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I've already stated my reasons. If you don't find them compelling you're free to ignore me.
What do you think my views are?
Nope. But that's the normal standard of evidence on this forum.
Sure. Rigorously interviewing them about the specifics of their beliefs.
The Overton Window is not a bus. Politics is not oriented around a set of immovable poles. People may fix their own beliefs, but the context for those beliefs is always changing.
Once upon a time, thinking that the electorate should be all men, regardless of property, made you a liberal who wanted to massively expand the franchise. Now it would make you a radical reactionary who wants to massively reduce it.
As near as I can tell, that is exactly what makes you conservative. What should? Are we all liberals because we all reject divine right of kings? That hardly seems useful.
You claimed you do take them on their word, so I asked where. This response sounds like you're a admitting to not taking them on their word, and saying you already explained why... So I'm having trouble making sense of what you're saying here.
You expressed skepticism of meritocracy, and the importance of considering the experiences of underprivileged groups... so these two things for a start? Why does it matter?
And how do you decide those specific beliefs are conservative?
Sure, but it is dishonest to claim a person who hasn't changed their views is the one converting.
Then the honest and accurate way of expressing that is something "we've moved on from those ideas", which is in accordance with what Amadan said, not "you're full of shit", which supposedly contradicts it.
So that means what Amadan, and people like him, are saying is correct. Within their short lifetime their movement changed so much that merely holding on to the views that used to mark them as quite progressive, makes them no longer welcome, and you were wrong to dismiss them.
Well, in that case progressives need to stop pretending they have any principles other than change itself. If open debate used to be something they lived by, and now they consider it harmful, you can't honestly guarantee that at some point everything that was old won't become new again, and the divine right of kings won't be declared progressive.
It's a lot more useful than pretending that things that are moving are standing still, and vice-versa.
No, I said I don't:
"I do [see a reason not to take them at their word]. The issues of the late 18th century..."
Because you seem to think it does and are making inferences based off that. Otherwise why bring up the idea that I'm a progressive?
Perhaps it would help if you could clarify what you mean when you say "progressive".
Could be. Could be a story they tell themselves to feel better about swinging right. Could be they were always kind of right-wing but didn't like to think of themselves that way and the low salience of their views meant that self-perception never got challenged. Contra Moldbug, political currents move in all directions.
Context and judgment.
I'm not sure how you get from here to there.
This is true but has nothing to do with the contemporary progressive movement as opposed to just human nature. Look no further than the libertarian -> nrx pipeline if you need an example of old ideas being revived. There is no magic wand that will perpetually banish an idea to the dustbin of history.
On the contrary. Understanding that motion is relative is extremely useful, whereas collapsing the distinction between hundreds of years of political philosophy is obfuscatory.
Oh, I completely misread that, thanks for explaining.
I don't think I anything I said relies on your views as an individual, or even getting general progressive beliefs right.
I use it as a noninflammatory catch-all term for left leaning people analyzing society through lenses of identity and privilege.
That argument was irrelevant to anyone swinging right. You were talking about past positions no longer counting as left wing, if this is what happened, it's everyone else that swung left.
That's not enough to dismiss someone out of hand, or call them full of shit, when they say they've been left behind.
It's pretty straight forward. If not keeping up with change is what gets you booted from the movement, than it's change that is the actual principle, rather than anything being professed in the moment.
The difference is that you correctly identify it as a pipeline - something with the function of moving stuff from one end to the other. You're not claiming that actually libertarianism is about bending the knee to the One True King, and that the left behind ancap that refuses must actually be a communist, even if he won't admit it to himself.
Oh, I suppose you're right, if you reframe people who keep their old opinions as moving, and your changing opinions as remaining stationary, you never have to ask yourself "am I going too far?". In that sense it's very useful.
Well, first of all, I wasn't discussing a timespan of hundreds of years. We were talking about 10 years or therabouts, and even that doesn't give justice to how sudden it was, because the change in question was very front loaded.
Secondly, I'm not collapsing anything. My approach allows just fine for describing the various ideological changes we went through. It's quote a bit more precise than just calling whatever is currently happening "liberalism".
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