My Anti-Authoritarian Stance Against Authoritarians On Both Sides

As much as I'm freaked out by the authoritarian, nationalist, neo-Fascist, tyrannical conservatism that I see all around me in American politics, I'm also concerned that there are ideological, fundamentalist, almost witch-hunty and authoritarian trends within leftism.  Don't get me wrong, I think that conservatism in America, particularly as it's currently being lead, has turned utterly insane and un-American.  I think conservatives here have abandoned core, foundational values of our nation (the Christian extremists are openly opposed to separation of church and state and tacitly opposed to freedom of religion, wanting to impose Christian Sharia law on the rest of us, the authoritarians are opposed to the fundamentally anti-authoritarian spirit of our democratic republic, conservative senators and congress people threw their duties out the window when there was a vacancy in the Supreme Court during the Obama administration by refusing to even consider any moderate candidate put forward by the President and shirked their duty to appoint sound judges by appointing poorly qualified extremists instead of well qualified centrists, they separate refugee children from refugee parents in the name of controlling immigration, they oppose democratizing popular elections in favor of keeping our broken Electoral College system, and the man they elected as President openly molests women and stands by while black protestors are beaten up by his constituents at his rallies, etc. etc.)

However, I see alarming things from my fellow liberals as well.  Leftist college students actively obstruct lecturers who aren't in lock-step with their ideology by coming directly into lecture halls with bullhorns and physically making so much noise that the lecturer cannot be heard.  Lest you think neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists are their only targets, Feminists such has Christina Sommers have been physically prevented from speaking or even debating only for being  different types of Feminists than the ones their obstructors support.  Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker has been shouted down for reasons unclear.  Canada-born Dr. Pinker is relatively non-political.  When he is, he seems to be relatively centrist, or else have various opinions on various issues.  The impetus behind oppressing his freedom of speech seems to have been merely that a white supremacist liked something he said, much to Pinker's dismay, which would make the oppression of his freedom of speech from leftists based on guilt by association.  At my own alma mater, Reed College, a Lesbian professor with PTSD was shouted down into a nervous breakdown in the middle of the auditorium during her lecture on Sappho, the female homosexual ancient Greek poet of the island of Lesbos after whom the word Lesbian derives (and, in my not so humble opinion, one of the great love poets of western civilization).  The reason for the leftist students oppressing her was merely that she was lecturing within a western humanities course that is required of all freshmen who attend Reed (which the students would have known before enrolling).

All this is ideological at best and authoritarian at worst.  It would be one thing to protest outside the lecture halls, but this is oppressing people's freedom of speech and the rights of fellow students to have an open debate on the issues and a free investigation into the Truth.  It's literally shouting down all opposing views.  There's a feeling, here, of attacking people even for disagreeing.  There's something distressingly witch-hunty about this.  In one case, Dr. Sommers was thus prevented from even having a debate with a feminist that these leftists like and both her and her fellow-feminist opponent in the debate were prevented from speaking.  So, this trend is anti-debate altogether, rather than engaging someone with an opposing view in debatew.  It started out as keeping neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists from using universities as places to speak, but that was clearly a slippery slope, because it's turned into something that reminds me a great deal of the McCarthy era Communist witch-hunts, in which things didn't stop with rooting out Communists spies and revolutionaries, or even with undermining Communism itself.  Non-Communists were also accused and black-listed.  Now, an alarmingly authoritarian form of leftism seems to be doing the same thing.  Where will it end?  Will I be shouted down?  Will you?

It's not just on college campuses where I'm seeing this distressing ideology.  I hear it all the time in the way my fellow leftists talk about issues.  They'll take their own hyperbole literally and use it to make unwarranted attacks on the moral character of anyone who opposes their ideology.  I'll take for one example a very hot topic and that's the issue of illegal immigration.  I can very easily understands why my fellow progressives are being driven mad by the tyranny of the conservatives in this regard and I can even understand them wanting some sort of powerful rhetoric that will steam-roll over all opposition, but I feel it's being done in a way that is, at times, devisive, unwarranted, and witch-hunty.

What's tricky about this issue is that there are real terrible things that we progressives are rightly fighting against.  I absolutely agree that there is real racism on all fronts, as well as religious prejudice in the case of the White House's rather nasty stance on Muslim refugees fleeing persecution from the tyranny of the so-called Islamic State.

