hold institutional commitments lightly, conditionally. They have no truck with utopian schemes. They recognize institutions as the work of human hands, with all the good and evil that those hands do. They hold every claim to power and every call for reform to the same emancipatory scrutiny. A Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat gets ruled out by its violent means and ends; the institutions of liberal democracy—competitive markets, constitutional government, popular control—justify themselves by working in the opposite direction. Yet even their authority remains provisional. The provisionality is the point.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bunwniu7nq7peq4dyypnv4te/bafkreiax7izhwqgedtjkuyqergabrgtyddqboe74p4apa4rtp6mgjhpd54)
