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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5723 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

it may interest you that your appeal to the "courage (…) to stand up and speak the truth when it is dangerous" got me to register so I could post this reply.

Awesome! I'm flattered.

I do, as a matter of fact, believe in the objective reality of human-caused climate change and the effectiveness of most vaccines. I believe - as a non-exhaustive list, presented in no particular order - in the moral abhorrence of racism, in every human being's inalienable right to shelter and healthcare, and in the moral imperative of LGBTQ rights and acceptance.

To be frank with you, I think most of these are truisms, behind which more thorny propositions are hiding. These thorny propositions mostly involve the use of violence (including threats of violence) by the government against its citizens, to induce them to behave in a certain way that you believe to be generally beneficial. We do not necessarily disagree about what is beneficial. What I suspect we disagree on is the intrinsic harm in using threats of force against fellow human beings to make them behave in the way we wish they would. For example,

  • The question is not whether human-caused climate change is real, but what the forward trajectory of it is, and exactly how much the government should force its citizens to do about it.
  • The question is not whether most vaccines are effective, but whether it is merited for people to be required by force to take particular vaccines under particular circumstances.
  • The living question is not whether racism is wrong, but what to do next about it, and in particular whether the remedy to past racism is any degree of current racism in the other direction. What exactly do you propose?
  • With regard to every human being's inalienable right to shelter and healthcare, the question is not whether it would be nice for everyone to have those things, but whether that alleged right entitles me to force other people to pay for it, against their will, at the point of a (government) gun. What do you propose here?
  • The question of LGBTQ rights and acceptance, in practice, is not whether I should be allowed to infringe on their negative human rights to safety and property, or even whether it is socially acceptable to be a jerk to someone who is gay or trans -- but whether I should be pressured, or even forced, to use the language they prefer, etc. What do you propose?

by all means feel free to simultaneously attack cancel culture and trans rights, but don't bother to claim that you're fighting wokeness as opposed to extreme progressivism.

I'm not attacking anyone at the moment. I disagree with progressivism, while I have disdain and enmity for wokeness. For example, I probably disagree with your position on "trans rights" (what exactly do you propose?), and on most of the topics you mentioned -- but I presume you hold those positions with an eye toward the betterment of the general condition of society, that you are open to changing your mind, and that you are interested in calmly listening to counterarguments. I also presume you hold those positions in good faith, and would continue to hold them even if it cost you something.

On the other hand, I do not have those same presumptions about woke zealots. What distinguishes them is a feeling of being entitled to be agreed with and obeyed, concomitant resistance to dialog, and a penchant for obsequious, opportunistic band wagoning.

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