7 ms·

It is not a blind spot. Intolerance against intolerance is intentional. > Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any;

by esolyt 10y ago

It is not a blind spot. Intolerance against intolerance is intentional. > Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have any evangelical friends. If a liberal perceives Muslims and evangelicals to be intolerant (or at least less tolerant than themselves), their intolerance against them will be intentional and it may serve a purpose.

mikevm 10y ago
This is beyond just intolerance of the intolerant, it's a sick worldview. I'd like to repost here a Reddit comment which I found to perfectly capture what is wrong with the so-called regressive left: Social Justice Warriors are also referred to as the regressive left because they are regressing backward from liberal society to defining people based solely on their identifying group, be it race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religious belief. They simply rationalize their bigotry differently; the bigoted right separates people by these lines but think that everybody should conform to the majority/dominant group. The bigoted/regressive left also treats people on the same lines but think that those in the dominant group should give special privileges to those in the minority in order to equalize. This is also an important distinction. It isn't that they are just overzealous on equality; I don't think that's necessarily possible. They have redefined equality. For most of us, it has always meant equal treatment of all individuals by setting a single set of rules and judgment based on individual merit. The liberal ideal is to not even care what color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal identifier a person has, unless it is directly relevant. Thus which group you fall in is generally irrelevant. That you happen to be born with a certain skin color then gives you no personal benefit or hindrance. The regressive left defines equality as a bulk statistic over the whole of an identifying group. Which group you fall in then is critical to how they treat you, the same as far-right bigots. (They only differ on how they treat each group.) If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as privileged because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power. That you may individually have no power or wealth is irrelevant to them, as if there is some big party where all the white males all go to divvy up the loot and push a single common agreed interest. By this reasoning, a homeless American white male murdered by police (like Mark Kelley) is privileged; a billionaire African black woman (like Isabel Dos Santos) is not. To these regressives, the idea of not caring what somebody's personal identity is (such as race) is abhorrent. They don't see their blatant racism or bigotry, largely because they think it's ok as long as they're rooting for the group that is statistically an underdog (even if the individual isn't). When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the dominant group, so who cares. (Again, regardless to the actual circumstances of the individuals.) But this is, of course, mistaken. They are stereotyping all people based on the groups they fall in, and dictating which groups are allowed to do what, across all groups, and to the detriment of many in those groups. Muslims are seen as oppressed in the West, so the regressive left oddly supports the conservative Muslims to oppressive other Muslims, like separating men and women, because that oppression is just part of their culture, which is an underdog in the West. So if you are a liberal Muslim woman seeking equal rights and treatment for Muslim women, the regressive left will actually fight against you, even trying to get you banned from speaking at a university. It's this perverse redefinition of equality based on bulk statistics that leads to such bigoted reviews that the regressive left ends up with many of the same policies as the bigoted right. A fundamentalist religious group on the right in California sued (and failed) to have yoga removed from schools as a violation of their religion. A regressive left student union successfully stopped yoga classes at the University of Ottawa under the guise it is "cultural appropriation". At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could explore their culture. Racists on the right also want blacks in their own housing. In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from the front. "Separate but equal" was also a policy of the American racist right. The regressive left, led by Anita Sarkeesian, wants to stop sex and violence and scantily clad women in video games. The religious right, led by Jack Thompson, have long fought for this as well. Same policies over and over. Just different rationalizations. They aren't just an extreme version of the left; they've abandoned liberalism for a form of underdog authoritarianism via stereotypes.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from the front. I've just tried to search for this and can't find anything - a bit of help? By "supported", do you mean someone brought it up in a debate or as a suggestion, or do you mean a significant group of people agreed it's a good idea? I also tried to find information on the activists demanding segregated housing. Either nobody's reported on any of this or I suck at googling.
  - kr7 10y ago
