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Comment by TheAdamAndChe | Hacker News Reader

The liberal viewpoint is vastly different from the conservative viewpoint, but only if we find a way to communicate and find common ground will we ever hope to move forward together as a nation. Seeing your political opponent as irredeemable is the first step towards sectarianism, which can easily lead to war.

I lean to the right, and yet regularly talk to and see the humanity in liberals on a pretty regular basis. We are all people, even if we see things differently.

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If a major political party prioritizes limiting the rights and freedoms of entire groups, how can we expect to find common ground with them? If you are asking people who are directly impacted by these laws to find the humanity in their oppressors, you are asking for the impossible.

The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on the allowed behavior of other people. The lines between what behavior is right and wrong varies from people to people and group to group, hence why we have democracy to try to form a consensus.

There is a stark, obvious and undeniable difference between "other people" and narrowly defined groups of people, such as Jews, gay people, black people, immigrants or women. Many people view targeted restrictions on specific groups of people as some of our most atrocious and indefensible errors throughout history. I am one of those people.

Yes, but reality is muddy and people affect each other. Look at the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and see how well they correlate with the liberalization of American culture since 2012. Look at the declining rates of sex in our youth, the number of school shootings, the rise of populist politicians... If a generic goal of diversity and avoiding hurt feelings was what our country truly needed then our country would be better than ever, but its not.

You are obviously right when you look at the far right. Complete oppression is a bad thing. But swinging to the other extreme and saying that no ways of life are better than others causes social instability too.

Whether it should be government's job to do that is another matter.. I'd much prefer that our society handles such social pressures itself, though such social feedback systems seem to have broken down.

> The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on the allowed behavior of other people.

Maybe the problem is just a majority forcing a minority into their beliefs?

I'm anti-government in general, so that _is_ my standpoint.

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