This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It was specifically sidestepping the nearly-20-year-old Colbert meme, but I guess you caught me. Maybe I am inclined to believe that those who seek truth for the sake of truth do tend to come out with a "liberal" bias. But more importantly, I feel more strongly that the painting of universities as institutions of liberal indoctrination deny entire cohorts of students their own agency in developing political beliefs, and equal-and-opposite mirror of the claim that FoxNews has indoctrinated an entire generation of cable news subscribers. Like you, I look forward to the results of this "test".
I would say it also qualifies as a conspiracy theory. I am curious, though, is your theory that the Long March Through Institutions was a concerted effort, with agents who collaborated and took specific actions? Or one that happened more "naturally" due to the perverse incentives of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_education](liberal education)?
This is a tautology, but the reason they come out with a liberal bias is because these people are in fact worthy of the individual rights liberalism suggests exist inherent to every man simply because they naturally do this.
Not all who claim to be liberals are actually liberal, though- hell, that's why progressives call themselves "liberal" in the first place! The problem for true liberals post-1980 or so is that, because socioeconomic opportunity started to dry up around that time (as compared to the '50s-'70s), society started selling those rights with the belief they'd be rewarded with other things that, while they feel good to have, are less aligned with the truth. Short-term moral gains at the expense of long-term advancement: affirmative action, gynosupremacism/feminism, [inorganic at the time] gay marriage, further destruction of negative rights (parental rights, self-defense rights, "freeze peach", free association), etc.
So progressives dressed their corruption in the skinsuit of what liberalism was and carried on with the slogans. And this worked, for a time; the transition kept otherwise low-information liberals believing that they had inherited the movement, and so did the details of being for things like feminism and non-straight sexualities.
Around 2013 there was a Great Awokening... but it wasn't the progressives that woke up, it was the liberals realizing they needed to take back their own label. They found natural allies in the enemies of the progressives (which is why the average liberal is seen as "right-wing"- classical liberalism is a conservative view now) because they know, and knew, that liberals oppress them less than progressives will.
I think that for any student in a liberal arts degree (including those who are only capable of that, and assuming this education is an accurate assessor of intelligence- the people for who that is not true tend not to emerge as progressives) progressivism is a natural adaptation because these people are in massive oversupply, and their policies are a natural reflection of this fact. That's why they need the absurd amounts of illegal immigration- after all, the easiest way to correct a problem of "too many chiefs, not enough indians" is simply to import a shit-ton of indians (literally, in many cases). As we might expect, academia was simply ahead of the curve here, because they were championing this stuff 20-30 years before this would become apparent to the average citizen.
More options
Context Copy link
Are you aware that at least a majority of the people arguing right-wing views here used to be doctrinaire liberals?
More options
Context Copy link
It's no secret that students are allowed "agency" to develop a very specific set of beliefs. Believe Women, No Human Is Illegal, ACAB, Black Lives Matter, Trans Women Are Women - funny how this liberalism-afforded agency only extends to things left of center. Additionally, these beliefs are constantly proselytized in an "everything not forbidden is mandatory" fashion.
I'm not sure how it can be both, so I'll ask for clarification of what you mean. As for the "natural occurrences" of left-liberalism based on incentives - what is the source of those incentives? Did they just change on their own in the 20th century, or, perhaps, it occurred because the composition of the incentive makers was changed by putting a thumb on the scale? Ayers and Kaczynski received wildly different treatments for some reason.
More options
Context Copy link
Stick around, new kid. Time in this community will thoroughly disabuse you of that notion, presuming you can avoid the traditional leftwinger meltdown and flounce-out when you realize that other people are going to continue to be allowed to argue back.
Prospiracy with significant conspiracy elements. Something like a third of professors openly admit they would refuse to approve of the hiring of a conservative, no matter how qualified. Iterate that attitude for the better part of a century and here we are.
No, I think people with that view do indeed tend toward liberalism.
The mistake is in assigning the word "liberal" incorrectly; social justice isn't liberal, it just (in the USA) has been wearing the word (and Officially Designated Intellectualism) like a skin-suit.
I very much agree, as a personal idiosyncrasy. In most cases, I just mentally replace all liberal->progressive whenever it's used by someone who isn't e.g. Glenn Greenwald.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The existence of a niche forum whose membership selects for right-wing views and truth-seeking does not disprove the idea that all else being equal people who strongly value truth for its own sake will be more likely to be liberals.
I dunno, I am pretty left wing (by the standards of the Motte) and while there are certain brands of bullshit popular here, it's more that this forum selects for truth-seeking regardless of who it offends, and that, as a side effect, selects for contrary rightist or dissident leftist opinions. I literally don't know of any other left-leaning or so-called "neutral" forum, for example, that would let someone argue that trans women are men or that IQ is both hereditary and has a racial component, or that deporting illegal immigrants is good, or that Trump is not a fascist. I don't mean that any of those propositions are necessarily true: I'm saying almost anywhere else, you can't even debate it. You might get away with suggesting it, but after the subsequent dogpile, if you persist, you will be banned as a Nazi. No exaggeration, I've seen that happen... almost everywhere else.
As a liberal it's disheartening and annoying. I don't think rightists actually have a closer relationship with the truth, per se. But they do put a higher value on truth as a terminal value, whereas leftists today regard truth as secondary to social approval and psychological comfort.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks, bro. Genuinely, I'd like to. It would be far too easy to comment somewhere that I receive no push-back, but then I wouldn't be sharpening my mind at all, would I? Unless you're not interested in also sharpening your mind, I would imagine you wouldn't want this to devolve into a reactionary circlejerk?
I'd buy it. But I'd also push-back that it was a one-way street and that conservatives had no agency in the matter. It's almost as if it would be convenient that academic institutions were one day able to be simply "deleted" for wrong-think.
The situation seems to model as a cooperate/defect situation. Leftists were able to gain a foothold precisely because enough of the old guard were swayed by arguments about academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. And enough of those leftists do not return that consideration that they were able to slowly grind out their outgroup.
We've seen the same dynamic play out in a thousand venues, from forums to corporations.
And we were warned! The usual formulation nowadays is from 1976's Children of Dune
but the sentiment goes back to at least 1843,
-- Thomas Babington MacCauley.
The MacCauley quote is, I think, a better representation of the woke position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link