Steersman wrote:Unfortunately, or not, it seems clear than many on the Right are equally "guilty" of "collectivism and group identity", while many on the Left might equally be commended for committment to "individualism and personal liberty", although I'll concede the case might not be as strong on that side.
The distinction between groups and individuals is orthogonal to that of Left and Right. There's a group-thinking left, an individualist left, a group thinking right and an individualist right. And the question of authoritarianism vs. libertarianism is orthogonal to the Left and Right as well: there's an authoritarian left, a libertarian left, an authoritarian rights and a libertarian right.
In general individualists on both sides
tend to be libertarians, and collectivists/group-thinking people on both sides
tend to be libertarians, but that's just general tendency, not a
However the matter is even more complicated. There's the matter of nationalism vs. globalism, which is orthogonal to both left and right and individualism vs. collectivism.There's the matter of European Union support vs. Euroskepticism, which is orthogonal to all the previous divides. There's the matter of corporate crony capitalism on all sides. There's the matter of international alliances, with Atlantism (NATO) and Isolationism vs. Eurasianism (Russia). There's the matter of the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its repercussions on the entire Middle East. There are the issues with Islam. It's all correlated and hard to extricate, and no issue can be dealt with in complete isolation.
Painting one side or the other with a broad brush is highly counterproductive. Accusing people of being what they claim they're not, trying to find secret meanings, "dog whistling" to words, is equally counterproductive.
Aneris believes that the "left" has many different layers, which is true, but doesn't seem to be as charitable to the "right". Aneris thinks that the right-libertarian economic distinction between imposition through aggression vs. asking for something in exchange for something, even if it's all in exchange for a little , isn't just flawed but plainly nonsensical as with the example of the oasis in the desert, where libertarians argue that in order to give you water the owner of a well can ask you anything and it's not an imposition, which is something that Aneris contests as being slavery with a nonsensical distinction about voluntarism. I don't agree with the libertarians, but I don't see the distinction as nonsensical, just as based on an extreme interpretation of what "voluntary" means (i.e. not based on aggression).
[I think that to argue that denying someone water unless they do something for you is bad as a matter of degree of what you ask for, not as a matter of principle. To argue otherwise means that either you think that any price for life-saving water is fair, which is absurd, and that no price is, which is equally absurd. If you're dying of thirst you're probably willing to pay me far more than you'd pay for in another circumstance, and not every price you'd pay for is unfair. 100$, or a week of work, is probably pretty fair considering your need. A lifetime of slavery very likely isn't]
See the discussion starting from
here.
Aneris also thinks that the pattern on the right-wing is to deliberately wreck governmental plans then declare that the government doesn't work and proceed to privatization. I agree that this sometimes the case, but there's also the case that the left builds up unnecessary or counterproductive programs which only favor their cronies.
Also this:
Kirbmarc wrote: Everything has a price, though, whether you pay it on the free market or you and other people pay it through taxes. Nothing is free, ever, for anyone. Everything has a price tag in every kind of economical system. "Free water" is actually "tax-paid water". "Free education" is "tax-paid education". Same thing for "free healthcare". Nothing can give you complete freedom and independence from reality: the state doesn't create wealth, it only redistributes it. The smarter libertarians are simply saying what you're saying, that everything has a price. Too many people seem to forget that state interventions have a price too (taxes).
To an extent this pretty much has to happen (all economies are mixed economies, there's no purely free market economy), but taken to its extreme it's communism.
Aneris also wrote that she finds the behavior of SJWs to be close to those of Right-Wing authoritarians. I think it's a general authoritarian behavior, which has its space both in the left and in the right.
What I'm arguing for here is that Aneris has a clear pro-left bias and thinks that leftist solutions are clearly more beneficial and rational than right-wing solutions.
There's nothing wrong with that: it's a legitimate position to have, even though I disagree with it and think that both the right have massive flaws and some sort of compromise/legitimate divide between left and right is needed in order for society to function.
I'm leaning more left, but I recognize that the right has a reason for its existence, isn't just irrational egoism (libertarians) or corruption (crony capitalists) or nazism (populists). I think that countries NEED both left and right wing parties to alternate in power, to produce a healthy political discussion. We NEED profound, even harsh, even impolite, even extreme differences of political, social, economical opinions. Aneris thinks that some opinions are simply irrational and not worth bothering with or discussing with, even though to her great credit she's not in favor of censoring anyone. I think that excluding some opinions from ALL discussions deprives people of alternative points of view.
You shouldn't invite ALL people to EACH AND EVERY discussion, that's absurd, but you should engage ALL opinions in SOME discussions, even the opinions you deem to be absurd or irrational. There's room to talk about Boringfoot, or about creationism, or about Holocaust Denial, in some appropriate venues.
The threshold for being passively banned from ALL civil discussions, even though you're not actively prosecuted by the justice system, is probably best kept together with the threshold of directly inciting to violence or of falsely accusing named people of having committed crimes. Everything else should have its own space for discussion
You don't necessarily have to invite anyone to any event, but if someone does invite people you deem irrational you have no right to threaten, intimidate, disrupt, heckle the event.
On this I and Aneris agree.
Where we disagree is on whether inviting some people to a discussion "gives them a platform" and "reflects on your views". I think that is true in some cases but not in all of them: it depends on why you invite them, what is discussed, which position you take, etc.
Aneris thinks that inviting a Reichsburger to discuss their case is giving the Reichsburger a platform. I don't think that's the case if he's invited to talk about how the German state allegedly raided his home for posting a meme which was dumb and idiotic but wasn't inciting to violence against anyone or falsely accusing anyone of any crime. Hell it wasn't even Holocaust Denial, it was just a stupid meme.
The person who posted the meme might be unsavory, but doesn't deserve to be punished for that meme, and the punishment/legal concern for that meme is a dangerous precedent for punishing other forms of memes (maybe those who are anti-islam?). The podcast didn't support the Reichsburger's political ideas, either, and actually glossed them over, which is the opposite of giving someone a platform.
That's the extent of the disagreement between Aneris and me on this issue. There are also other issues, like whether being anti-EU, anti-Merkel, pro-Trump, pro-LePen, friends with Alt-Righters is "laying the pipes" for neo-nazism, which I don't think is necessarily the case while Aneris sees as a pattern of promoting "hip neo-nazism" (maybe naively).
Ultimately though it boils down to whether being right wing is either egoistical and short-sighted or more or less inherently irrational and might give rise, even unwittingly, to authoritarian right-wing nightmares, or whether being right wing is a natural counterpart of being left-wing, and there's a rational need for both positions to create some balance.
What I think is that the Po-Mo left has poisoned rational liberal-democratic discussion by attacking reason and liberal democratic values (freedom of speech, presumption of innocence, separation of church and state, the concept of adulthood as legally defined as different from adolescence, respect for democratic results, abhorrence for political violence, the need for integration within a liberal-democratic society) as parts "The White Cis Hetero White Male Patricarchy". This in turn has fostered some irrationalism and skepticism towards reason and liberal democratic values on the right, too.
I think that both the reasonable, liberaldemocratic left and the reasonable, liberaldemocratic right need to unite against the rising waves of irrationality and illiberalism on both sides, and that calling someone who's reasonably liberal-democratic as "laying the pipes for neo-nazism" is highly counterproductive.
