Liberalism vs Socially-authoritarian Leftism: Presentism.

There seems to be a strange presentism in contemporary identity politics, in which identity politicians seem to expect the past, even the progressive past, to be entirely open for criticism by today's standards.  The problem with this is that progress, by definition, moves incrementally.  It's all in the name: "progressive".  Progress is, by its very nature, in opposition to the idea that the old ways are best, because that's precisely what conservatism is.  Progressivism is always in contrast to that idea, on the grounds that humanity can always improve itself.  If there's a best way to be, says the progressive, we should constantly strive toward it. 

 

What this means is that it should be no surprise that things were more racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally more prejudicial in the past, because these things needed to be resisted.  Take, for example, homosexuality.  In the 1950's, it was illegal and considered a mental illness.  Now, two people of the same sex can get married.  Progress! 

We progressives should celebrate how far we've come, rather than constantly attacking the old days.  When it comes to truly conservative things, I can kind of understand.  It's important for us to remember how bad things used to be and recognize what progress still needs to take place.  A recent Doctor Who episode about Rosa Parks did a good job of this by having the 21st Century black Brit run into trouble trying to pick up a 50's white southern lady's glove, but he also had a conversation with his Pakistani friend about what's still left to do in our time.  That's not presentist.  It's understanding a history of oppression in which some things have improved, while acknowledging there's more to be done now.

 

What really bothers me is when today's identity politicians lash out at yesterday's progress.  There was an incident a few years ago that I still find incomprehensible in which a school painted over a famous mural from the 1920's, because it depicted the terrible things America has done like slavery, oppression of workers, and the like.  This was made by a progressive artist who was trying to show people the problems with our country.  The objection seemed to be that it portrayed racism.  Yes, of course it did.  How else could the artist make the point that America has done terrible things?  To what end do today's so-called "progressives" paint over yester-year's progress?  True progressives celebrate the history of progress.



I see other things like this.  A lot of the new leftist (the wokeists, the social violence warriors, the social-authoritarians, who are willing to destroy your career if you don't say what you think they should say) will often look expressions from the past and criticize it under contemporary lights.  TV shows that were the cutting edge of progress in the 70's, and meant a lot to many of us as, say, opening out of our westo-centric shell, are now deplored as racist.  Old movies that were meant to portray women as non-conforming to "women's" roles are now looked down on as sexist.  Old novels that meant so much to many of us, as challenging contemporary mores, are now under attack by a new, snarly left.  What I find most surprising is that expressions that necessitated exposing their audience to the noxious behavior they condemned by, say, having the racists use the N word, are now attacked for exactly that.  To use the N word, the three letter F word, the K word, or the B word, in order to show why it's wrong to do so, are now under attack for precisely for violating these contemporary taboos.  Works by progressive white southerners who want to make sure people know just how much we need to fight against the wave of racism they saw in their day, are now condemned for daring to express a white perspective on the subject.  How could anyone who didn't have an inside view on, say, the White Citizens' Alliance (the legal wing of the Klan), possibly know their inner workings?  We can only know by hearing from progessive white folks who were allowed to see these machinations first hand by racists who didn't know they were starting to question racism.

Progressivism, by it's very nature, is impure.  Well, that's true of all nature, but that goes double for progress.  There's always more to do.  Yet, a new wave of leftists are purists, more than progressives.  To complain about its impurities is to complain about change.  To complain about change is to expect humanity to have always have been perfect and admonish all human history for its failure to do so.  Nature made us impure.  Progress takes time.  I wish we would applaud the efforts of the past, forgive the impurities of the present, and move on to the future.

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism: Consent Culture

I'm continuing my series on liberalism vs social-authoritarian leftism.  I consider large swaths of the left to have become socially-authoritarian and illiberal.  I see them using social violence to force their politics, which is why I say that they're social-authoritarians.  The group that I've come to call the Social Violence Warriors are abusive and illiberal.  I feel that they've betrayed the left and betrayed America.  This post is on "consent culture".

 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

I absolutely believe in consent.  Of course, before we touch someone erotically, for example, we should make sure they're okay with us doing that.  That's just basic common sense.

 

I never heard the term "consent culture" until a few years ago and the term baffles me.  A rather oily seeming guy in my community suggested that we should all attend classes on "consent culture".  My retort is that I don't need a special class to know not to murder or steal, and we don't need special classes to respect other people's boundaries.

 

Consent is Built-in to our Culture

 

Classic liberalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism) is an inherent part of western culture.  Consent is built into liberalism.  It's common sense that we can't take things that aren't ours or aren't freely given.  In other words, we can't take something from another unless they consent to it.  We can't physically hurt someone unless they consent to it (BDSM is the only exception I know to assault), or unless it's the only option to keep the other person from physically hurting us (self-defense).  We can't burn down a building the owner hasn't consented to allow to be burned down (that would be arson).  Our laws, both criminal and civil, have consent built into them as defining qualities.

 

I realize this may be an odd thing to say when in the wake of President Trump, who freely and openly sexually molested women, but that's the political insanity of our times rather than something inherent in our culture.  It's a sign that our culture is breaking down, not a sign that it's flawed (though I'm perfectly willing to admit it has flaws).

 

It's obvious to anyone in our culture, who isn't a sociopath, that everyone has the right to set boundaries about anything, including touch.  Anyone who violates those boundaries is, then, immediately seen correctly as the barbarians they are.  Treating "consent culture" as something non-obvious only serves to allow barbarians to look civilized. 

