Those who are left-leaning but have some views that are traditionally (or even more recently) seen as conservative often adopt the label of “classical liberal” to separate themselves from a left wing that is increasingly irrational and emotionally driven.
Classical liberalism is a laissez-faire, conservative ideology. That’s not a recent evaluation of it. The people using it as a way to separate themselves from the left are misusing it because if they’re actually classical liberals then were never on the left. I also agree that there is an irrational segment of the left, particularly the one that cares more about culture and language than policy and economics, but how is that any different than the right? How is the left more irrational and emotionally driven than Trump’s portion of the rightwing?
It’s not. I’m a centrist, remember? The biggest change in my political views over the last several years is the realization that the left isn’t automatically “on the right side of history”. Both sides have their insane fringes, and the fringes have shifted the boundaries of what’s conservative vs. liberal. The fringes are destroying our ability to meet in the middle and progress as a society. Add dying traditional media who are desperate for clicks into the mix and you have a disaster.
They do, but by that logic you surely can’t deny that the insane fringe is running the right. The Trump crowd controls the White House and Congress. The reason I forget that you’re a centrist is because you have a clear sympathy towards the people on the right doing the exact same thing you chastise the left for. Forgive me for being confused by that obvious bias. I am a leftist. I don’t doubt that my pro-left bias shows and I don’t pretend to be a centrist. If you’ve read this thread, you’d know how I feel about centrists. 😉
I don’t know where you get this idea that I sympathize more with the right than the left. I sympathize with those who present rational ideas and are labeled as extremists by those who disagree with them. When I’m talking about the stuff I see on the left that caused me to walk away, I’m not saying the right doesn’t do the same thing. It saddens me to come to terms with the fact that the left is as bullshit-ridden and disingenuous as the right, which is why I beat on them so hard.
Your defense of their identity politics is a perfect example of sympathizing with them. You don’t present a similarly sympathetic view on leftist identity politics.
Again, I’m not seeing what identity politics I’m defending. When Rubin, Peterson, Owens, etc. bring up race, it’s always to say “race doesn’t matter” or “stop talking about race”. I’m genuinely not following you here.
Rubin consistently brings up his homosexuality to legitimize his opinion. I do get where you’re coming from on Rubin and Peterson, so maybe we’ll just have to have our conflicting interpretations of them, but Candace Owens does not bring up race to say that it doesn’t matter. She brings it up to say that Democrats and liberals are racist. She brings it up to say Democrats were slaveowners as though that means anything now and she brings it up to say that black people need to “get off the plantation” and all sorts of other ludicrous shit.
I don’t see Rubin’s tendency to be self-referential as unreasonable. It’s just a counter to the idea that if you’re gay, you have to think and vote a certain way. He uses his own journey as an example and I don’t see the problem with it.
To be honest my problem with him on that issue is that he, in his comfortable married life in the liberal bastion of L.A., constantly takes the anti-gay side of every issue like states’ rights to discriminate, Christians’ right to discriminate, and he says that gay people living in shitholes like Alabama should just move somewhere else, as though that’s something that anyone could or should have to do. And I just think that that is despicable. That’s my real problem with him on the gay issue. Him saying that he’s okay with allowing businesses to discriminate and then following up with “but I’m gay!” is not compelling to me. If anything it makes it worse, in my mind.
I agree Rubin is a bit clueless in this regard. Poor people can’t just pick up and move someplace else. It’s also not reasonable to expect an entire family to relocate due to discrimination experienced by a family member.
Owens does call Democrats racists, true, as in “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. She uses the plantation as a metaphor for freeing black people from the traditional mindset that voting Democrat is the only way for them to succeed because Republicans are racists who want to hold them down. It’s provocative rhetoric for sure and I can see how it would be upsetting to Democrats who view themselves as the exact opposite of racists.
It annoys me because it’s a stupid thing to say and it upsets me because it’s hypocritical to complain about race-baiting and then do it. It also offends me to be hardcore left and then immediately become hardcore right when you realize there’s more money in being hardcore right. She’s also stunningly ignorant. She obviously has no understanding of American history and she also has no understanding of science. I’d encourage you to watch her on Joe Rogan where she literally says “I don’t believe any of this, like, at all,” when confronted with evidence in favor of climate change. The fact that conservatives tout this woman as any kind of intelligent voice is embarrassing in my opinion. At least someone like Ben Shapiro, who I think is a disgusting and repugnant pile of crap, demonstrates an understanding of the issues that he talks about. That’s all I expect from people whether I agree or disagree with them.
Not gonna lie, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously when your descriptions of those with whom you disagree are hyperbolic and dripping with hate. I disagree with Shapiro, but repugnant pile of crap?
Jay, would you be willing to criticize Jordan Peterson’s attempts to shut down critics by the force of the court system?
https://www.thecut.com/2018/09/jordan-peterson-threatened-to-sue-feminist-critic-kate-manne.html
There’s a difference between critique (free speech) and slander (illegal), and Peterson obviously thought this person’s review crossed the line into slander by labeling him a misogynist. I can’t blame him for being fed up with the ceaseless misrepresentation, but it’s not a good look given his constant hammering on free speech as a core value and filing the lawsuit isn’t going to get his critics to change their minds, so I don’t see the point. It comes across as hypocritical and overly dramatic.
You do realize that this is no different than someone suing Candace Owens for her calling them racist, right? You were defending Alex Jones for being banned over slander, which I don’t believe that Owens or the woman criticizing Peterson committed but I do believe that Jones has, because it had to do with liberals coming after a right-winger. This is what I mean when I say that you have sympathies for the right.
Didn’t I just say that I think the lawsuit is a bad idea?
I think you need to get over this mindset that if someone defends someone else, they must agree with everything that person does, or if they criticize someone else, they must hold the exact opposite position. Or that every criticism must be absolute and angry. I get that you’re passionate, but I’m not going to adopt the language you do to describe my feelings because I don’t think it’s productive.
If Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks sued Ben Shapiro for similar criticisms, I’d bet my life that you would not take such a tepid stance on it. I’m glad you see this as hypocritical, but it goes beyond that. It’s dangerous. This woman was very lucky that her employers didn’t just fire her to avoid the lawsuit, because it was one of his demands that the paper retract her article and issue an apology.
Some on the right have decided to fight fire with fire, matching outrage for outrage, drawing upon the mob and loss of income as deterrents for opinions they don’t like. SJWs have mastered this form of attack and many conservatives have responded in kind. It’s wrong whoever does it.