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Or one can view it as the increasing intellectual vacuousness of ideas on the "right". (In quotes because the dividing line between left and right itself has sh

Or one can view it as the increasing intellectual vacuousness of ideas on the "right". (In quotes because the dividing line between left and right itself has shifted rightward over the years.)

alabastervlog 1y ago
This isn’t new. Buckley is the best they could manage in the entire last century or so, and that’s… not a great high water mark.
- TimTheTinker 1y ago
  What about Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Josef Pieper? These were in fact some of the intellectual greats of the 20th century. Like many today, they wouldn't necessarily closely identify with "the right" as much as they'd disagree with and argue against the current ideology of the left.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    Tell me more about your seances with tolkien and lewis. Where did you have them? What's their favorite foods these days? Are they well?
    - TimTheTinker 1y ago
      Many authors poured their mind into their works such that simply reading their books makes it possible to know them pretty well. If you haven't tried it, I strongly suggest it :) Since you called out Lewis -- one of my favorites is his The Abolition of Man and its narrative counterpart That Hideous Strength. They describe in exquisite, arguably prophetic detail many of the evils of the modern left, particularly how it has ushered in a progressive downfall of society through institutionalized lies.
      - wredcoll 1y ago
        The irony of you citing a work that critiques placing "subjective emotion over objective moral truths" and attempting to apply it to the "modern left" is almost physically painful. You and everyone like you owe so much of your current life to the modern left that your ingratitude is astounding. The very computer you're using to send your words to me is a product of science and rational thinking that you seem to abhor.
        TimTheTinker 1y ago
        One of the central problems of left-wing ideology is placing (or more accurately, weaponizing) subjective emotion over objective truth, moral or otherwise. I'm sorry if that's painful to hear, but it is true. > science and rational thinking that you seem to abhor. What did I say that gave you that impression? Au contraire. Modern life, science, rational thinking -- these are not products of left-wing political, moral, or social ideology, not even a little bit. I'm curious how you arrived at that viewpoint, which is incoherent. Perhaps that which is not currently right-coded is leftist to you, but political coding is a disparate concept from the propositions upon which worldviews are built.
        wredcoll 1y ago
        You brought up the right-left dichotomy, I'm just following your lead. It's undeniable that, right now, the right wing is anti-intellectual and anti-science. They constantly seek to censor speech, defund research and privatize public goods. Where's a prominent politician saying "no actually, we should keep funding public research"? Or defending free speech? They're awfully quiet on the matter. Frankly, I don't know how to define "left wing ideology", I've yet to hear anyone give a particularly good definition, but if we assume that what people who self-identify as right wing hate and fear is considered to be left wing, then it seems like I'm in favor of most of that. Gender/transgender is a trivial subject to demonstrate the point. People thought "male" and "female" was a super specific binary that was trivial to separate people into. Then people did Science and found out it was considerably more complicated and closer to a spectrum with people crossing over at various points. Now look at which group of people is rejecting that research by calling it a lie and shouting loudly and which group of people are changing their world views.
dani__german 1y ago
As far as the "left", one need only consider the ideological rigidity around the topic of transvestites to see that specific, thoughtful, deep, data driven, and evidence based rhetoric is abandoned in favor of not hurting the feelings of a group of people prone to threaten harm to themselves for political and social gain. Don't ever forget that the left cant clearly articulate what a woman is without resorting to circular reasoning.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  This is probably pointless to reply to, but for anyone else reading this: For starters, the current right-wing hate campaign is targeting transgender people, not transvestites since the latter simply means people who wear clothing associated with the opposite gender, which is quite common in right-wing circles. Aside from that silliness, let's highlight the "specific, thoughtful, data driven, evidence based rhetoric" that is "not hurting the feelings of a group of people", as if "hurt feelings" were all that has happened. Also, hurt feelings matter. Humans are our feelings. They're who we are and what we are. People be hurt in a large variety of ways and they're all bad. It's trivial to demonstrate that non-fatal gash on your body is considerably less worse than being, say, ostracized and outcast from the community you grew up in. On a related note, why is "the right" so obsessed with defining what a woman is? What are the data driven and evidence based rhetorical reasons for coming up with a rigorous and definitive definition of woman? The idea that evidence or logic is involved in any of this is laughable. Edit: Nobody can come up with a good definition for what a planet it is either, but somehow we manage to stagger onwards.
  - jl6 1y ago
    Well, the evidence is that when males and females compete against each other in sport, the males tend to win, so if you think womens' sport should exist, then you need to define who is included and who is excluded from that category.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

Or one can view it as the increasing intellectual vacuousness of ideas on the "right". (In quotes because the dividing line between left and right itself has shifted rightward over the years.)

alabastervlog 1y ago

This isn’t new. Buckley is the best they could manage in the entire last century or so, and that’s… not a great high water mark.

