Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
preached equality and tolerance but practiced the opposite, I don't think you can say unmitigated equality and tolerance were traditional liberal principles.
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I don't think unmitigated equality is inherently a liberal ideal, really, but I guess it depends what you mean by unmitigated equality. Treating people as individuals might mandate equal treatment in some respects but it also is going to inherently recognize individual differences. There's certainly no sense in which liberalism requires some doctrinal adherence to a blank slate theory. Quite the opposite; if you look at the argument Pinker makes it's pretty reasonable, just as the evidence for conclusions drawn by many evolutionary psychologists is convincing.
Anyway, if you express principle X, but don't follow it consistently, your failure to follow it does not somehow affect the principle itself. Either they've made a mistake somewhere or they weren't actually liberals in the first place and were simply paying lip service. Historical examples abound of both.
If I swear up and down that two plus two is four, but in practice when I have two apples and am told to take two more I end up with five, it doesn't change the fact that my original math was right. I've just failed to enact it.