I don't get this niceness aspect that is so often associated with liberalism. Well, to be exact, with the real existing liberalism - unlike pretty much all the other ideologies, liberalism is seen as actual, specific practice, not as an abstract ideology, and as an actual existing practice in this hopelessly fallen world it is then compared with the pure ideologies, with those countless ideal laboratory cases of our rich human imagination, with unreality, in other words.
But in any case liberalism is not nice: it's hard, it's nonsentimental, it's detached, empirical, unemotional, even inhumane. Liberty is an empty thing, an emptiness, just a preliminary tiny first step away from outright barbarism. And even that tiny step has been paid for with blood - it has been taken from unimaginable hardships and brutalities and injustices. Not for capital, not for the highest return for investment, but for liberty and justice, for the primitive ignorance and brutality of human history to be one day totally ended.
