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.
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Isn't it the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?
Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.
...no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
I have often thought that when I do die it will be of sheer boredom.
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