The Classical Freedom loving Left vs the Regressive Leftists

[Flying Pig]

Yes, there's a level of hypocrisy in condemning a suicide bombing intended to cause civilian casualties, and addressing it with a bombing mission which we know will cause a large number of no less certain civilian casualties. As a wise man said, all wars are crimes.

 

[Farm Boy]

Which, if I'm to be honest, is where a lot of justification for brutality comes in. I mean, I think it must. Once we've decided that certain people need killing, or a certain thing needs done badly enough to justify killing, then by the gods, if we're going to kill, not only had it better be worth it but it better be worth doing it to the best of our capacity. Pile on the violence until it achieves its goal, maintain the violence for as long as it takes to maintain the goal, then for the love of Pete: stop doing it. Better yet if you didn't need to do it in the first place, this method has a hell of a lot of stiff drawbacks.

 

[Ryika]

Yes, there's a level of hypocrisy in condemning a suicide bombing intended to cause civilian casualties, and addressing it with a bombing mission which we know will cause a large number of no less certain civilian casualties. As a wise man said, all wars are crimes.

Yet there is a clear difference between a "bombing mission" that is targeting a military (or industrial) target and a "bombing mission" that is specifically targeting civilians.

 

[Hygro]

So do I. Could you please try to rephrase that?

Ok, here goes:

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Squeaky not-wheel gets thrown away and replaced. We expand enfranchisement at the margins. That means the next person in line who is almost enfranchised has a shot, but only if they make enough noise that the people with enfranchisement agency, i.e. the people inside the freedom/privilege bubble, let them in.

People too far outside yelling for it can't be helped without risking the integrity of the bubble's walls. It's a freedom phalanx and we need to hold the line.

This is why liberals give some care to sexist injustices in the middle east but a lot of care to injustices at elite college campuses. The loud people there demanding further enfranchisement just jumped in the moving car of liberation, except the door closed on them as they are halfway in so they're making a lot of noise so that the people in the car pull them in, or the driver slows down so they can do it themself without risking falling out.

They seem entitled and like they have it good enough. They don't, because it's incomplete, but true: those other people really do have it worse and need it more. But there's a reality in how progress works and it is the expansion of the enfranchised class at the rate we can go.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I'm sure I'm going to regret engaging with this since your entire post reads like you have a lot of pent up hostility, but what the hell, I've got nothing better to do.

Yes, which means this isn't a freedom of speech issue. Why do people like you keep saying that it is? Why do you keep insinuating that the universities seek to suppress freedom of speech?

First of all, I don't think "universities" are trying to restrict anything. I think small groups of students on those universities are trying to restrict things, and because they're yelling very loudly, some of the universities' leadership are mistaking them for being the majority voice. The people ultimately running the universities probably wish none of this ever happened, they were quietly making money hand over fist before all of this started and I'm sure they'd love to go back to that situation.

No. Private institutions are still bound by laws, they're not above them. Governments restrict harmful discrimination because... it's harmful.

Secondly, I'm not rising to the "Governments restrict harmful discrimination because... it's harmful" bait. That's an attempt to change the topic, this thread has nothing to do with that. I only used it as an example of how I believe that private property should be private while defending myself against false accusations of having said things I didn't say, it was not intended to turn into a thread derailing tangent so I'm not gonna do it.

Banning Milo from a university harms no one.

The people that were looking forward to seeing his talk didn't get to see it, that's a tangible loss for them. I suppose they simply don't count as people? Or could it be that you are so confident that you're in the right that you don't actually believe anyone did want to see him despite his popularity?

Restrictions on Halloween costumes doesn't undermine academic freedom.

Agreed? But I'm also not sure what this has to do with anything that I said anywhere in this thread.

OHMYGOD!!!111111 BLAKC HELICOPTERS!!!1

The UN is allowed to do this, and the UN doesn't make laws. This really makes the UN a part of the civil society.

The first bit is blatant ad hominem, implying that I'm some kind of conspiracy theorist, so aside from pointing that out I won't cover it, moving on.

I'm aware that the UN does not make laws. In fact, the UN commission that I referred to that was spoken at had to retract their written findings in embarrassment after they were called out for being chock full of factual errors, bad research, and general incompetence. That wasn't the point of me bringing it up. The point of me bringing it up was to point out that these ideas ARE being taken seriously in mainstream venues. These regressive ideas are not limited to people trying to effect local change at the college that they happen to go to, they are spreading to mainstream venues where they are being taken very seriously by high level public figures in an attempt to push their ideology into the larger public sphere.