    Not OP but this is what I could find: "Universities UK" said gender segregation at lectures on Islam was ok (but withdrew their recommendation after criticism): http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/13/universities-uk-withdraws-advice-gender-segregation http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/13/universitie... I couldn't find anything on Missou. But UConn is building black-only housing: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/02/uconn-building-black-only-living-space-to-promote-scholarship.html http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/02/uconn-building-black-on...
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      So Universities UK is not a student union or association - its members are the executive heads of universities. It's very much a political group on the other side from student unions. In response to the report you mention, "the National Union of Students has stopped short of full condemnation but said it does not endorse “enforced segregation” and would take steps to prevent it taking place." UConn are being ridiculous, I'll agree with that.
  - mikevm 10y ago
    For the first - http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/universities-uk-legal-gender-segregation-equality-human-rights http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/universitie... For the second (ignore the fact that the source is a right-wing newspaper, just follow the links to the sources) - http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25748/ http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25748/
smsm42 10y ago
The problem is it's not intolerance against intolerance. It's intolerance against disagreement, which weaponized accusation of intolerance as a tool to get a pass to be intolerant. You are supposed to be nice, but not to bigots - so if you paint whoever disagrees with you as a bigot, you don't have to be nice to them, and being nice is harder than not being nice, so why not take the easy road? Especially if 100% of your peer group thinks the same way? > If a liberal perceives Muslims and evangelicals to be intolerant You can perceive anything. If mere perception (i.e. opinion) gives you permission to be intolerant, then there's no point in the whole concept - you can always start with perceiving somebody you don't want to tolerate as bad. In fact, that's exactly the reason you don't want to tolerate them - nobody is intolerant to somebody they like! So one either has to bring something more than "I perceive so", or the whole thing is just meaningless.
- ebola1717 10y ago
  > It's intolerance against disagreement When you dress it up abstractly, sure. When you realize the arguments we're intolerant of are actually probably aren't that defensible, it doesn't. What ideas are we intolerant of that you think is so bad? That being gay is immoral? That women shouldn't have access to reproductive health services?
  - smsm42 10y ago
    It's not abstract. Look what happens in campuses. > When you realize the arguments we're intolerant of are actually probably aren't that defensible, it doesn't. There aren't that many arguments which are not defensible, at least to some measure. And even with them, if they are so weak, you can easily defeat them - with your superior argument. That's not what happens in the current left culture. The focus is not on presenting superior argument, but on excluding the possibility of the supposedly inferior one from being voiced, and if it is voiced - on hounding the offended out of the position in which they would be able to present any argument at all, usually by authoritarian means (firing them, cutting off their access to publishing, depriving them of means to publish their opinion, etc.). > That women shouldn't have access to reproductive health services? Note how you frame the argument in terms that suit you. Would a conservative really think that women should not have access to health services? Or maybe - consider it for a minute - they do not see e.g. abortion as a "health service", but instead some of them see it, for example, as a murder? Now, you may disagree with them - that's completely fine - but if you want to argue with their position, would it be useful to argue with their actual position instead of one invented for them? Now that question above is not rhetorical, and the answer to it is not obvious. Because that depends on your goal. If you want to construct superior argument which would be rationally convincing - the answer is yes, understanding the actual opposing argument is vital. However, if you want to paint your opponent as an idiot, bigot or caveman - in order, for example, to convince an authority that they should not be considered rational beings and thus their concerns can be dismissed and it is morally permissible to subjugate their will to yours, as a superior being - then understanding their argument and even admitting a possibility that their argument can be understood and is not just an incomprehensible blathering only superficially resembling human speech - is of course a wrong tactics which would do absolutely no good. Again, your actions here depend on your goal. And my claim is the left right now is virtually 100% invested in the second goal and behaves accordingly. I can understand why it is - the road of forcing your opponent to do what you like seems easier - I just think it's both morally wrong and disastrous in the long term, as as soon as two sides start playing this game - and they certainly already started - the possibility of having rational discourse which can discover the truth or at least get us closer to it is lost, and what we get is a series of shouting matches, in which truth doesn't matter and isn't even part of the calculus anymore.

