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I can accept just about any progressive result, so long as I'm still allowed to speak freely saying why I disagree with it (if I even do). I am okay with higher taxes. I am okay with gay marriage. I am okay with trans people using the bathrooms that they want to. I am okay with... a lot of things! But when there does happen to be something I'm not okay with, it is a requirement that I be able to say so clearly.
The modern left has lost this, and so they've lost me. I don't know what I "should" call myself, given that I align with lots of progressive goals and am not bothered by many others, but the talk about speech creating unsafety or harm and therefore needing to be blocked HAS to go. An inability to talk about something is an inability to take a step back if you're wrong, and that can't be allowed to stand. We must be able to realize when we are wrong and correct course, or else we can become permanently wrong and never fix our problems.
Letting people say stupid and wrong and even hateful things is the price we pay for the ability to change ourselves for the better, because obviously the powerful will immediately abuse any system that silences people (even if ostensibly for good reason) to silence those who challenge them - and they can do that even if no real harm or hate was there, because they are the powerful and can bend the rules to their whims.
This is so completely blindingly obvious to me that I am baffled every time a progressive friend of mine says we need to deplatform so-and-so. And every time I try to explain, they refuse to entertain the possibility of abuse. "No, no, we will only censor the bad people, don't you get it?" No, I think you are the one who doesn't get it.
So I get off the train. I'll vote for measures and policies that do progressive things, but I won't vote for leaders who don't understand the value of free speech - lately, that means I don't vote for very many on the left. Maybe that means I can't count myself as a leftist anymore, but I certainly don't think it makes me a rightist.
The best way I've heard to frame it is Pluralist vs. Authoritarian. South of Center vs. North of Center is the other way I'd put the same thing...it's entirely different than left vs. right. Generally speaking, this place is mostly South of Center, with a few North of Center people around.
But yeah, I largely agree with you, and I'm against the anti-Pluralism that's floating around, left center and right. That's largely because I'm a policy wonk, and I think the details matter and I think because of that it's essential that we can actually discuss and disagree about the issues, and not break everything down into a power-based binary.
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