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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26629 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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outside of a few truly principled libertarian types

I tire of this parenthetical being deployed to avoid grappling with legitimate calls to defend liberty. Yes, it's clearly not the prime value for some of the bigger ideological movements today. But it's deployed because it still carries weight and its call should be answered regardless of what slime blows the horn.

I'm not sure if there's a better way to defend liberty than to put these restrictions in place and defend them, explicitly, on the Title IX precedents. It probably won't work, they'll probably find some spurious distinguisher. But what else can you do, since both conservatives and liberals will follow those precedents on other speech (for different reasons)?

I don't even see a plausible way that this advances liberty. It's just a spiting of my enemy to no gain. The closest I can come up with is that a taste of their own medicine might make the left wake up to what they've been doing. But I find that justification very weak. Why help them build the weapon of a tyrant? I know how it will be wielded.

I don't even see a plausible way that this advances liberty.

Probably because you understand it won't work.

The weapon is already built. The point of defending these restrictions based on the Title IX precedents would be to put the court in a position where they could either ratify the government shutting down of speech friendly to the left, or overturn the Title IX precedents.

Honor cannot be dispensed with, and treating the dishonorable as honorable is not itself honorable.

Quite to the contrary: an honorable man treats all people with honor, even those who are dishonorable. If you do anything less then you aren't honorable, you're just nicer to people you like.

Honor demands the dishonorable be dishonored. A oathbreaker's word should not be trusted, for instance. There are disadvantages to acting with honor; these can be outweighed by the advantages of being treated as if one is honorable, but only if those advantages exist. If honor requires the dishonorable be treated with honor, honor is self-defeating.

Would you like to look at some real-world examples? Because I think there's no shortage of people modifying their interactions on the basis or absence of honor in their counterparties. One easy example would be the concept of "Magdeburg Quarter", and its analogues throughout the history of warfare.

You don't have to like someone to consider them honorable. In fact, the entire point of honor is to separate personal feelings from behavior.

I'm sure you can find lots of examples of people who claimed to be honorable and did that. But those people were not, in fact, honorable. They showed it by not acting honorable.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it. It's the times when it bites one in the ass where you see who is actually honorable/principled versus who merely claims to be.

They showed it by not acting honorable.

Whether they acted honorably or not is the dispute we are currently engaging in. Denying quarter to those who have denied it to others is not reducible to a "convenience"; there are no shortage of situations where simply letting the dishonorable behavior of others slide would absolutely be more convinient.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it.

Certainly. Nevertheless, there remains a distinction between treating others with honor, and treating the dishonorable as though they were honorable. Honor is not a synonym of "nice". It can in fact be extremely convinient to pretend that people are honorable when they are obviously not, but doing so remains dishonorable.

Principles and Honor are about rules, and rules require enforcement. There must be an answer to the question "what follows?"

This combined with an easy excuse to find the outgroup dishonorable allows you quite a convenient relationship with when you are bound by honor.

I do not concede that my "excuses" are "easy". We've had a decade of widespread attacks on freedom of speech, including popular public repudiation of the concept's core validity. The principles free speech proponents claim, and which many of us wholeheartedly accepted and acted upon in good faith for decades, were swept aside in an instant when they obstructed Progressive ideology. That action requires a response.

Free speech was supposed to be for all of us. It observably failed in that mission. If you are willing to accept one side censoring its opponents without being censored in turn, I am more than willing to operate under those rules provided I get to be the censor you favor. If you want to argue that we should cooperate to secure free speech for everyone, I note that I am part of "everyone", and eagerly await the lifting of the censorship against myself and my allies. If you want to help the people censoring me to not be censored in turn, with no actual plan for ending their own censorship, I am going to oppose you, because this is a conflict and you appear to have picked a side.

We've had a decade of widespread attacks on freedom of speech, including popular public repudiation of the concept's core validity.

And before that your faction was the defectors from my perspective, do not claim this high ground, you've not paid the cost when it was dear. You being the conservatives it's not important to me whether you, @FCfromSSC were one of those principled libertarians. It's enough that you'd oppose us now on the side of those who opposed us then.

If you are willing to accept one side censoring

I am not.

If you want to argue that we should cooperate to secure free speech for everyone, I note that I am part of "everyone", and eagerly await the lifting of the censorship against myself and my allies.

Ground has been reclaimed. We feast wantonly in the valley of twitter. How much of a mistake it would have been to give control to twitter over to the bureaucrats in order to spite the social justice crowd only for them to cement control forever through the deep state.

If you want to help the people censoring me to not be censored in turn, with no actual plan for ending their own censorship, I am going to oppose you, because this is a conflict and you appear to have picked a side.

If it must be so, but should my side lost the ratchet will turn and it will be your own doing.

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