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.
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
Making matters worse is people's natural inclination to be easy on themselves, judging themselves according to their good intentions-while holding others to a higher standard and judging them by their worst actions.
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
This thing called nationalism is a treasure that a country uses to try to develop and a nationality uses to try to survive. China has lost this treasure.
The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena.
Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
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