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Comment by jsbdk | Hacker News Reader

For many people, any political change that is not a move towards an even more liberal view of the world is automatically authoritarianism.

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I think what's important is respecting human rights, not ideological affiliation, and in that sense Hungary has noticeably regressed in the past decade.

Human rights are a human construct and constantly change over time.

If you deny any form of transcendence, which is the case in the positivist, technocratic culture of the West, then this is the inevitable conclusion.

It’s either this, or basing ones moral code on old wives tales.

I am very much in favor of human rights. They are among the last, public vestiges of the “old wives tales” you denigrate, and could be problematized at any time. This could come from the political left, the political right, or some as-yet unrevealed historical force. Without recourse to the kind of transcendent, essential reality that positivism negates, we will have a very hard time defending them as anything other than a mutable, socially contingent prejudice.

That’s an interesting argument, given that the Catholic Church was - and largely still is - opposed to Human Rights, and fought fiercely against them. Remind me, when was the last time the Catholic pope argued against woman voting rights; it was ~1950, right?

Far more people have an apoplectic fit at anything that can even vaguely be described as “liberal”..

Even when the word is being used in its european sense, meaning more or less the same as 'libertarian' in the US.

It can be for sure, but at least in Northern Europe, it can also suggest a more social liberal ideology (e.g. look at Sweden’s recent debacle)

To be honest, my comment was mostly a jab at the GP for their touch anxiety when using the word “liberal”, although it’s less obvious now, when their followup comment is dead.

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