However, just because someone supports some amount of controlling of our borders and deportation or some sort of government regulation of illegal immigration does not, ipso facto, make one a racist.  Yet, I hear a lot of my fellow leftists branding anyone who suggests any idea other than that our borders should be totally free as somehow being "racists" and that distresses me as witch-hunty.

Please understand, that the non-racist reasons for supporting government regulation of illegal immigration does not imply that I believe or support such opinions.  That being said, I can think of several non-racist reasons why my fellow Americans might take such a stance.

    1. They may be workers who are afraid (possibly wrongly) that illegal immigrants will take their jobs.  Even if they're wrong about this, their ignorance does not make them racists.

    2. They might be afraid that terrorists will get into our country if our border guard is relaxed.  Again, regardless of whether or not that's true, that does not necessarily make them racists (though it may be the case in some of the people who make this claim, but I very much doubt that it is with all).

    3. They might simply believe that our country should control our borders on general principles: that it's basically a good policy take be in control of who comes in.  Such people may point out that the immigrants in question are illegal and may not have any problem whatsoever with legal immigrants, wherever they come from, whatever their ethnicity, skin color, or religion.

My personal view is that the government should do something about illegal employment.  Our corporations are, after all, complicit in hiring illegal immigrants.  My charge against many conservatives on this issue is not racism, but rather hypocrisy (many of them are fine supporting these corporations, but not the illegal immigrants they pay).  There, though, you'll notice I was careful to say "many" and not brand all conservatives on this issue as hypocrites, only the ones who hold this double standard.  Of course, as a progressive, I cannot condone deporting children who had no say in coming here, separating children from their families, turning away refugees, denying entry on religious grounds, or actual, factual racism on this issue.

I'll turn now to another issue in which I also see a distressing witch-huntiness: that of consent. Though I absolutely support real consent, I've heard distressing things.  For example, I've heard of cases in which a woman and man both consented to all the touching that was going on between them, but some nosy third party asked them if they had consented and, even when they confirmed that they had, proceeded to attack the character of the man involved over social media, via blogs, within communities, and in personal correspondences with mutual friends.  In other words, all consent was present, but some busy-body took exception to Gods-know-what.  There's a sense to which what started out as a very good campaign toward consent has shifted, in some circles, to a campaign for ideological purity that has been divorced from the original goal.  While I absolutely support that real goal, this ideological drift scares me.  I'm single.  If I get into a consensual relationship, will some busy-body third party assassinate my character across the internet and throughout my community just because I don't do Gods-know-what ultra pure thing, while some consenting woman of my affections, in full mutuality, is humiliated in the public eye and has to endure the man of her affections getting his character assassinated for some alleged impurity that has little, if anything to do with their relationship or his moral character all so that some busy-body can virtue signal?

These are only a few sample issues representing a larger pattern.  I hear this sort of ideological, intractability from my fellow progressives all the time.  I disturbs me.  We should not be the authoritarian ones.  We should not be the witch hunters.

What particularly disturbs me is that I see my fellow progressives attacking the morals and character of anyone who disagrees with them on certain issues.  It's wrong to brand someone as immoral (as racist, sexist, selfish, hateful,  murderous, impure, or whatever) only because a person disagrees with you.  Will I be the next victim if I disagree with 5% or 1% of the politics of a fellow progressive?  Will you?  I, for one, intend to think for myself and I hope you do too.  As we do, we're bound to find that our free thoughts differ from all sorts of ideologies (and you will undoubtedly disagree with me about something and I with you).

What's more, liberalism is supposed to stand for freedom of expression and democracy.  If we believe in democracy, we must believe in an open debate on the issues.  We need to stop shouting people down, assassinating character, and witch hunting.  We must discard our intractable ideologies and replace them with well-thought-through opinions and, when debate is in order, sound, rational arguments.  We must take a page from our own playbook and think for ourselves instead of locking our step with ideologues, however leftist, in the name of being liked.

We cannot fight ideology with ideology, witch-hunt with witch-hunt, or authoritarianism with authoritarianism.  That plays right into the hands of the neo-Fascists who have come to power in our beloved Land of the Free, because the People will have both sides normalizing authoritarian ideology.  It's only when we practice what we preach and rise above them, that we can truly promote our values.  To quote from a central text of my own religion, we must "keep true your highest ideal and strive ever towards it."  ("Charge of the Goddess", Doreen Valiente)  When that ideal is freedom, we must stive for everyone having their say and open, and honest debate of the issues.