7 ms·

This is an excellent expression of the kinds of conversations I want to be able to have with conservatives and liberals without being called one by the other.

• gizmo686 9y ago
  Leave us liberals out of this. /s This is one of those areas where liberal and leftist diverge. As the author identifies, this aspect of social justice thinking is decidedly anti-liberal. I actually think this is one of the bigger issues we are seeing with the current debate. Historically, we have had a liberal/leftist coalition in our culture. Now that this is starting to break apart, us liberals are having to come to terms with our leftist allies not actually being liberals; while the leftists are coming to terms with us liberals not actually being leftists. Because of how inconceivable this divide is to many people, there is a lot of strawmaning of positions. So if a leftist sees a liberal argue for the liberal position in this debate, they see it as arguing against the leftist position; and since leftist==liberal, they must be arguing for the right/conservative posisition. Since this issue is so politized, I don't think many liberals see the left as arguing for a right/conservative posistion; but many do see them as arguing for an authoritarian posistion, which has historically been associated with the right. As a result, I think that many liberals are simply confused about what is going on since, without the liberal/left distinction, all they see is "their" side going "crazy"; when, in reality, there simply is not (and never was) the common ground that both sides thought there was. (Obviously, any reference to "historically" refers to the recent history. One does not need to go back that far to find major examples of widely accepted leftist-authoritarians, but those are more in the history books, then in the public perception).
  • bem94 9y ago
    Please excuse my brevity, I'm on a phone. I think you are right about the "coalition" between liberals and leftists. I've noticed it falling apart for a while but not really been able to describe it. Talking with friends I previously considered liberal and being shushed for questioning or simply not knowing the current vogue in social justice discourse has been a really horrible experience. Worse, I've seen that experience turn others into frothing radicals who then do the same thing to other people. It's a forward feedback loop of people entrenching their existing preconceptions. It's a mess.
  • _mhr_ 9y ago
    Could you describe what you perceive to be the difference between leftism and liberalism?
    • aklemm 9y ago
      A leftist violates general democratic principles in the fight against a particular injustice.
      • greglindahl 9y ago
        And do the people you apply this label to agree that they're "violating general democratic principles"? Seems unlikely, and also seems unlikely to generate a good discussion.
        • closeparen 9y ago
          They're openly hostile to both free speech and the presumption of innocence as values and general practices (less opposed to the technical Constitutional restraints on the state, for now). I don't know about "general democratic principles" but I would include these as ideas valued by liberalism and not by leftism.
          • greglindahl 9y ago
            Just starting with the first part of what you said, I see a big disagreement about what "free speech" is. If you say something offensive, and a billion people speak back that you're being offensive, that's also free speech.
            • closeparen 9y ago
              Sure. The fissure is over whether a disagreeable idea or speaker should be engaged and defeated on rational grounds, or excluded from the premises by whatever means necessary. Last generation's liberal professors value the exercise for its own sake. Today's leftist students think it's an abomination that they're allowed into the institution at all.
  • da_chicken 9y ago
    See, I really don't think it's about liberalism vs leftism. I agree with the article. It's about those who think critically, and those who chose not to. Unfortunately, the Internet gives voice to both groups equally, and idiots tend to have a lot of time on their hands to be exceptionally vocal on Twitter or other forms of social media. Since journalism has suffered so severely in the past decade, social media has just taken off as a source for every tiny criticism which just gets amplified. And there's no attempt to see how deep this outrage goes because depth doesn't make money in journalism anymore. Manufactured outrage is driving the conversation because it's sexy and gets views. Culturally, the underlying problem is that certain people have spent too long in echo chambers that have atrophied their ability to interpret criticism rationally or thoughtfully. It's to the point that it's gone beyond oppression olympics to outright witch hunting. Liberals are terrified of being accused of not being liberal because apparently not being a complete extremist in your beliefs means you're not dedicated or passionate about them or have no credibility. This is so unbelievable as to be absurd. Journalism and discussion have completely broken down into whichever side can throw the most hate at the other. It's just complete nonsense.