by esolyt 10y ago

mikevm 10y ago

This is beyond just intolerance of the intolerant, it's a sick worldview. I'd like to repost here a Reddit comment which I found to perfectly capture what is wrong with the so-called regressive left: Social Justice Warriors are also referred to as the regressive left because they are regressing backward from liberal society to defining people based solely on their identifying group, be it race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religious belief. They simply rationalize their bigotry differently; the bigoted right separates people by these lines but think that everybody should conform to the majority/dominant group. The bigoted/regressive left also treats people on the same lines but think that those in the dominant group should give special privileges to those in the minority in order to equalize. This is also an important distinction. It isn't that they are just overzealous on equality; I don't think that's necessarily possible. They have redefined equality. For most of us, it has always meant equal treatment of all individuals by setting a single set of rules and judgment based on individual merit. The liberal ideal is to not even care what color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal identifier a person has, unless it is directly relevant. Thus which group you fall in is generally irrelevant. That you happen to be born with a certain skin color then gives you no personal benefit or hindrance. The regressive left defines equality as a bulk statistic over the whole of an identifying group. Which group you fall in then is critical to how they treat you, the same as far-right bigots. (They only differ on how they treat each group.) If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as privileged because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power. That you may individually have no power or wealth is irrelevant to them, as if there is some big party where all the white males all go to divvy up the loot and push a single common agreed interest. By this reasoning, a homeless American white male murdered by police (like Mark Kelley) is privileged; a billionaire African black woman (like Isabel Dos Santos) is not. To these regressives, the idea of not caring what somebody's personal identity is (such as race) is abhorrent. They don't see their blatant racism or bigotry, largely because they think it's ok as long as they're rooting for the group that is statistically an underdog (even if the individual isn't). When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the dominant group, so who cares. (Again, regardless to the actual circumstances of the individuals.) But this is, of course, mistaken. They are stereotyping all people based on the groups they fall in, and dictating which groups are allowed to do what, across all groups, and to the detriment of many in those groups. Muslims are seen as oppressed in the West, so the regressive left oddly supports the conservative Muslims to oppressive other Muslims, like separating men and women, because that oppression is just part of their culture, which is an underdog in the West. So if you are a liberal Muslim woman seeking equal rights and treatment for Muslim women, the regressive left will actually fight against you, even trying to get you banned from speaking at a university. It's this perverse redefinition of equality based on bulk statistics that leads to such bigoted reviews that the regressive left ends up with many of the same policies as the bigoted right. A fundamentalist religious group on the right in California sued (and failed) to have yoga removed from schools as a violation of their religion. A regressive left student union successfully stopped yoga classes at the University of Ottawa under the guise it is "cultural appropriation". At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could explore their culture. Racists on the right also want blacks in their own housing. In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from the front. "Separate but equal" was also a policy of the American racist right. The regressive left, led by Anita Sarkeesian, wants to stop sex and violence and scantily clad women in video games. The religious right, led by Jack Thompson, have long fought for this as well. Same policies over and over. Just different rationalizations. They aren't just an extreme version of the left; they've abandoned liberalism for a form of underdog authoritarianism via stereotypes.