 

Respecting Women in Sex-Positive Culture

 

Often when women talk about how they find it sexist if men don't "respect them".  Sex-positive women are referring, correctly, to men who won't see them as human beings.  However, I fear that other women have fallen back into old puritanical, sex-negative thought patterns.  In a sex-positive culture, for a man to desire a woman sexually and to show it is not in and of itself disrespectful, and therefore not sexist.  If sex is fundamentally good, showing sexual desire is also fundamentally good. 

 

Of course, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to do so.  Nobody likes their sex organs being stared at, for instance.  It's also certainly disrespectful to take someone else for granted, rather than to realize that they might be in a monogamous relationship with someone, or they may simply not return our sexual feelings.  My point is that respect in a sex-positive culture looks very different from respect in a sex-negative one.  That is, it's not the sexual-ness that makes a given interaction disrespectful.  There are good sex-positive manners that signal things such as that we'll respect boundaries, that we see the human whole, not just the parts, that we don't presume that everybody just wants to get laid, that we'll respect everyone's right to approach sex in their own way (poly- or mono-, committed or casual, short term, or long term, gay, hetero, bi, etc.), and so forth.  If you're poly, it's rude to come on to someone who you know is mono and taken.  If someone wants hookups, it's rude for them to pursue someone whom they know is not.  Sex-positive manners require that we respect everyone.  But that's just basic, common-sense ethics.

 

What about People who Violate Consent?

 

There are certainly people who violate other people's consent.  There are also murders, robbers, arsonists, and so forth.  However, it's common sense that all of these people are immoral, including those who violate other people's consent.

Conclusion

 

We don't need some special, extra "consent culture" in order to respect other people's boundaries.

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism: Sex

 

As a liberal, I feel that the left's left me.  Today's left frightens me.  Rather than using reason to persuade us and letting the rest of us form our own opinions, the new left is waging a war of abuse and social violence against everyone who's not in lockstep with the the Left party line.  It's not what they're saying, it's how they're saying it.  This runs counter to liberal values.  Liberalism is a political philosophy that has to do with rights.  It holds that people are free and that we cannot coerce others to hold certain opinions or to only express certain things.  We all have the right to a sincere opinion.

 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

In this post, I continue my series on liberal vs authoritarian approaches to progress.  Today's topic is sex.  I'll discuss how I view sex as a liberal and how I see the current left's view on sex as having divereged radically from liberalism.

 

Sex

 

The old left has traditionally been sex-positive.  We affirm that sex is essentially good.  All forms of consensual sex among adults are basically good, including casual sex that's merely for the mutual physical pleasure of all parties involved and polyamorous sex, in which everybody involved agrees to it.  What's bad is to violate another individual's sexual boundaries or to involve minors in sex with adults, since minors are considered unable to consent.

 

However, American culture has traditionally been sex-negative, becaues of its Puritanical roots.  Traditional conservatism, thus sees sex as bad on the face of it and only acknowledges it to be good if other qualities are added, like sex within a loving marriage, for example, or sex for the sake of making babies.  If someone violates someone else's boundaries via erotic touch, this perspective understands the act as doubly bad: bad because someone's values were violated, but also bad because the perpetrator wanted to do something erotic in the first place.  Casual sex and polyamory are understood as fundamentally bad.  So are gay, Lesbian, and bi.

 

Recently, I see the new left as having adopted this puratanical sex-negative thought pattern.  It used to be that I'd hear women complain about men violating their boundaries, but, lately, they seem to think that they don't have to set them in the first place.  The former follows logically from sex-positive culture, while the latter follows logically from sex-negative culture.

 

The liberal perspective, on the other hand, is that it's true that there are boundaries we shouldn't have to set (like erotic touch outside of a romantic / dating context), it's everybody's responsibility to set boundaries and to respect boundaries that are set.  This is something I see the new left as rejecting.

One problem I'm seeing, in the new left, is cases in which third parties in our community would make a complaint against someone (usually a man) for some sort of perceived, vague sexual malfeasance, when the second party (the person receiving erotic touching, often a woman) clearly consented.  These nosy neigbhors couch their accusations in a tearful sales pitch.  It's custom tailored to pull at your heart strings.  They'll give lip service to ideals like "consent culture" and often make vague accusations, like "I didn't feel like that guy was using language that…".  They'll pretend to be "helping" the second party (the one consenting to advances of the iniator), when really they're objecting to any sort of romantic, erotic, or sexual behavior.

 

They gaslight the initiator of whatever it was (asking someone out on a date, kissing someone, putting their arm around someone's shoulders, etc) because reasons.  However, if you stop and be rational for a moment, you'll soon realize the problem.  If the second party consented, what's the problem?  If we're sex-positive, there is none!  The nosy neighbor's real complaint is that erotic touching is occurring at all.

 

Liberalism holds that the second party has the right to consent.  A third party should only get involved if the second party asks them to.

 

Consent Culture

 

I absolutely believe in consent.  Of course, before we touch someone erotically we should make sure they're okay with that.  That's just basic common sense.

 

I never heard the term "consent culture" until a few years ago and the term still baffles me.  As sex-negative as American culture has traditionaly been, consent has always been built into our culture.  It's necessary for capitalism, which is also part of American culture.  You can't take something from another without their consent.  Our nation was founded on classic liberalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism), which implies consent.  It follows logically from that that you can't engage another person in erotic touching unless they've agreed to it.  The proof is in our laws.  Rape and sexual assault are illegal.  A culture that did not have consent built into its notions of sex would not have such laws. 

