note taking: playing nice

"Or, even more harshly: since Americans are philosophical conservatives but operational liberals"
Can we add also that many of the elite are philosophical liberals but operational conservatives? And that both are fully molded by and into the mass-bureaucratic state?

Capitalism destroys or perverts both "family values" and open sociability [social conservative and socially liberal terms for the same thing] rendering it/them secondary to state function, which is why a sort of critical left-Burkeanism is the best response to both. This debate in the grander scheme is largely pot and kettle, since liberals and conservatives are both obsessed with finding a defense for one sort or another of libertarianism, and libertarianism is problematic in ways neither want to admit. Both conservatives and liberals are philosophical "economic liberals" each trying to justify that to their differing sensibilities.

It's easy and fun to feel intellectually superior to the National Review crowd et al. but it avoids the bigger problems.
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#46- “Liberals believe that the commercial sphere is fundamentally different from the private sphere…” but that the private sphere, as being home to subjectivity and sensibility is shrinking in importance in the face or the rise of “objective” knowledge, rationality, and utilitarian drive for progress: the imperatives if technocratic uniformity.

As always, I think liberals in these debates should read Derrick Bell’s dissent in Brown v. Board of Education