Yes they do.

Which come with specific conditions attached that are irrelevant to this subject. Being subsidized by the government doesn't make you a component of the government.

Being subsidized may not make you an official part of the government, but if my tax dollars, that I cannot opt out of paying without being thrown in a cage, are being used to support these organizations, then I have a reasonable expectation that my constitutional rights will apply while I am there and every right and reason to complain when they do not. Of course this particular problem is far larger than universities, so large that it's beyond the scope of this thread, because the government does a LOT of things with my involuntarily coerced tax dollars that I don't like. But for this thread it's enough to say that my complaints on this subject are reasonable, even if I have to admit that they are also pointless since the government using my money to restrict my rights and those of others is not new and not going away soon.

It is. This a debate between actual totalitarians , that is people who want force the civil society to endorse or platform views even if they find them abhorrent, and the liberals who are justly opposed to doing so. The universities do not want to poison their studying environment with demeaning filth: and that's fine.

Yes, the actual totalitarians.

Like the ones abusing the court system and ruining a man's life for 3 years with a case that basically boiled down to "he was mean to us".

Like the ones knowingly lying through their teeth to accuse innocent people of horrendous crimes and drag their name through the mud and suffering no consequences when it's found that they lied.

Like the ones trying to block members of the press from covering events held in a public space that they have every right to cover.

Like the ones making demands that must be fulfilled or there will be vague, never quite elucidated "consequences".

This entire last paragraph of yours makes me wonder where you got the bubble you're living in, it seems really comfortable in there and I'd love to look into getting one for myself. Any objective look around at what is happening in these cultural clashes would reveal that the so-called liberals to which you have allied yourself are the bullies these days. They are the ones using threats to get their way. They are the ones abusing the legal system by making accusations that are spurious at best and outright knowing lies at worst. They are the ones calling for "separate but equal" racially segregated spaces. And they're doing all this while shouting into a megaphone about how virtuous they are. Then, to cap it all off, when challenged on any of it, those who are self aware enough to be somewhat embarrassed about it deep down just refuse to engage while those who are without shame will unironically tell you that it's okay when they do those things because they're on "the right side of history". Those who lie are excused because "they were just trying to start a conversation". Those who bully are excused because "there are no bad tactics, only bad targets". Those who threaten are excused because "they're an oppressed class so they're punching up". No. Liars are liars. Bullies are bullies. Threats are threats. This "one rule for thee, a different rule for me" nonsense cannot be excused by anyone who wants to continue to stand for liberal values of equality and freedom.

 

[Ryika]

I always wonder if people like Princeps have ever thought: "Would my views be the same if they were doing this to people I agree with?". "The universities do not want to poison their studying environment with demeaning filth: and that's fine." is so subjective, it really sounds like he didn't.

Just imagine universities all over the place endorsing only right-wing ideologues and no-platforming large parts of the left. Would the same argument still fly? I hardly doubt it.

 

[Cheetah]

Ok, here goes:

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Squeaky not-wheel gets thrown away and replaced. We expand enfranchisement at the margins. That means the next person in line who is almost enfranchised has a shot, but only if they make enough noise that the people with enfranchisement agency, i.e. the people inside the freedom/privilege bubble, let them in.

People too far outside yelling for it can't be helped without risking the integrity of the bubble's walls. It's a freedom phalanx and we need to hold the line.

This is why liberals give some care to sexist injustices in the middle east but a lot of care to injustices at elite college campuses. The loud people there demanding further enfranchisement just jumped in the moving car of liberation, except the door closed on them as they are halfway in so they're making a lot of noise so that the people in the car pull them in, or the driver slows down so they can do it themself without risking falling out.

They seem entitled and like they have it good enough. They don't, because it's incomplete, but true: those other people really do have it worse and need it more. But there's a reality in how progress works and it is the expansion of the enfranchised class at the rate we can go.

Heh. Fashionably late, are we?

Thanks, I understood this one better than the first one. However, I'm not sure which point of mine you're arguing...

I understand the argument you're making though, and can agree that it is a reasonable way to go about it. But it seems to me that the rights within the bubble are being chipped away at. The whole problem of Regressive Left is that they seem to be willing to throw away certain rights in the name of misguided tolerance.

 

[Hygro]

As the person who opened the thread "what if you were on the same side as the thought police" I am sympathetic but in the end the regressive left doesn't really exist. Not in the threatening way these new-conservatives who call themselves progressives fear.

My first post was responding to the whole discussion above it, starting with the OP.