 

So, consent is built into our culture.  We don't need "consent culture" any more than we need a no-murdering culture or a no-theft culture.  The fact that murders or thefts happen does not imply anything to the contrary.  Human beings do all sorts of evil things, by nature, that we need to rein in.  Culture and law are there to help us do that.  Just as it's obvious that murder and theft are wrong, it's also obvious that consent is necessary.

 

Respecting Women in Sex-Positive Culture

 

Of course, men should respect women.  That follows logically to any liberal, because we liberals believe that we're all equal.  Often, though, when women talk about how they find it sexist if men don't "respect them", I have the awful nagging feeling that they've fallen back into that puritanical, sex-negative thought pattern.  In a sex-positive culture, for a man to express desire to a woman is normal.  It's  not in and of itself disrespectful.  If sex is fundamentally good, showing sexual desire is also fundamentally good.  Of course, there are appropriate and inapproriate ways to do so.  Nobody likes their sex organs being stared at, for instance.  It's also certainly disrespectful to take someone else for granted. 

 

Sex-positive culture looks very different from respect in a sex-negative one.  Since sex is fundamentally good, there are good sex-positive manners that show that we respect everyone's right to approach sex in their own way.  When criticizing sexual interest and advances, we must be careful to properly criticize breaches of sex-positive etiquette, rather than criticizing the sexual fact itself.

 

Objectification vs Physical Attraction

 

There's a difference between objectification and physical attraction.  If you know someone's a human being and treat them as such (by sex-positive standards), you're not objectifying them.  In sex-positive culture, there's nothing at all wrong with feeling primarily physically attracted to someone and thinking sex with them would be fun.

 

Objectification is a very harsh thing to accuse somebody of.  It's batted around like it's nothing, but it actually means treating someone like an object.  Psychologists use the term to describe sociopaths and psychopaths, who literally objectify everybody (they treat everyone but themselves as objects to be used, rather than fellow human beings to be related to).  So, I wish people would be much more careful about using this term.  Objectification could include physical attraction (just wanting pussy or dick, which is quite different from wanting a mutually pleasureable hookup).  It could also include pocketbook objectification, such just wanting to get into a relationship with someone for their money (treating the other person as a mere pocketbook to dispense money).

 

Hints

 

I've heard a lot of proponents of "consent culture" insist that people, particularly men, read the hints of the people they desire.  This is unworkable.  Was that woman I was talking to at the convention backing away from me or toward the buffet table?  Did she want me to back off, or was she hinting that she wanted to eat while we're flirting?  If we really believe in consent, we have to throw this idea away.  Human beings are simply hit and miss on reading other people's hints.  If someone's coming onto you and they're not taking your hints, you need to use explicit verbal communication.  You don't have to be rude about it.  "No thank you" is perfectly fine.  It's perfectly possible to be polite and explicit at the same time.  The key is not to beat others over the head with your emotions and recognize that the other person may just not get that you're not interested.  The burden of communication and setting boundaries is on you.

One fallout from this insistence on everybody reading other people's hints is that someone who desires another, romantically, may actually read positive hints that aren't there.  Did that woman 6 inches from me with her lips parted because she wanted a kiss, or just because she felt overwhelmed with a sense of Platonic friendship toward me?  By pressuring people into "reading hints", we actually pressure people into receiving false positives about what the other person wants.  If I brush a woman's hair back after she gets close to me and looks into my eyes, and she smiles and looks deeper into my eyes, and then I move into a kiss and she doesn't feel that way about me, she needs to speak up. 

 

And… I think we need to have a discussion about what constitutes erotic touching.  To many of us, including me, kissing is a gray zone.  If I give a woman a peck on the lips, and she didn't want it, it's not an emergency.  I didn't violate her, because it's not the same as grabbing her ass or her breasts.  It's what people do in that gray area in between being friendly and full-on romantic.  In many cultures, kissing is totally non-romantic.  In ours, a kiss on the cheak is a reasonable thing to do with, say, a woman who feels like a sister to a man, or who's just a close friend.  If someone kisses you, and you don't want it, you need to tell them.  Every system of boundaries has its gray areas.  We can't ask for consent for absolutely everything, or we'd never get anything done (certainly not in an organic way).  Too much checking boundaries can make an intimate situation ackward (and note that intimacy is not necessarily romance).  Do I need to ask you before shaking hands?  Before kissing a dear female friend on the cheak?  Without explicit boundary setting, it all falls apart.

 

Hard Sales Culture

 

While I disagree that there's any such thing as non-consent culture or "rape culture", I do think there's such a thing as hard sales culture, when it comes to sex.  Because of the capitalist nature of American culture, I've met some men who seem to regard women as customers on a used car lot and themselves as the salesmen.  They make a hard sales pitch.  Sales advice, in America, often includes "don't take no for an answer".  While this is not something that any salesperson would take literally (you can't force somebody to buy something), it can certainly make them pushy and unpleasant.  As I've said, there's nothing in American culture that promotes rape (though there are morally weak individuals who give into their base desires enough to violate our built-in culture of consent).

 

I'd like to suggest that we reframe "rape culture" and "objectification" as "hard sales culture" with regard to sex.  Being a push creepy is bad etiquette in sex-positive culture.  Although these men may not actually violate women, they are disrespectful to them.  If they guy is gay, it's disrespectful to men.  And, women sometimes engage in this sort of smarmy behaviour as well, although it's rarer.

