Liberalism is the view that individuals have rights and beliefs, and that politics involves safeguarding rights and making compromises when beliefs conflict.[qh]
自由主义认为,个体拥有权利和信仰,而政治需要在信仰冲突时捍卫权利和做出妥协
It has existed for only a few centuries and is by some measures the most successful idea in history. [qh]
自由主义仅存在了几个世纪,但按照某些标准,自由主义是历史上最成功的观点
Just look where people want to live: the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, all liberal places that people will risk their life to reach. [qh]
纵观人们想要生活的地方:美国、欧盟、加拿大、澳大利亚和英国,这些都是人们愿意冒着生命危险抵达的自由之地
But Garsten said liberalism had some of his best students hopping into rafts and paddling in other intellectual directions. [qh]
但加斯滕说,自由主义让他的一些最优秀的学生跳上木筏,在其他的知识方向上划桨
He said they had been “captured” by the belief “that to be morally serious, one faces a choice.”[qh]
他表示,这些学生被这样一种信念“俘获”了,即,“要审慎对待道德,就必须面临一个选择”
The choice, he said, is not between liberalism and illiberalism.[qh]
他说,这个选择不是在自由主义和非自由主义之间做出的
Liberalism had already lost. Its greatest champion, the United States, had run aground after pointless wars, terminal decadence, and bureaucratic takeover by activists and special interests.[qh]
自由主义已经败下阵来
Garsten said his best students were choosing between the protofascism of Nietzsche and a neomedieval, quasi-theocratic version of Catholicism opposed to Enlightenment liberalism. [qh]
加斯滕称他最优秀的学生正在尼采的原始法西斯主义和新中世纪的、准神权版本的、反对启蒙运动自由主义的天主教义之间做选择
These students considered liberal democracy an exhausted joke, and they hinted—and sometimes did more than hint—that the past few centuries had been a mistake, and that the mistake should now be corrected. [qh]
这些学生认为自由民主是一个枯竭的笑话,他们暗示——有时甚至不止是暗示——过去几个世纪是一个错误,而现在应该纠正这个错误
Some at the conference countered that these illiberals might have just not done their homework. [qh]
这次会议上的一些人反驳说,这些非自由主义者可能只是没有做足功课
“Your students need to become better readers,” said Diana J. Schaub, a political-science professor at Loyola University Maryland. [qh]
“你的学生需要好好读书,”马里兰州洛约拉大学政治学教授戴安娜·肖布说
But Garsten’s illiberal students were good readers.[qh]
但加斯滕的那些非自由主义者的学生阅读量却很丰富
Their deficiencies lay elsewhere, possibly everywhere but there.[qh]
他们的缺陷在其他地方,可能在除了阅读量以外的每个地方
Many of the participants knew that Garsten was talking about the threat posed by Bronze Age Pervert, though his name was uttered with great reluctance. [qh]
许多参会者都知道加斯滕说的是Bronze Age Pervert所带来的威胁,尽管极不情愿说出他的名字