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> I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. I don't feel comfortable with anyo

> I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. I don't feel comfortable with anyone using the term "liberal moral agenda" unironically because of culture-specific connotations: for starters, it's a very US-specific phrase which will have attached meanings that would be lost or misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with how the term "liberal" specifically relates to US political discourse - and the hugely negative (to downright toxic) connotations attached to the label "liberal moral agenda" by the reactionary right-wing - which all make conversations like these impossible to have.

inkblotuniverse 5y ago
How would that make conversations impossible to have? Just talk to the reactionary right-wingers about what they see as the liberal moral agenda. (Of course there's a liberal moral agenda- there's an X moral agenda for every X).
clavicat 5y ago
Translation: it’s bad PR for my tribe. One of the privileges of occupying a position of hegemony is that you get to instruct your subjects in how they are allowed to refer to power, and pathologize expressions that are offensive to it. Liberals have all these rules about how you are allowed to describe liberals—the idea that we should observe similar courtesies when describing the “reactionary right-wing” as you pejoratively put it is, naturally, absurd. So even an anodyne description like “liberal moral agenda” of what is objectively a moral agenda informed by liberal priorities becomes verboten, simply because it allows its adversaries to vocalize their opposition to it. Depriving the opposition of their own vocabulary and replacing it with one of your making is a classic move—anyone who fails to update their dictionary marks themselves as an enemy. Someone is indeed making conversation impossible to have, but whose fault is that, exactly?

inkblotuniverse 5y ago

How would that make conversations impossible to have? Just talk to the reactionary right-wingers about what they see as the liberal moral agenda. (Of course there's a liberal moral agenda- there's an X moral agenda for every X).

clavicat 5y ago

Translation: it’s bad PR for my tribe. One of the privileges of occupying a position of hegemony is that you get to instruct your subjects in how they are allowed to refer to power, and pathologize expressions that are offensive to it. Liberals have all these rules about how you are allowed to describe liberals—the idea that we should observe similar courtesies when describing the “reactionary right-wing” as you pejoratively put it is, naturally, absurd. So even an anodyne description like “liberal moral agenda” of what is objectively a moral agenda informed by liberal priorities becomes verboten, simply because it allows its adversaries to vocalize their opposition to it. Depriving the opposition of their own vocabulary and replacing it with one of your making is a classic move—anyone who fails to update their dictionary marks themselves as an enemy. Someone is indeed making conversation impossible to have, but whose fault is that, exactly?