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> let alone convincing them to change their minds. This has become a growing issue in American politics. As much as a love progressive politics myself. I can't

by nbardy 7y ago

> let alone convincing them to change their minds. This has become a growing issue in American politics. As much as a love progressive politics myself. I can't deny the important of strong political opposition and the importance of conservative view points in opposition to progress. Progressive politics has become ignorant to the people, and as a result the people have turned a dead ear towards it. Instead of trying to convince them of their new ideas and why they're better than the old ones. Progressives have adopted an assumption of, "the other side is evil and is deliberately holding us back". It should be hard to cause political change. Most new ideas in politics are truly awful and failures at that level affect society gravely. Disagreement over how to move forward is fundamental to a functioning democracy and the emergence of good ideas. Yet modern politics seems to treat any amount of disagreement as a solemn oath of obstinance. Yes, changing minds politically is challenging, and yes it should be.

rayiner 7y ago
> It should be hard to cause political change. Most new ideas in politics are truly awful and failures at that level affect society gravely. Part of the problem is that the left has erased all evidence of the failures of progressive politics (and in many cases the right has let them do so). When you just hear about the civil rights movement and marriage equality, it’s easy to assume that conservatives are just there to hold everyone back. I’d offer three examples. First, “socialism.” Socialism failed dismally. One of the most colossal failures of a political idea in modern history. So progressives endeavored to replace “socialism” with “social democracy.” But “social democracy” as practiced in Europe approaches the problem from the complete opposite end. It abandons the socialist economic model and builds on a capitalist one. Put differently, it’s not “socialism with more democracy” it’s “capitalism with more democracy.” So progressives have turned social democracy—which is more than anything an affirmation of the success of capitalism, and an utter retreat from what progressives were pushing before—into a win for progressivism. The second is the sexual revolution. At least in the United States, we have retrenched significantly on that front. Millennials start having sex later, and have fewer partners. “Affirmative consent” has replaced “free love.” The boundary-pushing on things like age have been pulled back hard. The #MeToo movement reaffirmed conservative truths: men cannot be trusted and society has a role to play helping women stave off unwanted and inappropriate advances. (Andrea Dworkin addresses this at length in Right Wing Women, though obviously long before #MeToo. In explaining why many women continue to support patriarchal systems, she notes that the sexual revolution stripped women of a lot of protections that those systems used to provide, with nothing to replace them. While Dworkin was obviously no conservative, she astutely recognized that the progressive tendency to throw out rules can easily end up overreaching. Many have lamented that the #MeToo movement is a return to a more Puritanical approach. There is a lot of truth to that.) Third, eugenics. The history of support for eugenics in this country has been pretty much erased, even though the evils of Jim Crow get plenty of attention. That’s likely because many progressives backed eugenics. Woodrow Wilson, progressive champion, was a former New Jersey Governor and eugenicist who segregated the federal work force for the first time. He fired existing black federal employees (proving he wasn’t just a product of his time). Meanwhile, one of the strongest opponents of eugenics was the Catholic Church. In 1930, the Pope released an encyclical in which he condemned birth control, abortion, and eugenics as all being incompatible with the traditional Christian view of reproduction.
- dariusj18 7y ago
  I know the whole post is about progressives "erasing" evidence of failures, but your points don't make sense. 1. Could you point to things to back up socialism failed dismally? 2. At what point is affirmative consent anything similar to free love. Free love should still be consensual. 3. Eugenics is definitely a stain on progressivism, however I disagree that that has been erased. There's plenty of evidence of the US being swept up in the eugenics fervor.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > 1. Could you point to things to back up socialism failed dismally? Literally every country built in socialist economic principles, I.e. collective ownership of capital. > 2. At what point is affirmative consent anything similar to free love. Free love should still be consensual. That’s an attempt to reformulate “free love” to fit modern sensibilities. Read Dworkin’s contemporaneous take on the sexual revolution, starting at p. 89: https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Andrea-DWORKIN-Right-Wing-Women-The-Politics-of-Domesticated-Females-19831.pdf https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010... > In the sexual-liberation movement of the sixties, its ideology and practice, neither force nor the subordinate status of women was an issue. It was assumed that — unrepressed — everyone wanted intercourse all the time Affirmative consent is more than just “consent” (which too often turns into “the woman didn’t physically resist”). Combined with #metoo, it narrows the scope of sex to something shared between individuals under specific circumstances under specific terms and conditions, and demarcates vast swaths of human experience (like the work place) where discussing or propositioning sexual activity is inappropriate. That’s a huge retrenchment from “free love.”
- neonate 7y ago
  I think you may be overstating the degree to which the sexual revolution has been rolled back. Its two pillars were universal birth control and sex outside of marriage--in other words the decoupling of sex from family and procreation--and those are very much still in place. MeToo isn't a rollback of those changes. Maybe there is a Puritan element to it, but there has always been a displaced Puritanism among certain elements of the left.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Yeah. It turns out that saying "Agree with me or you're evil" doesn't actually persuade people very well. The first side to figure that out, and actually do better, might win until the other side also figures it out.

