Maybe this is just a phase, but it feels like we're going to a place from which we won't return.
I still keep in touch with many of them on Facebook, and the amount of absolute insanity coming from them is staggering and depressing.
I've seen a significant number of posts like yours, all with the same gist, but they always make me smile; by describing yourself as a "liberal" as something akin to "left of center", i.e opposite of a "conservative", such people actually often really are liberals (in the political philosophy sense) themselves, the exact position that the left has been critiquing since the turn of the 19th century and what continued to be fashionable until about 1970.
The left has never been on the side of property rights, the system of rights in general (which they decry as bourgeois rights), the current form of the state, the existence of capital, income inequality, neoliberalism etc. and the appearance of the Left in the US as "liberal" as manifested in the Democratic Party for instance is in stark contrast to some leftist parties in Europe to whom "liberal" always meant center or center-right.
So you were always a liberal, and you still are, just not in the sense you thought.
I'm confused here - what rights do you view free speech as being privileged over?
[0] http://web.mit.edu/sgrp/2008/no2/EatonSAPF.pdf
[1] Easterbrook's judgement in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut (1985)
[2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...
The only way the US manages to function (in contrast to Germany or Canada for instance) is by codifying similar rules outside of the constitution. For instance, restrictions on child porn, assault letters, threats, copyright etc.
I mentioned Rae Langton in my last comment; she claims to have found a way to challenge liberals on their own ground - pornography literally silences women by convincing people that their cries of resistance are actually encouragement. If speech is to be anything more than sounds and scrawls, it relies on meaning being reliably communicated. If women cannot convey their meaning in society at large then there are grounds to say women are being silenced. Suddenly there is a weighing act between the free speech of pornographers and the free speech of women. Caroline West defends this rather well[0].
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00455091.2003.10...
Your views on speech align you closely with millions of far-right American social conservatives who also dismiss the primacy of free expression. People like David Barton, who will say openly that the constitution did not intend to protect the speech of non-christians. People who would love nothing more than for the state to censor pornography, vulgarity, profanity, blasphemy, and flag-desecration.
And that's just the start. You're also in good company with the stricter sorts of muslims -- and there are many around the world -- who believe the death penalty is an acceptable punishment for blasphemy against Mohammed. Even mundane portrayals of the Prophet are labelled anti-muslim hate speech, meant to silence muslim voices, and accordingly met with demands for censorship.
You'll enjoy similar agreement from the Russian state, which purchases conservative capital by outlawing any speech that looks or sounds gay, and the Chinese state which only allows speech that doesn't pose a threat to harmony or the revolution.
I suspect you have little in common with these people in any other way. So why would you want to fight this particular battle along side them?
Groups with wildly different goals can share similar viewpoints, that does not make them allies. The reasoning behind their platforms are not identical, and the desired outcome is unlikely to be identical, even though there is similarity in some aspects of their positions.
Let's say there's Group A:
- Advocates for abortion rights
- Ethically and medically opposed to carnivorous diets
- Requires wearing of a fez and monocle when out in public at all times
- Advocates against abortion
- Opposed to carnivorous diets because eating the souls animals may increase the chance of spontaneous combustion
- Condemns the fez as an abomination against all mankind; doesn't know what a monocle is, still considering boycott for symmetry's sake
What if a member of as yet defined Group C tries to persuade a member of Group A to abandon as aspect of their platform by saying, "I suspect you have little in common with those Antifez jerks in any other way. So why would you want to fight this particular battle along side them?"
That seems like an unnecessarily combative stance to take. Comparing Catherine MacKinnon to Islamic extremists or to unreasonably homophobic Russians is for sure hyperbolic.
@claudiawerner argues, albeit obliquely, that speech that makes certain particular groups feel unsafe should not be protected. She might have somewhat different ideas about what constitutes safety compared to Tony Perkins or Yelena Mizulina. But they'll all argue, convincingly and articulately, that the notion of a fundamental human right to freedom of expression is an error. In general, history has shown that the consequences of such people gaining power over societies is tragic beyond words.
So, yeah, I agree that that comparing them based on their choice of clothing or diet would be a bit of a red herring. Good point, I guess.
In thinking about this though I realized something. Almost like clockwork there is a shifting of the zeitgeist of the nation on 20 year intervals:
- Roaring 20s
- Warring 40s
- Social movement 60s
- Huge growth 80s
- Identity politics 2000s
- ?? 2020s
You can't explain these shifts in era by a new generation alone, as would be implied by the 20 year intervals. It has to be in large part substantial chunks of the existing population also shifting their views. I'm not sure if this is a product of people changing, perhaps as they age, or maybe it's some organic factor of political competition that results in the parties changing. Again, going back to the top - I guess it doesn't really matter. It's the exact same effect and result in either case.
The point being is that I think this is 'normal', but we're the first generation to get to share and experience this sort of shift, and in such a public way, due to the internet.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...
My suspicion is that they consider the right these days the calm voice of reason – not in spite of the racism, the misogyny, homophobia, or hatred of the poor, but because of these things, because maybe their sympathies simply lie with maintaining the comfortable order that they are used to, not with any of the ideals that they actually claim/ed to uphold.