 

Sex positive respect is

 

Conclusions

 

As a liberal, I see sex as basically good.  If you want to convince me that something involved with it is immoral, you need to make your case by explaining how it's immoral from a sex-positive perspective.  I'd like to see the left jettison puritanism once and for all.  Let's get back to the sexual revolution.  We can do so in a civilized way, with an eye to etiquette.  We can also do so in a way that respects all views on sex (monogamy, polyamory, LGBT, etc.).  While there are dif

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism – Reexamining Identity Politics

 

 

I'm continuing my series on liberalism vs social-authoritarian leftism.  I consider large swaths of the left to have become socially-authoritarian and illiberal.  I see them using social violence to force their politics, which is why I say that they're social-authoritarians.  The group that I've come to call the Social Violence Warriors are abusive and illiberal.  I feel that they've betrayed the left and betrayed America.

 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

Today's topic is identity politics.  I support equality and rights for everybody by everybody and respect to everybody from everybody, but I respectfully disagree with some of the leftist ideas about this issue.  So, I'll be talking about how I see a lot of leftists talking about it, why I disagree about subtle points, and what I think.

 

To What Extent Does Perspective Really Effect Opinion?

 

I hear the new left talking a lot about perspective.  Its adherents claim, first of all, that members of oppressed groups all have similar perspectives as members of the oppressed group, that members of traditionally oppressive groups have common perspectives, likewise, and, finally, that perspective significantly influences opinion.  It's certainly true that we have different perspectives and that differences among us, such as race or gender, can definitely effect those perspectives, but I think we have to be careful to avoid over-categorizing a group as having a monolithic perspective.

 

The new left claims that perspective effects opinion, but I see a lot of evidence that it does not dictate opinion.  How do they explain Sarah Palin, for example?  She's a woman.  Women are an oppressed group.  Their logic would say that Palin's female perspective would control her opinion and make her do whatever's best for women to help her sister fight free from under the heal of patriarchal oppression.  Yet, when she was mayor, Palin opposed having enough rape kits at police stations to prosecute rapists.  She has a very anti-feminist record.  I personally know a black woman who is on the side of the police on the police shootings issue. 

 

I also see plenty of fair skinned Americans supporting people of color in their struggle for freedom from oppression.  We know many who are "straight but not narrow".  There are men like me who are ready and willing to fight for women's causes.  So, even if there are monolithic perspectives that glob together according to traditionally-oppressive groups, it seems to me that perspectives don't dictate opinion.  It seems to me that morals and values are also factors in how people form their opinions.  For example, I support women's rights because I'm a social liberal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism), not because I'm a woman.  In fact, the notion that perspective dictates opinion seems to see humans as fundamentally selfish, but we know that we're often not.  We often do care about others.

 

But I'll go even farther and say that I doubt whether these monolithic perspectives even exist.  I'm a man, yes, but I was raised in the SF Bay Area by parents who modeled equality in the home.  I grew up in the late 70's, the 80's, and the early 90's surrounded by hippyish leftists who stood firmly against racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, religious discrimination, and any other form of prejudice or oppression.  My parents and many of their friends, though fair-skinned, participated in the civil rights movement.  In school we read books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Color Purple" and had mandatory assemblies in which we were taught about the plight of blacks, latinos/as/ex's, gays and Lesbians, women, etc.  In short, while I am fair-skinned, hetero, and male, the world I grew up in was very much a progressive, anti-prejudice, anti-oppression, and pro-diversity world.  Even the Reaganite private K through 8 I attended (which wasn't my parents' first choice, you understand), nevertheless taught us to celebrate diversity and made some efforts toward having a diverse student body. 

 

My background is very different from, say, growing up in a rural part of the deep South, being raised fundamentalist Christian, or something like that.  So it's a significant question as to whether our perspectives are shaped more by our identities or our backgrounds.

 

Rather than understanding perspective as a predictive model.  Rather than thinking of there as being one "white perspective", "male perspective", "straight perspective," and so forth.  I'd like to suggest that we think of there as being many of each of these, as we remember that that perspective may be only one part of each individual's makeup, which includes their background, the parenting they received, and their life experiences.

 

Finally, it's clear to me that we, as intelligent beings, can think for ourselves and our not bound by any perspective.  Whether our identity, our political model, our background, or our life experiences affect our opinions more, we are always able to bring reason and intelligence to bear on the issues, so we may very well come to opinions that none of our perspectives would predict.

 

In this way, we're all free.  While we all have a different, unique mixture of perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, etc., we can all contribute equally to the dialogs and discussions of our time.  So, the non-liberal idea that we "straight white men" should shut up and let others express themselves, because we have the "wrong" perspective, loses all meaning for me.  Of course, none of us knows what it's like to be someone else, but, when I realize that we are all just as qualified to contribute to the discussion, my liberalism is renewed, because only liberalism allows us to do that.  In order to participate in society, we must be free.

 

It seems to me that it's more important to make sure that oppressed groups have the same opportunity to express themselves as the rest of us, than to stifle the free expression of people outside of those groups.

 

Privilege vs Human Rights

 

I've been told that, as a white person, as a man, etc., I have certain "privileges".  Among these, or so the claim goes, are that the cops will treat me fairly, justly, and even mercifully, that the I can walk down the street at night and feel safe, that I don't particularly have to worry about being sexually assaulted (more than being victim of any other crime, I suppose).

 

All true, however I can't think of a single example of such "privilege" that could not be better expressed in terms of rights.  Among human rights are the rights to justice, fairness, and basic respect (egalitarian respect, not deferential respect).  It's everybody's human right to have our justice system treat them justly, fairly, and with basic respect.  I also think we have a basic right to mercy.

