Séimí Mac Síomón on Nostr: Does anyone have an opinion on Caroll Quigley's comments on 19th century liberalism? ...

Does anyone have an opinion on Caroll Quigley's comments on 19th century liberalism? What does he mean here by "society"?

Just as the negative idea of the nature of evil flowed from the belief that human nature was good, so the idea of liberalism flowed from the belief that society was bad. For, if society was bad, the state, which was the organized coercive power of society, was doubly bad, and if man was good, he should be freed, above all, from the coercive power of the state. Liberalism was the crop which emerged from this soil. In its broadest aspect liberalism believed that men should be freed from coercive power as completely as possible. In its narrowest aspect liberalism believed that the economic activities of man should be freed completely from "state interference." This latter belief, summed up in the battle-cry "No government in business," was commonly called "laissez-faire." Liberalism, which included laissez-faire, was a wider term because it would have freed men from the coercive power of any church, army, or other institution, and would have left to society little power beyond that required to prevent the strong from physically oppressing the weak.

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