5 ms·
Couldn't agree more. The airtime on this topic is insane. People's email signatures filled with their pronouns. The anger. The division. I get it's an emotive c
by dmje 5y ago
Couldn't agree more. The airtime on this topic is insane. People's email signatures filled with their pronouns. The anger. The division. I get it's an emotive conversation but then so are gay rights, gender rights, race rights, democratic rights, inequality, and about a gazillion other topics. That's not belittling trans as an issue, but it's so incredibly noisy.
IMO the wider question here is nothing to do with trans but about what being "liberal" means. We're in this insanely weird moment in history when the hard left is eating itself by being so Woke it's nearly impossible to even have a conversation any more.
I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better.
- geoduck14 5y ago> Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. >>These are the things of the hard right Woah. Hey now. People can change.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nec4b 5y ago"I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better." That has not been true anywhere in the world where a left wing (the) party dominated the discourse. No socialist or communist party has ever had tolerance to an opposing view.
- raxxorrax 5y agoProblem is that people on the left support de-platforming. Perhaps it is wrong and business leaders are really responsible for this, but combating hate speech is popular in those circles. You can guess how hate gets define by zeitgeist.
- dmje 5y agoYou're right. And they shouldn't. Being liberal is about being able to take on opposing views.
- Tainnor 5y agoI hope you're aware that "left wing" doesn't mean "socialist" or "communist" and that plenty of liberal democracies have had social democratic parties in power for some period or another without there being any breakdown in tolerance to opposing viewpoints.
- dmje 5y agoCame to say just that but you got there first and did it better than I would have
- nec4b 5y agoOf course it also means socialists and communists among other leftist parties. They represent the pure leftist ideology from which other leftist parties take ideas from, and the closer to center those parties are the more they tone the communistic ideals down. In essence the tip of the left wing is completely intolerable and illiberal.
- dmje 5y agoYour point doesn't really work, if it is "at the heart of any left wing moderate is a left wing fringe lunatic" because obviously you could just claim the same of the right, and suggest that every moderate right wing has fascism at its core. This sort of reductionism ends up with nothing useful. Both right and left approach a similar looking set of ideologies at their extremes. I'm arguing that the left runs the risk of being overrun by something that moderate liberal lefties like me should be very concerned about.