 

I have a quibble with the notion of "privilege" as opposed to the notion of human rights.  The California DMV defines driving a car as a "privilege not a right".  That's what the term privilege means to me.  If that's not what it means to you, you're either miscommunication or deliberately trying to confuse people.  So, when people tell me that it's, say, a "white privilege" to be treated fairly by the police, it makes it sound like they're endorsing a police state.  In other words, it sounds to me like they think that the police SHOULD be unfair.  I don't get the impression that that is what they intend to imply, but that's why I'm baffled by the use of the word "privilege".  It's a human RIGHT to be treated fairly by the police.

 

Now, certainly, some sort black perspective comes into play here.  (Well, I don't totally dismiss the notion of perspective, I just have the concerns about it I've already stated.)  Of course, we should take the reports of police brutality and killings seriously.  My point is merely that I think it's much clearer and more liberal to frame this failure of our civilization in terms of human rights than in terms of "white privilege".  Ditto with the right of women to equal protection under the law from assault, for another example, for gays and Lesbians to be treated with respect, or for someone with a penis and an Adam's apple to walk down the street in a dress and still be respected.

 

As a liberal, I support human rights for all.  The struggle of the oppressed, which I understand myself as supporting, is a struggle for human rights, rather than a struggle against privilege.

 

In order to participate in society, we must be free.

 

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism: Why Liberalism?

 

Today, I'm finally getting back to my series "Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism".  Today, I explain what I think liberalism is and why I think liberalism is important.  The backdrop of this is a left-on-left debate about whether we want a liberal left or a socially-authoritarian left.  In my earlier posts, I defined social authoritarianism as the use of social violence and abuse as a may to manipulate politics to leftist ends and how I oppose that approach.  I'm arguing that a liberal left is better than a social-authoritarian left.

 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

What is Liberalism and Why is It Important?

 

Simply put, there is one and only one alternative to authoritarianism and that's liberalism.  In America, we think of the word liberalism as meaning social liberalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism).  Liberalism, broadly speaking, simply means the political philosophy that we are all free individuals and that we all have inalienable rights.  America was founded by liberals (classic liberalism).  Human rights are liberal.  Liberalism spans everything from traditional American progressivism in the left-center, to anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism on the far left, to right-wing libertarianism.  Obviously, I'm a left liberal, so I tend to disagree with right-wing libertarianism, but I still recognize that we have a lot in common, even if we disagree on a lot of issues.  The freedoms that all forms of liberalism offer stand in contrast to authoritarianism, which is much worse, in my opinion, than right-wing liberalism.  Right-wing liberals are the loyal opposition.  I want my team to win, but I respect theirs and can play with them under the terms of good sportsmanship.  Authoritarians, right, left, or center, are the traitorous opposition and the enemies to freedom.  Another way to think about it is that liberalism is an alternative to civil war.  Let me explain...

 

The Religious Wars

 

For approximately 150 years, the Religious Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion) waged across Europe and Britain during the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries.  Catholics fought against Protestants.  Protestants fought against other types of Protestants.  Countless innocent people were put to death merely for being the "wrong" kind of Christian.  John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, lured Michael Servetus, founder of Unitarianism, to Amsterdam and had him burnt at the stake for "heresy".  The Puritans assassinated the King of Great Britain and abolished Christmas.  Such were the times.  Why?  Because everyone thought they were absolutely right and everyone else was absolutely wrong.  All sides thought they had a right to violence and to force everyone else to conform to their beliefs.  In other words, they were authoritarian. 

 

The Enlightenment

 

The heroes who stepped forward and righted these wrongs were the philosophers of the Enlightenment.  Did they lay evil low?  Better!  They created a new way of thinking about politics, religion, society, and humanity called liberalism.  It held that everyone is equal, that we're all free individuals, and that we all have inalienable rights like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to justice, etc.  Slowly, the old monarchies began to give way to republics like America and France, which were later to become even more democratic.  The UK experienced a series of reforms that lead in the same direction.  Self-governance and personal freedom were the hallmarks of the Enlightenment. 

 

Why is it so important?  It keeps us from killing each other.  It's a better way.  Instead of every side thinking, "we're right and they're wrong, so they must die," it enabled various groups with diverse philosophies to talk to each other.  They might still think they're right and the other group is wrong, but they couldn't just kill the other group.  They had to learn to live with very important type of diversity: philosophical diversity.  This new way enabled people of different religions, creeds, and political persuasions to coexist in peace and maybe even learn from each other for the overall betterment of humanity.  Peace and Liberty to the rescue!

 

Today, liberalism has championed women's rights, gay and Lesbian rights, trans rights, queer rights, religious rights, class rights, disabled rights, and many other rights as inalienable human liberties.  So, let's be liberal.

 

Human Rights

 

Among human rights are all the rights we're used to in America, like freedom of expression, of religion, of due process in by our justice system, etc.  Many Americans also count the right to bear arms among these (though in other free countries, like the UK, they may not).  In addition, we also ALL have the right to be treated with basic respect and dignity as human beings, we ALL have a right to justice, etc.  These rights are too numerous to name, but the idea is that we are all essentially equal individuals.  All human rights apply equally to all people everywhere regardless of race, genealogy, religion, creed, philosophy, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, eye color, hair color, etc., etc.

 

VERY IMPORTANT POINT

Human rights are distinct from legal rights.  Legal rights are simply those that the state gives you.  The idea of human rights is that EVERY HUMAN BEING has them.  If the state won't honor those rights, their rights are being oppressed.  States that do grant those same rights as legal rights are liberal states that support human rights, like America with its Bill of Rights.