    • gizmo686 9y ago
      I don't disagree with you. I personally see this problem as stemming from the Two Cultures problem (sciences vs humanities), with the humanities culture leaking out of academia, into the mainstream where it can do real harm. But, the current leftist movement, as far as I can tell, is a product of the humanities culture. In the current iteration of this fight, there seems to be, at a minimum, a liberal/science coalition, but I am not sure how fundamental that is. I actually avoid talking about this, because people tend to get far more offended when I attack the humanities culture relative to the leftist culture (probably because humanities students take an attack on the humanities much more personally; while most non-activists would not have such a personal attachment to "the left").
      • greglindahl 9y ago
        Maybe people are unhappy because "humanities culture" is an extremely broad term which is terrible at describing your target? I mean, I'm a scientist, but I have a lot of artsy hobbies, and my initial impression when I hear "humanities culture" is "oh great, this is the next SJW or feminism label, used to dismiss things." Probably not what you intended.
  • aklemm 9y ago
    us liberals are having to come to terms with our leftist allies not actually being liberals In fact, it's so hard to reconcile that I sometimes wonder if leftists are a straw man invented by the right, but I'm starting to realize that may not be true.
    • krapp 9y ago
      >In fact, it's so hard to reconcile that I sometimes wonder if leftists are a straw man invented by the right, but I'm starting to realize that may not be true. Leftists are not, but "leftists" as described by the right often are, as are "feminists" and "SJWs." And because it will probably come up, yes, the same phenomenon exists on the other side as well.
  • ytoi 9y ago
    I disagree. As a European "leftist", which I guess counts as the "far left" people like to blame things on, I think almost all these issues being discussed are right wing issues. To the point were you have to explain to people in Europe, that have been reading US articles, that the things they are opposing doesn't exist here. Overall European leftist doesn't want company policies, affirmative action or even large immigration. They want powerful unions, fair admissions to university, daycare, protection of employment and other concrete things that the US consider socialism. This entire "social justice" situation is because liberals in the US doesn't want to give up their privileges of private social insurance, good schools districts, rising housing markets, lobbying etc. So the result is the predictably a shallow shouting match, which people are uncomfortable with after the fact.
    • gizmo686 9y ago
      Political labels are fuzzy, and highly subject to drift. I use the term "liberal" and "leftist" because in current US politics, there are two clusters of political thought and, in current US politics, "liberal" and "leftist" are the names that we seem to be assigning them. A European leftist is not the same thing as an American leftist. In fact, if we were to look at a different issue, the division between liberal and leftist would be different, even withing American politics. For some issues, there is so little corralation with the general notion of liberal and leftist, that we would not even think to frame the problem in terms of those lines. My point being, political identities are not a fundamental unit. They are an abstraction that is only meaningful in a particular contexts. There are real clusters of thought in politics; and we are currently discussing the relationship between two particular clusters of American politics. For the sake of communication, we are forced to give these clusters names, and we choose liberal and leftist because they are the best names we have available.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      There are many people who identify as liberal while basking in their rising home value and exclusive school districts, but they typically do so quietly, not under the banner of liberalism. The closest example of people doing this openly and proudly under a left-wing banner is San Francisco's Progressivism, which is more closely aligned with what we're calling leftism here than what we're calling liberalism. Overall, the various shades of the left are still pretty aligned on concrete policy at the national level. Liberals are pretty reliably in favor of single payer, education funding, minimum wage, family leave, etc. Where you start to see the fissure is around how universities should handle controversial material in the classroom and accusations of sexual misconduct in their student populations. The Christakis incident at Yale [0] is one of the best test cases. In particular, >...if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society. is one of those flash-point statements that separates liberals from leftists. This incident has been picked up as a rallying cry by the far-right so there's a lot of FUD flying around, but just to prove I'm not the only Democrat who would agree wholeheartedly, here's Obama [1]: > I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either. I would call Obama and has allies "liberals" here, and the protesters and their allies "leftists." Happy to be convinced otherwise on terminology, but it shows that there are at least two very distinct value systems going on here, which may be aligned on policy only by accident. [0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-per... [1]https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correc...
  • closeparen 9y ago
    Thank you for succinctly describing what I've been struggling to put into words for a long time. It was confusing and disorienting to learn that my left-wing peers in college had so little in common with the values and principles of the liberalism I grew up in, even if we arrived at the same policy prescriptions on most of the issues surfacing in the news. Being able to conceptualize these things as separate political alignments is helpful.
• akhilcacharya 9y ago
  If this is supposed to be nuanced, I'd love to see what isn't nuanced, or what you think an equivalent conversation would be from the left.