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I actually already addressed this argument: claiming that to be tolerant you must be tolerant of people you are intolerant of is a circular argument. The LGBT c

I actually already addressed this argument: claiming that to be tolerant you must be tolerant of people you are intolerant of is a circular argument. The LGBT community is an outgroup in society, and by being more open to said societal outgroups, the left is more open minded in general. To rephrase, your assumption that to demonstrate open mindedness, one must act a certain way towards the outgroup is a self defeating premise. As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded. Under this framing, everyone is exactly equally open-minded because open mindedness is encoded in our preexisting personal prejudices. A more useful definition of open mindedness is less relative to the person under the lens. And under this lens, the left is significantly more open minded. Progressives have been the side of social progress since the beginning of politics. That's why they're called conservatives and progressives. Arguing that conservatives are more open to new ideas than progressives seems challenging, given the definitions of the words. > The left considers people born into wealth to be morally wrong. The right does not. This is a straw argument. The left does not claim it is immoral to be born into wealth. There are claims about certain systems that pereptuate wealth being immoral, but those arguments don't ascribe some sort of original sin to babies of wealthy people.

svrb 6y ago
> As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded. This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right (e.g., my family, Chick-fil-a) then we would (counterfactually) have to conclude that LGBT is an ingroup of the right. This contradicts your claim that "The LGBT community is an outgroup in society". It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction? An argument based on the definitions of "progressive" and "conservative" is no better than saying North Korea is a democracy. In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech. This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words. Finally, I frankly don't know how to respond to the notion that open-mindedness in the sense we're using it here, or the sense I thought we were using it here (viz. as a rough synonym of "tolerance"), has anything to do with the age of ideas. Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany).
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right This doesn't follow. The existence of a continuum of levels of acceptance within the right doesn't mean that the right, as a whole is accepting. Consider if we took this to the extreme: I am accepting of LGBT people, therefore society is. Your parents, as individuals, being accepting of LGBT people does not make the whole of "the right" accepting of LGBT people any more than me, as an individual, makes society accepting. > It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction. You're using absolute terms when I used relative ones. And when dealing with people, who are fuzzy, relative terms are more correct. I can be more to the right of someone else. Not all right wing people share exactly the same views. I don't consider supporting politicians who wish to remove your rights to be "accepting". You seem to consider "personal politeness" to be "accepting". If your parents identify as "the right" they presumably support Republican candidates. The republican party wishes to remove the right of lgbt individuals to marry. I don't think that is accepting. Perhaps they don't support those right wing policies, but then by the same token I'd argue that they are not paragons of right-wing ideology, so to bundle them into "the right" is to include moderates under the right wing umbrella. That's why I'm not talking about individuals, but the republican party platform, which is I think as close as well get to an official statement of the beliefs of the right wing. > Chick-fil-a I'm lost. > In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech. It hasn't though. This is an invention of people on the right. The internet has made it easier for us to see examples of people disagreeing, and the right has done a good job of branding individuals exercising their first amendment rights to criticise as an attack on "free speech". I'll warn that were running headlong into paradox of tolerance territory. But the right is no stranger to policing speech. Consider that the most commonly banned books in the us schools are the handmaid's tale (sexual themes), harry potter (witchcraft), and 8 books about lgbtq topics. The right likes to shift the focus to cancel culture, but... > This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words. This does not follow. I'll also note that someone did go to the effort of explaining why progressive and conservative are fitting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24402840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24402840), and you ignored the body of the response. > Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany). Compare to the right, which gets it's ideas from the Bible and enlightenment philosophers, both of which predate leftist philosophy by decades or centuries ;). You're also greatly oversimplifying critical theory to the point of parody. Perhaps remove the "only" from your sentence.

svrb 6y ago

> As soon as you provide the requisite amount of acceptance to the outgroup, they are no longer the outgroup, so you are no longer being open minded. This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right (e.g., my family, Chick-fil-a) then we would (counterfactually) have to conclude that LGBT is an ingroup of the right. This contradicts your claim that "The LGBT community is an outgroup in society". It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction? An argument based on the definitions of "progressive" and "conservative" is no better than saying North Korea is a democracy. In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech. This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words. Finally, I frankly don't know how to respond to the notion that open-mindedness in the sense we're using it here, or the sense I thought we were using it here (viz. as a rough synonym of "tolerance"), has anything to do with the age of ideas. Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany).

joshuamorton 6y ago
> This may seem true if one can't conceive of being accepting of an outgroup. But if we apply this claim to my multiple examples of LGBT acceptance by the right This doesn't follow. The existence of a continuum of levels of acceptance within the right doesn't mean that the right, as a whole is accepting. Consider if we took this to the extreme: I am accepting of LGBT people, therefore society is. Your parents, as individuals, being accepting of LGBT people does not make the whole of "the right" accepting of LGBT people any more than me, as an individual, makes society accepting. > It cannot simultaneously be true that LGBT is an outgroup of the right (surely a subset of society), that treating someone with respect and acceptance makes them an ingroup, and that LGBT are treated with respect and acceptance by at least some people on the right. How do you explain this contradiction. You're using absolute terms when I used relative ones. And when dealing with people, who are fuzzy, relative terms are more correct. I can be more to the right of someone else. Not all right wing people share exactly the same views. I don't consider supporting politicians who wish to remove your rights to be "accepting". You seem to consider "personal politeness" to be "accepting". If your parents identify as "the right" they presumably support Republican candidates. The republican party wishes to remove the right of lgbt individuals to marry. I don't think that is accepting. Perhaps they don't support those right wing policies, but then by the same token I'd argue that they are not paragons of right-wing ideology, so to bundle them into "the right" is to include moderates under the right wing umbrella. That's why I'm not talking about individuals, but the republican party platform, which is I think as close as well get to an official statement of the beliefs of the right wing. > Chick-fil-a I'm lost. > In the past twenty years the left has had a shocking reversion to moral puritanism, such as by policing speech. It hasn't though. This is an invention of people on the right. The internet has made it easier for us to see examples of people disagreeing, and the right has done a good job of branding individuals exercising their first amendment rights to criticise as an attack on "free speech". I'll warn that were running headlong into paradox of tolerance territory. But the right is no stranger to policing speech. Consider that the most commonly banned books in the us schools are the handmaid's tale (sexual themes), harry potter (witchcraft), and 8 books about lgbtq topics. The right likes to shift the focus to cancel culture, but... > This again contradicts the definitions, so unless we claim that it's reality which is wrong, then we must abandon the original meaning of the words. This does not follow. I'll also note that someone did go to the effort of explaining why progressive and conservative are fitting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24402840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24402840), and you ignored the body of the response. > Moreover I dispute the claim that the left's ideas are primarily new, because they again seem to be a reversion to older ideas; for example, socialism (late 18th century) and the idea that society and history can only be properly be viewed through the lens of race (early to mid 20th century Germany). Compare to the right, which gets it's ideas from the Bible and enlightenment philosophers, both of which predate leftist philosophy by decades or centuries ;). You're also greatly oversimplifying critical theory to the point of parody. Perhaps remove the "only" from your sentence.