TimTheTinker 1y ago
What about Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Josef Pieper? These were in fact some of the intellectual greats of the 20th century. Like many today, they wouldn't necessarily closely identify with "the right" as much as they'd disagree with and argue against the current ideology of the left.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Tell me more about your seances with tolkien and lewis. Where did you have them? What's their favorite foods these days? Are they well?
  - TimTheTinker 1y ago
    Many authors poured their mind into their works such that simply reading their books makes it possible to know them pretty well. If you haven't tried it, I strongly suggest it :) Since you called out Lewis -- one of my favorites is his The Abolition of Man and its narrative counterpart That Hideous Strength. They describe in exquisite, arguably prophetic detail many of the evils of the modern left, particularly how it has ushered in a progressive downfall of society through institutionalized lies.
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      The irony of you citing a work that critiques placing "subjective emotion over objective moral truths" and attempting to apply it to the "modern left" is almost physically painful. You and everyone like you owe so much of your current life to the modern left that your ingratitude is astounding. The very computer you're using to send your words to me is a product of science and rational thinking that you seem to abhor.
      - TimTheTinker 1y ago
        One of the central problems of left-wing ideology is placing (or more accurately, weaponizing) subjective emotion over objective truth, moral or otherwise. I'm sorry if that's painful to hear, but it is true. > science and rational thinking that you seem to abhor. What did I say that gave you that impression? Au contraire. Modern life, science, rational thinking -- these are not products of left-wing political, moral, or social ideology, not even a little bit. I'm curious how you arrived at that viewpoint, which is incoherent. Perhaps that which is not currently right-coded is leftist to you, but political coding is a disparate concept from the propositions upon which worldviews are built.
        wredcoll 1y ago
        You brought up the right-left dichotomy, I'm just following your lead. It's undeniable that, right now, the right wing is anti-intellectual and anti-science. They constantly seek to censor speech, defund research and privatize public goods. Where's a prominent politician saying "no actually, we should keep funding public research"? Or defending free speech? They're awfully quiet on the matter. Frankly, I don't know how to define "left wing ideology", I've yet to hear anyone give a particularly good definition, but if we assume that what people who self-identify as right wing hate and fear is considered to be left wing, then it seems like I'm in favor of most of that. Gender/transgender is a trivial subject to demonstrate the point. People thought "male" and "female" was a super specific binary that was trivial to separate people into. Then people did Science and found out it was considerably more complicated and closer to a spectrum with people crossing over at various points. Now look at which group of people is rejecting that research by calling it a lie and shouting loudly and which group of people are changing their world views.

dani__german 1y ago

As far as the "left", one need only consider the ideological rigidity around the topic of transvestites to see that specific, thoughtful, deep, data driven, and evidence based rhetoric is abandoned in favor of not hurting the feelings of a group of people prone to threaten harm to themselves for political and social gain. Don't ever forget that the left cant clearly articulate what a woman is without resorting to circular reasoning.

wredcoll 1y ago
This is probably pointless to reply to, but for anyone else reading this: For starters, the current right-wing hate campaign is targeting transgender people, not transvestites since the latter simply means people who wear clothing associated with the opposite gender, which is quite common in right-wing circles. Aside from that silliness, let's highlight the "specific, thoughtful, data driven, evidence based rhetoric" that is "not hurting the feelings of a group of people", as if "hurt feelings" were all that has happened. Also, hurt feelings matter. Humans are our feelings. They're who we are and what we are. People be hurt in a large variety of ways and they're all bad. It's trivial to demonstrate that non-fatal gash on your body is considerably less worse than being, say, ostracized and outcast from the community you grew up in. On a related note, why is "the right" so obsessed with defining what a woman is? What are the data driven and evidence based rhetorical reasons for coming up with a rigorous and definitive definition of woman? The idea that evidence or logic is involved in any of this is laughable. Edit: Nobody can come up with a good definition for what a planet it is either, but somehow we manage to stagger onwards.
- jl6 1y ago
  Well, the evidence is that when males and females compete against each other in sport, the males tend to win, so if you think womens' sport should exist, then you need to define who is included and who is excluded from that category.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]