 

Authoritarian Leftism

I see a major problem on the left, today, which is that there's a new type of leftism that I'd consider to be socially authoritarian.  I don't mean that this movement wants to put anyone on forced marches to Siberia or into "reeducation" camps or anything, but, as I've discussed in earlier blogs, this movement is willing to use social violence and emotional abuse to get its way.  Althrough I am a left-liberal, I stand against this movement.  I consider it to be illiberal and anit-freedom.

 

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism: Social Authoritarianism and the New Left

 

I'm continuing my once-a-weekend blog post on how I feel that the left has left me, and why I think the new left has abandoned its liberal roots.  I'm a liberal, and as such I think for myself. 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

What I've been seeing in the new left is a slow growth of social authoritarianism.  Rather than hearing a group of liberals voicing their opinions about oppressed groups and what we, as a society, can do to change, I'm seeing a group of leftist authoritarians busy trying to force everybody to adopt their ways.  This group has its own terminology, which is often appropriated from academia, but then changed.[1]  It viciously attacks and defames all outsiders as being prejudicial and immoral, simply for voicing a differing opinions.  The new leftists try to persuade people by claiming that only they know the truth and that anyone who's not them is somehow seeing things falsely.  If you complain about them, you're simply talked down to, told you're part of the problem, and that you shouldn't complain.  Dissenters are shamed.  The new left seeks to suppress logic and expects everyone to take their message on faith.  Apart from their pseudo-academic jargon, which creates the illusion of authority, they rarely appeal to reason to convince anyone of anything and instead resort to emotion to either appeal to our compassion or lash out at us with rage.  They call themselves social justice warriors, but I call them the social violence warriors. 

 

Just because a group does not have the force of the state behind it, does not mean it's not authoritarian.  The Nazis, at first, did not have the support of the state, but later seized power.  They were always authoritarian, they just couldn't act on it as effectively as they had been until they seized control of the state.  If any political group that is philosophically and socially authoritarian came to power, we have every reason to expect that it will use the force of the state to force its authoritarian designs on the rest of us.

 

Here's a list of some of the things I'm seeing that have brought me to these conclusions...

 

Enforced Labeling

 

My aunt Midge served as a public high school teacher from the 1950's through the 1990's.  Ever the progressive, she wanted nothing better than to instruct her students in which terms for black people were respectful and disrespectful.  Being a little before the hippy generation, though, she wasn't hip enough to have received the memo when these terms changed.  In the 50's, "negro" was the respectful word and the N word, of course, disrespectful.  "Black" and "colored" were both considered disrespectful.  Then, "colored" was considered respectful and negro, black and the N word were all bad.  Later, "black" was considered good and colored was listed along with negro and the N word as bad words.  For a brief period "Afro-American" was considered correct and black, colored, negro, and the N word were all bad.  Quickly, Afro-American was listed among black, colored, negro, and the N word as bad and replaced by "African American".  I remember that myself, because, when I applied to college in 1992, I asked my interviewer if they were so PC that people would jump down my throat for saying "black" instead of "African American".  She laughed and assured me that they would not.  Shortly after I started college, the terms switched and African American was listed along with Afro-American, colored, negro, and the N word as disrespectful and black was brought back as the good word.  The result of all this as that my aunt, although desperately trying to be respectful, was constantly embarrassed and shamed for being behind the times on the ever-changing list of respectful and disrespectful terms.

 

Today I see much the same thing with people saying we should say "First Nations People" instead of "Native American", while, when I was in high school, all the progressives were saying we should say "Native American" as opposed to "Indian".

 

Constantly changing the "in" term like this serves no purpose that I can see other than to shame anyone who's not "cool" enough to have received the memo.  Much of it seems arbitrary.  "Native American" always made sense to me, because it refers to the natives of the American continents, though I can understand that it might be even better to refer to them by tribe, if possible, since they're not actually a single culture, but many cultures.  Whatever term you use it's never good enough for the new left, it would seem. 

 

A liberal, on the other hand, would be open to a discussion from anyone who sincerely respected the oppressed group the term referred to.  If the new left really wanted to use respectful terms and not disrespectful ones, they would have settled on one set of terms a long time ago.  The only reason I can see to constantly change them is as a mode of control: to signal to its members who's "woke" enough to have gotten the memo and who's out enough not to.

 

Shaming

 

I see a lot of this going around.  It seems that whenever a European American, a man, a hetero-, or whatever says anything at all, even if this person is just trying to be helpful and supportive, the social violence warriors jump down their throats with a litany of "you don't understand...", "you need to hear this...," "you have so many privileges you don't even know about...," "you're fill-in-the-blank-splaining...," "you have a fill-in-the-blank perspective," "oh that term you used, fill-in-the-blank, is such an archaic and offensive term, because... reasons," etc.  The upshot of this is that the person is shamed.  Shaming is abusive.  When a political movement is abusive, it's authoritarian, because it's using emotional abuse to punish and control people.

 

While we should certainly express ourselves politely and respectfully, liberalism holds that we all have a right to express our opinions.  Others have the right to disagree with us, but not to oppress our freedom of expression or abuse us over it.

