One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how the fight against terrorism has led to a failure of liberal democratic values.
Terry Eagleton highlights that the war on terror has not merely resulted in oppressive laws but has also raised fundamental questions about the nature of liberalism itself. The way liberal states respond to and manage anti-liberal forces poses significant challenges to the principles of freedom and democracy, which are foundational to liberalism, and indicates a crisis in how these states interpret and defend their values in times of conflict.
In practice
In a debate about national security versus civil liberties, this quote can be used to illustrate the impact of anti-terror laws on democratic principles.
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.
Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.
How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.
Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.
We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.
When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards.
One's own self or material goods, which has more worth?_x000D_ _x000D_ Loss (of self) or possession (of goods), which is the greater evil?_x000D_ _x000D_ He who loves most, spends most,_x000D_ _x000D_ He who hoards much loses much
This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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