The Purpose, Method, and Platform for this Website

Purpose: Contribute to the discourse about the challenges to liberalism, and how to meet them

Political liberalism and liberal democracy are taken for granted in our society, and in large parts of the world. However, they are also challenged by several other ideologies and ethoses of various kinds. They include authoritarian ideologies that resemble those views of governance that liberalism objected to in its early days. Now, like then, they sometimes appeal to religion in support of their stance. But today, liberalism is also confronted by new problems, such as organized crime, and clan structures that challenge the law-based society.

Another large problem is arguably of liberalism's own making. It has argued for economic freedom, including the removal of obstacles at national boundaries, both for individuals and for corporations. Like all other freedoms, these can also be misused if they are left more or less unchecked, and to a large extent it is the nation-states that have enacted the necessary restrictions. These controlling forces have been weakened in recent years, and we have seen how multinational corporations and global capital has created conditions that are incompatible with liberal and human ideals. This is a problem in itself, but it has also given arguments to those who criticize liberalism as such.

Finally, there is a problem that has been created by the development of technology, for example by information technology whereby traditional values such as freedom of expression and the freedom of the press do not work out in the same way as before. There is a need to think about them and to recover their original intentions.

With respect to the Swedish scene, the purpose of this website, Liberal Kommentar, is to contribute to the flow of opinions, perspectives, and ideas about these issues, in particular since they are actually quite interdependent. Liberals in our country have not really discussed these topics in ideological terms, but this website shall contribute to a forthcoming discussion of this kind.

I hope and believe that some aspects of this debate will also be of interest on an international level, so that both the website pages and some of the articles will be translated to English. This process will be pursued concurrently with other efforts, so it will be done as fast as those other efforts can permit.

Method: Publish articles about both liberalism and its alternatives

As a way of contributing to the described purpose, this purpose shall attempt to make a coherent presentation of my writings about liberalism, diversity, values, the tasks of the state and the nation, as well as how these relate to various non-liberal doctrines and views.

The articles are published in a series called Liberal Kommentar, which is also the name of this website. It contains articles that have been published since 2013 on a related website, 'Argument och Fakta'. Forthcoming articles will be published on the present website, whereas 'Argument and Fakta' will be dedicated as a site for a knowledgebase.

Platform: Paraliberalism and its monograph

I use the word 'paraliberalism' as a name for my view of the topics described above, and I describe it both in a monograph, and in separate articles that complement the book's contents. The title of the book is 'Values, Liberalism, and Islam', and it is described under the heading 'Monograph' in the top-level menue.