 

Stacks

 

As near as I can tell, a stack is a brainwashing technique that I've seen used in panels and "facilitated discussions".  The way it works is that, when hands go up, people of color who look like women are called on first, then fair skinned people who look like women and male-looking people of color, and finally fair skinned people who look like men.  It's all line of sight, so gays and Lesbians don't factor in.  Neither do trans or queer, apparently, because anyone who looks like a woman is presumed to be one and anyone who is a man is likewise.  The stated goal is based on the presumption that members of oppressed groups are heard less often than people who are not.  Fair skinned people who look like men are never called on if anyone from any other category ever raises their hand, even if he (or she) has been waiting patiently for half an hour.  Even if all of the original volley of hands have been called on and new hands are going up, will he (or she) be ignored.

 

This is oppresses free speech.  First of all, I hear people of color, women, gays and Lesbians, trans folk, etc. all the time.  They're very vocal.  So, I find it hard to believe that they need a "stack" in order to be heard, particularly when the person implementing the stack is a woman of color, which was the case in every situation in which I've personally seen it used.  Can't a female moderator of color be trusted to simply call on people in the order that hands go up?  I can see that some people might claim that a white person or a man might "see" the order wrong, due to prejudice, but that's not the case with a woman of color who's using line of sight to make sure people of all groups are allowed to speak.  Secondly, and more importantly, the only liberal solution that's fair and equal for all is that hands are called in the order in which they're raised.  Anything other than that is the oppression of somebody's free speech.  If you oppress free speech, you're an authoritarian.

 

Bullhorns

 

I have read numerous news reports of speakers at universities being physically prevented from speaking by leftist protesters coming in with bullhorns and making so much noise no one could hear them.  Lest you think these speakers were just neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists, think again.  I mean, as liberal as I am, there's part of me that would love to see neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists shutdown.  Unfortunately, it's ordinary speakers that they're shutting down. At Reed, the Lesbian professor lecturing on Sappho was shutdown from lecturing at the required freshman humanities class, on the grounds that it was "westo-centric".  Isn't a Lesbian lecturing on Sappho exactly the kind of diversity they want?  The moderate feminist Christina Hoff Sommers and her more leftist feminist opponent in a debate were both shutdown, because the protestors liked the leftist opponent and didn't like Sommers' views.  Sommers now has universities provide her with a security detail whenever she lectures.  Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker has similarly been shut down and reported that his colleagues have as well.  He's a very middle-of-the-road and not-terribly-political intellectual.  These are our precious universities!  They're supposed to be places of learning, in which different scholars can freely express different views.

 

This is oppression of free speech and oppression of free speech is a form of authoritarianism.  The liberal way is to let people speak, picket outside the auditorium, and speak out ourselves, but not shut down everyone else.

 

Jumping Down People's Throats

 

Finally, I'm often shocked by the rudeness, the animosity, and even the physical loudness with which the social violence warriors will jump down my throat for daring to voice an opinion, even a helpful one.  They'll often interrupt me before I can make it clear how full and thoughtful my point is.  What I think they basically object to is the very fact that I'm expressing an opinion at all. 

 

Well, like everyone else, I have a right to express my opinion.  You may disagree and my opinion may make you emotional, but jumping down people's throats is a subtle way of attacking their freedom to express an opinion.  I won't go so far as to call occassional outbursts like this social authoritarianism, but when people consistently do this to a member of a particular group (even if it's not an oppressed group, by their reckoning), that's an abusive pattern of behavior.  When you abuse other people's freedom of expression, that is social authoritarianism.

 

The liberal solution is to be the change you want to see in the world by respecting everyone and their opinions.  You can always dialog with people you disagree with, too.  Freedom of expression goes both ways.  I just think the key is to be respectful and tolerant.

 

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[1] An example of this is the term "trigger".  My understanding is that it originally came from the real psychology of PTSD.  From what I understand, people with actual diagnoses of PTSD experience heightened anxiety when certain things happen that remind them of the trauma that caused the PTSD.  These are called "triggers".  Real triggers are almost impossible to predict.  When I was in a car accident five years ago, I became anxious when I was in someone else's passenger seat, because that's where I was when the accident happened.  There's no way for someone else to have predicted that that would happen with me, and, fortunately, it faded after about a year.  That's not how I hear people using the term in leftist circles, however.  They seem to use it to mean something that can be predicted and not something that's necessarily because of actual, diagnosed PTSD, but mereley because of any negative experience in the past that they associate that thing with.  So, that's an example of a term that originated in the field of psychology and then got appropriated to mean things it didn't originally mean.

Liberalism vs Social-Authoritarian Leftism: Logic, Emotion, and Sophistry

 

There's more than one way to be on the left.

 

I'm a liberal, but I feel that the left's left me.  Today's left frightens me.  Rather than using reason to persuade us and letting the rest of us form our own opinions, the new left is waging a war of abuse and social violence against everyone who's not in lockstep with the party line.  It's not what they're saying, it's how they're saying it.  This runs counter to liberal values.  Liberalism is a political philosophy that has to do with rights.  It holds that people are free and that we cannot coerce others to hold certain opinions or to only express certain things.  To do so is illiberal, abusive, and authoritarian.  Abuse is defined by psychologists in terms of trying to control other people.  Authoritarianism can come in many forms.  While we usually think of it in terms of governments using secret police, death camps, torture, forced marches, and brainwashing techniques, but social violence is also a form of coercion.  When a political movement uses social violence to coerce others, that movement becomes socially authoritarian, and that's exactly what I see the left as having become.  The new left may not be anywhere near as bad as authoritarian governments, but it's a dangerous first step that's throwing up a bunch of red flags, for me.  Authoritarianism is the opposite of liberalism.  To the extent that the left has become socially-authoritarian, it has ceased to be liberal, and it left me, and many others like me, behind.