vertex-four 10y ago
> In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from the front. I've just tried to search for this and can't find anything - a bit of help? By "supported", do you mean someone brought it up in a debate or as a suggestion, or do you mean a significant group of people agreed it's a good idea? I also tried to find information on the activists demanding segregated housing. Either nobody's reported on any of this or I suck at googling.
- kr7 10y ago
  Not OP but this is what I could find: "Universities UK" said gender segregation at lectures on Islam was ok (but withdrew their recommendation after criticism): http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/13/universities-uk-withdraws-advice-gender-segregation http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/13/universitie... I couldn't find anything on Missou. But UConn is building black-only housing: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/02/uconn-building-black-only-living-space-to-promote-scholarship.html http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/02/uconn-building-black-on...
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    So Universities UK is not a student union or association - its members are the executive heads of universities. It's very much a political group on the other side from student unions. In response to the report you mention, "the National Union of Students has stopped short of full condemnation but said it does not endorse “enforced segregation” and would take steps to prevent it taking place." UConn are being ridiculous, I'll agree with that.
- mikevm 10y ago
  For the first - http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/universities-uk-legal-gender-segregation-equality-human-rights http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/universitie... For the second (ignore the fact that the source is a right-wing newspaper, just follow the links to the sources) - http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25748/ http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25748/

smsm42 10y ago

The problem is it's not intolerance against intolerance. It's intolerance against disagreement, which weaponized accusation of intolerance as a tool to get a pass to be intolerant. You are supposed to be nice, but not to bigots - so if you paint whoever disagrees with you as a bigot, you don't have to be nice to them, and being nice is harder than not being nice, so why not take the easy road? Especially if 100% of your peer group thinks the same way? > If a liberal perceives Muslims and evangelicals to be intolerant You can perceive anything. If mere perception (i.e. opinion) gives you permission to be intolerant, then there's no point in the whole concept - you can always start with perceiving somebody you don't want to tolerate as bad. In fact, that's exactly the reason you don't want to tolerate them - nobody is intolerant to somebody they like! So one either has to bring something more than "I perceive so", or the whole thing is just meaningless.

ebola1717 10y ago
> It's intolerance against disagreement When you dress it up abstractly, sure. When you realize the arguments we're intolerant of are actually probably aren't that defensible, it doesn't. What ideas are we intolerant of that you think is so bad? That being gay is immoral? That women shouldn't have access to reproductive health services?
- smsm42 10y ago
  It's not abstract. Look what happens in campuses. > When you realize the arguments we're intolerant of are actually probably aren't that defensible, it doesn't. There aren't that many arguments which are not defensible, at least to some measure. And even with them, if they are so weak, you can easily defeat them - with your superior argument. That's not what happens in the current left culture. The focus is not on presenting superior argument, but on excluding the possibility of the supposedly inferior one from being voiced, and if it is voiced - on hounding the offended out of the position in which they would be able to present any argument at all, usually by authoritarian means (firing them, cutting off their access to publishing, depriving them of means to publish their opinion, etc.). > That women shouldn't have access to reproductive health services? Note how you frame the argument in terms that suit you. Would a conservative really think that women should not have access to health services? Or maybe - consider it for a minute - they do not see e.g. abortion as a "health service", but instead some of them see it, for example, as a murder? Now, you may disagree with them - that's completely fine - but if you want to argue with their position, would it be useful to argue with their actual position instead of one invented for them? Now that question above is not rhetorical, and the answer to it is not obvious. Because that depends on your goal. If you want to construct superior argument which would be rationally convincing - the answer is yes, understanding the actual opposing argument is vital. However, if you want to paint your opponent as an idiot, bigot or caveman - in order, for example, to convince an authority that they should not be considered rational beings and thus their concerns can be dismissed and it is morally permissible to subjugate their will to yours, as a superior being - then understanding their argument and even admitting a possibility that their argument can be understood and is not just an incomprehensible blathering only superficially resembling human speech - is of course a wrong tactics which would do absolutely no good. Again, your actions here depend on your goal. And my claim is the left right now is virtually 100% invested in the second goal and behaves accordingly. I can understand why it is - the road of forcing your opponent to do what you like seems easier - I just think it's both morally wrong and disastrous in the long term, as as soon as two sides start playing this game - and they certainly already started - the possibility of having rational discourse which can discover the truth or at least get us closer to it is lost, and what we get is a series of shouting matches, in which truth doesn't matter and isn't even part of the calculus anymore.