 

[Cheetah]

But it does exist.

When liberal, secular and progressive voices are shouted down by groups which are otherwise liberal, secular and progressive, on the grounds that those voices "attacked" or "insulted" people by making logical and reasoned arguments regarding Islamism, religions (of minorities), feminism, immigration or any a-priori-assumed progressive policies, there is a problem. That problem has been termed the regressive left.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

But it does exist.

When liberal, secular and progressive voices are shouted down by groups which are otherwise liberal, secular and progressive, on the grounds that those voices "attacked" or "insulted" people by making logical and reasoned arguments regarding Islamism, religions (of minorities), feminism, immigration or any a-priori-assumed progressive policies, there is a problem. That problem has been termed the regressive left.

Exactly. The left might not like the term, but... well...

The right didn't coin the term neo-con. The puritans did not make up that name for themselves. Human history has a long and storied tradition of groups being remembered by the names given to them by their opponents. Sorry reality is like that, I guess?

 

[Hygro]

Last decade we called them soccer moms

 

[Cheetah]

Please be serious Hygro, even if it's not an RD thread.

The 'soccer mom' term evolved into 'helicopter parents'. Neither has anything to do with political discussions around progressive and regressive liberalism and socialism.

 

[Hygro]

I'm dead serious. Soccer moms were a political unit and one that matches the more reactionary expressions that spawn from the progressive environments.

 

[Cheetah]

No, no it doesn't...

The phrase soccer mom broadly refers to a North American middle-class suburban woman who spends a significant amount of her time transporting her school-age children to their youth sporting events or other activities. It came into widespread use during the 1996 United States presidential election.

Link

If you are serious, then you really haven't grasped what properties we're attributing to the Regressive Left. And if that's your position, even after the attempts at explanation in this thread, I'm rather lost on where I should start to explain it.

 

[Hygro]

You can start by understanding that if you don't understand me, you might not understand what I do and don't know.

 

[sophie]

No, no it doesn't...

I think it's an apt comparison. Soccer mom came to refer to a certain demographic of theoretically or superficially liberal voters who often ended up trending conservative when push came to shove.

The "I'm all for personal freedoms but I won't have a gay scout leader corrupting my children" demographic. i.e. the people that elected Clinton, who was especially good at bridging that gap between the "cool-guy liberal" who was never going to advocate for anything particularly radical. It's the platform mainstream Democrats have been operating on all the way up to now, or 2008, depending on how you interpret Obama's presidency.

 

[Cheetah]

You can start by understanding that if you don't understand me, you might not understand what I do and don't know.

Well, that's at least half true, but I'm honestly trying to understand you. You're not making it very easy though.

I think it's an apt comparison. Soccer mom came to refer to a certain demographic of theoretically or superficially liberal voters who often ended up trending conservative when push came to shove.

The "I'm all for personal freedoms but I won't have a gay scout leader corrupting my children" demographic. i.e. the people that elected Clinton, who was especially good at bridging that gap between the "cool-guy liberal" who was never going to advocate for anything particularly radical. It's the platform mainstream Democrats have been operating on all the way up to now, or 2008, depending on how you interpret Obama's presidency.

Mmm... Alright, I think I get it a bit more. Though I'm not sure I'd agree with comparing them, something doesn't match. I'll have to think of it a bit.

Are there any other examples of the conservative positions of soccer moms?

 

[Lohrenswald]

I feel there's something important about Princeps' notes on suicide bombing, but I just can't quite grasp it

there might even be cognitive dissonance going on on my part

 

[Hygro]

They wanted war in Iraq, censorship of video games, Janet Jackson's boob was a big deal as was Clinton's infedility, and Al Gore kissing his wife won their affection. They were a "think of the children!" morality police. Now it's "think of the oppressed!" morality police, and it's the children of the soccer moms.

Interestingly, on CFC the people bent on calling the American social justice movement and the European pro-immigrant folks the same group called the "regressive left" are also similar to the soccer moms. In this case, however, its ostensible liberals who are clearly in-denial conservatives attacking the leftists. It's the exact same Allan Bloom crowd, who are the intellectual harbor of the right. edit: the point being, thought of themselves as culturally liberal in the same way as soccer moms.


All identities are inherently political, notice the end of the wiki quote you supplied ending in "presidential election", i.e. that the identity came out as label for a political end.

 

[classical_hero]

Yet there is a clear difference between a "bombing mission" that is targeting a military (or industrial) target and a "bombing mission" that is specifically targeting civilians.

You would think so but according to many any civilian death is a crime.