 

My purposes in writing this essay are:

1.     To express my fear at the direction the left is going.

2.     To try to persuade my fellow leftists to return to abandon social-authoritarianism and return to liberal values.

3.     To demonstrate my freedom to speak out against the left.

 

What I'm about to say will no doubt offend some, but, as I'll unpack further down, offense is only a problem when it's the deliberate and primary point of a writer.  We're always offended by anything we disagree with, particularly when we're emotionally invested in a particular opinion or the particular side of a debate.  So, if this essay offends you, please know that it is neither my intent nor my primary goal to offend.  However, anything worth saying risks offense, and I find that I must make a stand for liberal virtues.  If it's any consolation, know that I also value your right to disagree with me, as long as you're polite and rational about it (and probably even if you're not).

 

The following story will give you a sense of what I'm talking about.  A few years ago at my own alma mater, Reed, I was very saddened and angered to hear that the students who were protesting the westo-centricism of their required freshman humanities course (Hum 110) were so disruptive of the lectures that they goaded a Lesbian professor with PTSD during her lecture on Sappho so severely that she had a nervous breakdown in front of the entire class.  Liberals picket outside of lecture halls, but won't obstruct the rights of people to attend the lectures.  Shutting down a college lecture is authoritarian.  It's much worse now than it was in the 90's, when I attended, but I'm not surprised that it is, because those sorts of sentiments were already germinating even then.

 

I believe in equality for all, consent to all, and fairness for all.  I'm opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, ablism, religious discrimination, and, as a matter of fact, all forms of prejudice.  I would love to manifest a world in which everyone is respected simply for being who they are.  In fact, I'm more concerned that people are respected than not offended.  Respect is achievable.  Offense, I fear, is inevitable.  If anyone can stifle debate by screaming offense, none of us have freedom of expression.  Freedom of expression is necessary to keep any one political ideology from becoming dominant.  Political diversity is necessary for democracy.

 

Over the next few weeks, I plan to write one blog post on one subject about liberalism vs authoritarian leftism.  This is the first one and I've chosen to write on logic, sophistry, and emotions. 

 

Logic, Sophistry, and Emotions

I'd like to start things off by appealing to your reason, rather than your emotions.  However, the new left often conducts the debate in terms of emotion, telling us how angry they are at anyone who expresses a different opinion.  So, let's talk about emotions, reason, and where I believe each belong in a political debate.

 

I keep hearing people talk about something they call "emotional validity", but validity means truthful.  Emotions cannot really be said to be valid or invalid.  If you're angry, it's true that you're angry, but how we feel does not make things true or false.  Anger, for example, is not a justification for violence, social or otherwise.

 

Plato distinguished between logic and sophistry.  Logic is when you start out with things you're extremely sure are true, like 2 + 2 = 4, and go forward with your reasoning to find out what you conclude.  Sophistry is when you start out with a conclusion you want to be true and back-fill it with rationalizations.   Reason is the only honest way we can explain how we came to a sincere conclusion.

 

I know what people mean by feeling that someone has "invalidated" their emotions.  I've certainly had that feeling.  It's certainly fine to express emotions, as emotions, but emotions are not, in and of themselves, persuasive.  I'd prefer to describe emotions in terms of "legitimacy" rather than "validity".  We may well talk of emotions as being legitimate without implying that they imply some sort of truth or falsehood about the facts of the world.

 

What makes this more complicated, is that people frequently lie about their emotions.  Moreover, they can have real emotions for all sorts of reasons, not all of them necessarily virtuous.  Jealousy, prejudice, and hatred are all examples of this.  So, emotions may have little to do with the truth or with making a sound argument.  Most of us dislike being disagreed with.  If you just want to say how you feel, that's fine, but, if you're going to explain why you think something, emotions are unhelpful.  When people try to persuade me with emotions, I pessimistically assume they're trying to bamboozle me.

 

There is an alternative and that is reason.  Now, we have to be careful of sophistry and rationalization.  Reason must start out with solid facts and go forward to find out what we conclude, rather than starting out with a conclusion and then rationalizing it.  If we can have the self-discipline to do that, we can explain to other people why we think something without having to fall back on emotions.  So, logic is a form of communication, rather than a method of trickery.

 

I think the key is to stop arguing and start discussing.  I once naively thought that we could argue everything out rationally, but I now think it must be human nature to bring sophistry and emotions into a debate.  When someone's arguing against us, it's natural to feel defensive.  However, we can discuss things rationally by simply telling people what we think and why we think it, without trying to change their mind.  We can let them think for themselves about whether or not they agree, and they can do the same for us.  In return, we can let others express their opinions without pouncing on them or jumping down their throats.  In this way, we can all get out of our echo chambers and really listen to each other.  No one has to agree with someone else's opinion.  It's not a war, just an exchange of ideas.

 

One reason freedom of expression is so important is because there are so many different philosophical approaches out there.  If we get locked into one and try to beat people over the head with it, we may be ignoring the possibility that someone else really has thought things through, only in a different way than we did.  Sharing diverse ideas makes us stronger as a society, not weaker.  Insisting on being in lockstep with a party line divides us and chases away potential allies.  The key is to tolerate other people's opinions, even when we dislike them.

 

Think For Yourself!  Never check your brain in at the door!  You have a right to your opinion and so do I to mine.  You have the right to disagree with me and I with you.  Instead of focusing on who we're offending, I invite you to focus on who we're respecting.