So what is the Critical Realists Working Group?
Group for discussing epistemological liberalism and illiberal threats to American liberalism and its core values of equal protection, free speech and secularism. To promote epistemological liberalism on Daily Kos, within the Left and in American politics generally.
Of course, that does not necessarily explain much. The word "epistemological" is itself a bit chunky. In essence, however, the group is a group designed for and by liberals. It is a group designed to promote liberal solutions, liberal ideas and liberal policies.
So what is liberalism?
Liberalism is not the same as "the Left." Liberals are not socialists. Liberals and socialists share certain goals, like the elimination of human suffering, but that no more makes liberals socialists than it makes them Buddhists, Christians or Muslims. For the same reason, liberals are not communists. Because more than anything else, liberalism is not collectivism, but its antithesis:
Liberalism is not collectivism. The theory of collectivism holds that man is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of others. Collectivism, unlike individualism, holds the group as the primary and the standard of moral value. Whether that group is a dictator's gang, the nation, society, the race, (the) god(s), the majority, the community, the tribe, etc., is irrelevant - the point is that man in principle is a sacrificial victim, whose only value is his ability to sacrifice his happiness for the will of the "group." In contrast, liberalism places the basis for all civil society on the freedom of the individual person.
Lonnie Lopez, In Defense of Liberalism
This does not mean that liberal membership is limited to its classical variation, modern libertarians. All libertarians are liberals, but not all liberals are libertarians. And liberals are a notoriously disagreeable bunch. What unites liberals is a justified belief in the value of liberty, in the overriding concern for individual autonomy and freedom.
Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant or trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding political value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value of equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order itself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these conceptions of political right.
Liberalism: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It is not that liberals reject the value of community, equality or tradition, it is that a liberal privileges freedom over these values. Free speech may offend other values that liberals hold dear, but the value placed on liberty will usually trump those other values. Liberals may find private moral decisions repugnant, but they will not be inclined to call for state intervention to regulate the lives of others. Liberals may respect the legitimacy of democratic deliberation and rule, but they will insist that there are some actions even overwhelming majorities may never legitimately take.
Many liberals are Democrats, but far from all Democrats are liberals. The purpose of the Critical Realists Working Group is to promote liberalism, its principles and policy preferences. It is to serve as a situs of liberal thought, deliberation, discussion and activism on DK4.
Welcome aboard.