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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26125 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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To whom?

Maybe my brain is just melted by exposure to political compass memes, but I don’t see people contesting the existence of an authleft.

I suspect the main point of divergence is who you think the authleft is and how influential they are. Do you the representative authoritarian leftist is some tankie academic or Joe Biden and the Regime? (And, just as relevantly, what priority to do you assign to them?)

The big issues that I’d frame as authright-vs-libleft are

  1. War on drugs
  2. War on Terror
  3. Voter registration
  4. Immigration
  5. Abortion (when framed as supremacy of old white dudes)

But there are some other really salient ones that don’t fit the mold:

  1. Health insurance
  2. COVID measures
  3. 2nd Amendment
  4. 1st Amendment (in recent years)
  5. Subsidizing college
  6. National debt
  7. Abortion (when framed as supremacy of the federal govt)

To me, this suggests two parties with comparable support for authoritarianism. Neocons and neoliberals represent the equilibrium level. Because “Policy Debates Shouldn’t Be One Sided,” they’ve split on cultural issues instead.

So I guess I’d say most everyone in national politics is, like, between 60 and 80 percent on the authoritarian axis. Even the open socialists or populists. To get on the national stage, you just have to bite the bullet and accept the concept of driver’s licenses.

I think it's important to draw the distinction between paternalism (by which I primarily mean laws that curtail individual autonomy for the subject's own good and/or pro-social causes) and authoritarianism. While one shades into the other in places and there tends to be strong correlation (authoritarian governments are not known for their laissez faire attitudes except when it comes to accountability), you can, e.g. have a politically free country that bans drugs or gun or sodomy. Likewise, you could have a politically unfree country that permits all of the above.

Even the open socialists or populists.

Political radicals are the most prone to authoritarianism because they tend to assume ordinary politically processes are hopelessly corrupted/subverted and thus extreme measures are justified.

Is that paternalism not already captured in the compass? Economic/structural paternalism is pretty much the normal statist-vs.-laissez-faire axis. The other ought to cover moral paternalism.

political radicals are the most prone

Yes, and I think in American politics, they’re still only partway up that axis. Or Axis, as it were.

But there are some other really salient ones that don’t fit the mold:

Health insurance

COVID measures

2nd Amendment

1st Amendment (in recent years)

Subsidizing college

National debt

Abortion (when framed as supremacy of the federal govt)

Also homeschooling, religious exemptions, and the environment.

Good examples, especially since they avoid the libertarian valence of most of my list.

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