Reading and writing

I host reading groups, I blog

Janet Bufton
January 22, 2025

One of the most fun things I get to do for work is online reading groups. It’s something I started doing a bit in 2019 and then hoo boy, did demand take off in 2020. But they’re still fun now! I love working through a book, the best way to do it is in conversation with other people, and the best way to find enough people who want to read the same book is on the Internet.

These days, the reading groups I get to host are hosted by Liberty Fund.

One of the books we read late last year was Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. I put together some of my thoughts from the reading group discussion and they’re up today at The Reading Room at the Online Library of Liberty.

Hoffer makes what I think is a pretty common mistake about liberalism for conservatives to make, with parallels to the conservatives that try to claim Hayek. I hope you’ll take a look.

Liberalism in The True Believer | Online Library of Liberty

In November, Liberty Fund hosted a virtual reading group on Eric Hoffer's short book, The True Believer. One topic of discussion was Hoffer's conservatism, which is implicit to his theories of mass movements. One place it’s implied is in his mistreatment of liberalism. In section 52, under “Deprecation of the Present”, Hoffer sums up his views of conservatives, skeptics, liberals, radicals, and reactionaries.

oll.libertyfund.org/publications/reading-room/2025-01-22-liberalism-in-the-true-believer

Blog

I’ve got some new posts up that appear only on this site. I’ll be sharing these as I write them on Bluesky or, if you subscribe for newsletter updates, when I send out an update about something published elsewhere.

So, new at the blog:

I wrote about a common mistake that liberals make when talking politics: we assume that the liberal assumptions that were safe a couple of decades ago are still safe now. They often aren’t.

For example, we can’t only argue that we shouldn’t intervene in others’ lives for their own good anymore. We have to argue for a broad concept of a private sphere in which individuals should be allowed to make their own choices, rather than acting as part of a social collective. I illustrate starting from a post about the nature of gender by Andrew Jason Cohen at ProSocial Libertarians.

Liberal assumptions

If we don't assume liberal premises hold, our arguments have to get deeper

www.janetbufton.ca/p/liberal-assumptions

I also expand on my belief that the political Right has made gender, like immigration, a newly salient political sorting issue, whether moderates, centrists, and the centre-left like it or not. The argument is very similar to the one I made in Liberal Currents back in the fall about the Right’s pursuit of closed borders as a useful political signal.

Gender and political sorting

The Right draws another line in the sand

www.janetbufton.ca/p/gender-and-political-sorting

Recs

Two great pieces by Andy Craig came out today, one at Liberal Currents about fruitful paths for constitutional reform in the United States, and another at The UnPopulist about the type of liberalism we need now.

Zack Beauchamp’s article at Vox discussing the type of politics that frames attacks on liberal democratic norms as defence of liberal democratic norms is a valuable read.

This new piece at Liberal Currents by Toby Buckle about our meta-narratives on gender was really helpful, it’s worth your time.