Scrapped reply to John on the contingency of liberalism, and ideology

I still cannot surmount the Marauding Army conundrum. This is an abandonned response to John about an article on a shadowy shcolar turned propagandist for the liberal democratic ideal that mostly plays into the hands of american and western interest. The discussion quickly turns to the Marauding Army problem, which is that of ideology.

WARNING! The following is worth SKIPPING due to general lack of finishing. I err in ignorance on this topic. But can you say better, as the socratic, rhetorical question would come?

Interesting guy and story. But I'd rather he be a CIA agent than an idealist myself. Overthrowing regimes on purely ideological grounds is very close to fanaticism: it consists in loosing your self-interest in the name of some idea or meme. This smacks me of hubris. In my view, his books simply spawned a bunch of angry activists who think it good to destroy their government simply because their doctrine says it's the right thing to do. The world has seen many regimes go by and all had it's supporters and detractors. Coincidence? So, I do not believe that liberal democracy is better than the petty 3rd world dictatorship (it might be better in the sense of "fitter" in a darwinian way, but certainly not "ethically better").

Basically, I am taking a different take on Socrates paradox, that no one does wrong knowingly. Socrates' answer (or Plato's) was that wrong was commited out of ignorance and that the solution resided in instilling knowledge in people because nobody that knew his virtue(s) would go against them in action. My take on the paradox goes against Plato's idea of an eternal crystalline knowledge, and is a lot more cynical perhaps: no one does wrong knowingly because everyone thinks he's doing the right thing! Yes, very simple, but in that case, we really do have a real paradox because wrong is impossible: there is no such thing as an impartial arbiter, a god, a revelation, or, for that matter, a rational discovery that goes beyond the rank of opinion (doxa).

The problem is that wrong exists but is contingent. Wrong is a predicate that has for subject a given situation. That situation can be described in a game theoretic environment: it has it's end game, it's rules, etc. Wrong is when you fail to win the game, or do what you wanted to do. Ethics is for action, not for sacred, platonic values.

What we are left with is a broken down system of value that emphasises the actor's interest and resources. Indeed, it is close to the ethical premises of political realism. "Liberte, fraternite et solidarite", as the french moto went, is only a tool to use against (or enlist) the believers: those enslaved to a doctrine ie a group of memes. Memes are indeed looking as if they are self serving in this case. Certain memeswhen they commit millions of people throughout history to act out of sheer belief.

But therein lies the danger because such doctrines are inflexible and present disadvantages in a competitive environment. Richelieu's advantage against the holy roman empire was his freedom of action, and his focus on material stuff.

But what of this doctrine, is it not in the same boat as all the others? No, not as much.

An idea is just an idea, there to be used or not. I would, for instance, advise a prince to follow the above principles such that their hands were never tied up.

But materiality is not naivety or greedy reductionism either: it doesn't mean only calculating the number of tanks you have vs your neighbour's. Any good realist needs to be in touch with the ideas of his time but also of the protocols, customs and the different modes of acting and responding to actions. Each international relation - each interpersonal relation for that matter too, has his overtones, his precedents, and his constitutive and prescriptive rules. A good realist starts from the bottom of the materiality table and goes up. This is a different strategy than a liberal democracy proponent, who seeks to supplant other ways of seeing things just because it contradicts an artificial principle...