There have always been liberals.

But you know, people have difference definitions of liberal, these days I see comments by a lot of western atheist liberals who kinda think they have it all figured out and everyone just needs to be like them

I also think (going by these historical writings) it's a mistake as I've seen many people do today to consider their Enlightenment heritage to be 'rationalism' but the truth is a lot of Enlightenment/Renaissance writers weren't just skeptical of the church & state there was also lot of healthy societal self-skepticism involved, including of 'scientific'/'rational' ideas. You could say that science in fact went out of control after them in the age of mass industrialization and eugenics rather than in their own thoughts or ideas

I've also been mulling -- separate from literary reading -- critiques of rationalism-- that is to say, can you point out there's arbitrary referential parts to 'reason', without getting all weird and postmodern -- and have been coming across some interesting stuff on that. That sort of philosophical stuff is a bit heavier though

the thing that got me started here is Montaigne talking about Cannibalism ... he really sort of contextualizes it as less barbaric relative to certain european behaviors (torture etc). I have never seen a defense of cannibalism lol

I love a nice critique of rationalism. Which are you reading? Any online?

nothing yet but my searches led me to this guy: Reinhold Niebuhr who I really should have known about earlier.

Basically my problems with Rationalism aren't on the deep metaphysical Kant level, my problems are the conflation of people who consider themselves "rational" being confused about sociopolitical issues on a global scale--not realizing that their 'reasoning' is tinted with their social environment and their sociopolitical stance isn't some pure truth--and Niebuhr seemed to have some views on the cold war that tied into this.