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Officially, perhaps, but our coastal bubbles clearly believe that current liberal democratic values and attitudes are superior.
by bobthechef 9y ago
Officially, perhaps, but our coastal bubbles clearly believe that current liberal democratic values and attitudes are superior.
- ajmurmann 9y agoAnd yet we are hesitant to push out values on people from other cultures. It's a very different dilemma that I think Houellebecq portrayed fabulously in "Submission". Liberals are eager to defend other cultures whose values could hardly new more opposite. It's fascinating really and a tough position. It's admirable and pathetic at the same time and I'm not sure there is a good answer.
- leohutson 9y agoYou might say that multiculturalism is a cultural value in itself, and perhaps some might value multiculturalism more than the survival of their culture. My view is that syncretic cultures are dominant because they are capable of absorbing other cultures and adapting to change, whereas rigid and intolerant cultures can only last as long as their particular moires are relevant.
- taneq 9y agoAnd in the same vein, Liberals show no hesitation in lambasting other people with markedly different values (such as central/southern U.S.) who they lump in as "the same culture" and so consider a valid target.
- drdeca 9y ago"outgroup" vs "fargroup" ?
- leohutson 9y agoHaven’t you just done the same thing to liberals?
- throwanem 9y agoNot everyone values, or even claims to value, the idea that no culture or value system can be strictly preferable to another. From the perspective where such preferences can exist, there's nothing inconsistent about expressing one.
- Spooky23 9y agoWhether these places share a culture or not, they are dominated by a particular political culture that has an amplified impact due to a variety of factors.
- specialist 9y agoYou're not wrong. Mocking country bumpkins has been our national past time, making the careers of H. L. Mencken and contemporaries. Two major fronts in the modern culture wars started with industrialization (urbanization), and the south's remything their humiliating unconditional surrender and occupation in defense of slavery as some kind of Noble Lost Cause (victimhood). As a proud urban progressive, I'm only too eager, happy to hail the wambulance for anyone railing against us job creators and fitness nuts. So I guess I'm no better.
- weberc2 9y agoI think Scott Alexander touched on this in his "I tolerate everyone but the outgroup" post. He noted that it is relatively easy to get along with those very different from you, particularly when you're uniting against your proximal enemy. He pointed out that even the racist Nazis allied with the Japanese against other Europeans. This isn't tolerance; it's just another way to gain power in a struggle against old foes.
- specialist 9y agoLiberals in the USA were defined by their willingness to push their values, beliefs onto others. That was the New Deal. The War Machine got their profiteering and Labor got their middle class. Uniting left and right, over the objections of the isolationist (minor caucus within the Republican coalition). That Cold War ear consensus was mooted by the fall of the USSR. A new consensus has not emerged (been forged). Nowadays, we of the left are more aware of blowback, and so are more hesitate to support Gun Boat Diplomacy.
- psychometry 9y agoAnd according to the author of the article, they would be objectively superior than the other predominant culture framework in the U.S., namely the regressive authoritarianism of American conservatism.