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.