by nbardy 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

> It should be hard to cause political change. Most new ideas in politics are truly awful and failures at that level affect society gravely. Part of the problem is that the left has erased all evidence of the failures of progressive politics (and in many cases the right has let them do so). When you just hear about the civil rights movement and marriage equality, it’s easy to assume that conservatives are just there to hold everyone back. I’d offer three examples. First, “socialism.” Socialism failed dismally. One of the most colossal failures of a political idea in modern history. So progressives endeavored to replace “socialism” with “social democracy.” But “social democracy” as practiced in Europe approaches the problem from the complete opposite end. It abandons the socialist economic model and builds on a capitalist one. Put differently, it’s not “socialism with more democracy” it’s “capitalism with more democracy.” So progressives have turned social democracy—which is more than anything an affirmation of the success of capitalism, and an utter retreat from what progressives were pushing before—into a win for progressivism. The second is the sexual revolution. At least in the United States, we have retrenched significantly on that front. Millennials start having sex later, and have fewer partners. “Affirmative consent” has replaced “free love.” The boundary-pushing on things like age have been pulled back hard. The #MeToo movement reaffirmed conservative truths: men cannot be trusted and society has a role to play helping women stave off unwanted and inappropriate advances. (Andrea Dworkin addresses this at length in Right Wing Women, though obviously long before #MeToo. In explaining why many women continue to support patriarchal systems, she notes that the sexual revolution stripped women of a lot of protections that those systems used to provide, with nothing to replace them. While Dworkin was obviously no conservative, she astutely recognized that the progressive tendency to throw out rules can easily end up overreaching. Many have lamented that the #MeToo movement is a return to a more Puritanical approach. There is a lot of truth to that.) Third, eugenics. The history of support for eugenics in this country has been pretty much erased, even though the evils of Jim Crow get plenty of attention. That’s likely because many progressives backed eugenics. Woodrow Wilson, progressive champion, was a former New Jersey Governor and eugenicist who segregated the federal work force for the first time. He fired existing black federal employees (proving he wasn’t just a product of his time). Meanwhile, one of the strongest opponents of eugenics was the Catholic Church. In 1930, the Pope released an encyclical in which he condemned birth control, abortion, and eugenics as all being incompatible with the traditional Christian view of reproduction.

dariusj18 7y ago
I know the whole post is about progressives "erasing" evidence of failures, but your points don't make sense. 1. Could you point to things to back up socialism failed dismally? 2. At what point is affirmative consent anything similar to free love. Free love should still be consensual. 3. Eugenics is definitely a stain on progressivism, however I disagree that that has been erased. There's plenty of evidence of the US being swept up in the eugenics fervor.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > 1. Could you point to things to back up socialism failed dismally? Literally every country built in socialist economic principles, I.e. collective ownership of capital. > 2. At what point is affirmative consent anything similar to free love. Free love should still be consensual. That’s an attempt to reformulate “free love” to fit modern sensibilities. Read Dworkin’s contemporaneous take on the sexual revolution, starting at p. 89: https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Andrea-DWORKIN-Right-Wing-Women-The-Politics-of-Domesticated-Females-19831.pdf https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010... > In the sexual-liberation movement of the sixties, its ideology and practice, neither force nor the subordinate status of women was an issue. It was assumed that — unrepressed — everyone wanted intercourse all the time Affirmative consent is more than just “consent” (which too often turns into “the woman didn’t physically resist”). Combined with #metoo, it narrows the scope of sex to something shared between individuals under specific circumstances under specific terms and conditions, and demarcates vast swaths of human experience (like the work place) where discussing or propositioning sexual activity is inappropriate. That’s a huge retrenchment from “free love.”
neonate 7y ago
I think you may be overstating the degree to which the sexual revolution has been rolled back. Its two pillars were universal birth control and sex outside of marriage--in other words the decoupling of sex from family and procreation--and those are very much still in place. MeToo isn't a rollback of those changes. Maybe there is a Puritan element to it, but there has always been a displaced Puritanism among certain elements of the left.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Yeah. It turns out that saying "Agree with me or you're evil" doesn't actually persuade people very well. The first side to figure that out, and actually do better, might win until the other side also figures it out.