Liberalism's main pragmatic selling point is that after 150 years of religious warfare and sectarian killing (including the Thirty Years' War which killed roughly a third of Central Europe's population), liberal thinkers argued that instead of building communities around shared religious truth claims about the good life and ultimate purpose, diverse societies should focus on survival together by tolerating people fundamentally different from themselves and building rules for peaceful coexistence.

causalpending

Speaker

Frank Fukuyama

Evidence Quote

30 years war kills you know, maybe a third of the population of Central Europe...you get liberal thinkers that say 'maybe it's not such a great idea to tightly bound a community around one set of ideas...focus on survival in a diverse society...tolerate people that are fundamentally different'

Source

Is Liberalism Dead? Fukuyama vs GrayIntelligence Squared
Created: 8/10/2026, 11:40:33 PM

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