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88 pages from 2021 involving Wilfred Laurier social sciences?

You know what's more interesting, in the months since this study it has become much more clear what's really going down.

NYTimes realized their echo chamber and practically ordered their journalists to exit their echo chambers. Which upon doing so they somewhat returned to better journalistic standards, NYTimes suddenly showed some excellent legitimacy.

CNN is basically in complete collapse because they were too late. Can't see how they recover without some absolute hail mary.

Rachel Maddow had a bit of a sabbatical and then got rebranded and is on air far less. MSNBC ratings not looking so hot lately.

Meanwhile Fox is in dominant #1 position. There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the polarization. You have star trek discovery a ultra top secret missions best of the best crew... but every character is LGBT. Wtf are they trying to say? Even Trek fell into this same trap as those above.

Has anyone checked out Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode 1 where they literally say second US civil war. The story was intentionally weak as hell to ensure everyone who watches it sees they are talking about the USA. The importance of getting those 2 parties talking together again. That working together for a better future is really the only way.

Even Trek suddenly realized their own mistake. It makes for such an amazing first episode.

View on HN

Abstract: "Americans’ hostility toward political opponents has intensified to a degree not fully explained by actual ideological polarization. We propose that political animosity may be based particularly on partisans’ overestimation of the prevalence of extreme, egregious views held by only a minority of opponents but imagined to be widespread."

You: "There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the polarization."

Hmm. Could it be that you're... overestimating?

In recent surveys, Democrats are found to be far more intolerant of Republicans than vice-versa.

Young Dems more likely to despise the other party https://www.axios.com/2021/12/08/poll-political-polarization...

thats because Democrats are largely impotent whereas republicans have let fringe hateful ideas become their platform. If one person in the room smells like shit, can you blame other people for taking a step away?

> republicans have let fringe hateful ideas become their platform.

In 2001, 23% of Republicans/Republican-leaning Americans supported same-sex marraige. By 2019, it was 44%. Among white evangelical protestants specifically, it was 13% and rose to 29%.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/changing-att...

aw thats cute. less than 50% of republicans think gay people can get married

If I may inject a bit of dispassionate analysis here: I think there's a grain of truth to both sides.

It's true that Republicans have moved more toward same-sex marriage.

However, it also seems to be true that the legalization of same-sex marriage has politically activated many Republicans who are still opposed to same-sex marriage.

When same-sex marriage was not legal, those opposed to it could remain fairly complacent. It was the status quo and wasn't an issue where they felt the need to engage in political activism. The most outspoken people were those in favor of same-sex marriage. But when same-sex marriage was legalized, there was an almost complete reversal, in terms of activism.

So today it feels like Republicans are more opposed to same-sex marriage, even if the raw numbers say otherwise. But perhaps the raw poll numbers don't reflect the level of enthusiasm or activism regarding the issue.

I think this is actually a general point: the level of political activism regarding any issue tends to be highest among those who feel threatened. So ironically, the level of activism opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, becomes higher as that view tends to wane in public popularity. A powerful overwhelming majority, on the other hand, doesn't need to make much effort to maintain its status.

Cute? I am challenging your perception that Republicans let their "hateful fringe" take over. The data shows that Republicans have actually been getting more progressive. That this trend isn't fast enough to suit you is beyond the point, republicans trending in this direction at all (let alone doubling) contradicts your stated perception of the trend.

Your statistic is based on the opinion of individual voters. My concern is with the forces in government that have made my friends in Florida fear that they cannot talk about their lives without being branded a pedophile. The sitting members of congress who think trans people are an abomination. The 20-something states that allow for conversion therapy for minors. But sure, I'm glad I can feel safe talking about marriage with 44% of rep. voters.

> The data shows that Republicans have actually been getting more progressive.

That data shows only that republicans’ support of gay marriage follows the same trend as democrats’, at a lower level. That indicates to me a cultural shift for this single issue more than a political one.

The data in the article below paints a different overall picture, though I went to the source and did not find the information on what their metrics were for the liberal / moderate / conservative spectrum. It’s likely in their downloadable data sets but I am on mobile.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/28/what-elon...

Actual laws actually enacted by conservatives are not middle of the road. Nor justices they pushed into supreme court. By that I mean that actual politic of both parties is different.

I don't know how we're defining "an objective measure", but pushing CRT sure looks like "move left." So does "we're going to help your kid transition without telling you" and XYs in women's sports.

Of course, one can argue that none of this is new, that what's new is pushback.

"Pushing CRT" sounds pretty subjective. What measurement are you offering here?

CRT, itself, is a pretty nebulous concept outside of actual legal scholarship. "Pushing CRT" is a common right-fringe talking point. How much do you think the majority of Democratic voters agree with "pushing CRT"?

I didn't say that I was offering a measurement, in fact, I asked how we were defining "an objective measure." Moreover, I have no idea how many Democrat voters go along with the institutional Left.

That said, the institutional left (IL) is pushing Project 1619 and associated materials outside of law schools, whether or not you want to call that CRT. (Shades of "no true Scotsman.")

This is part of a broader "all-in" on DIE by the IL. "Everything" is racism, sexism, etc.

There's also deplatforming and doxxing.

No, I'm not going to provide a scale. I'm not even going to order deplatforming and doxxing. So, the above isn't quantitative measure.

That's a long way from "nothing is happening."

> That's a long way from "nothing is happening."

Who are you quoting? Nobody said that. This seems like a non sequitur.

It's sneer quotes.

I'm claiming that the fact that the original poster didn't provide something like "0.2 units to the left" doesn't actually refute his fundamental point.

Feel free to disagree.

Some relevant quotes from the guidelines:

> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

> Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

What you've done is complain about some general stuff that you seem to dislike about "the left" and completely fail to engage with the content of the actual article, which I was trying to bring the discussion back to. But hey, at least you acknowledge ignorance about what most people think. Perhaps you should try exiting your bubble and figure that one out instead of dwelling on what you hate about the fringe.

The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The response was "prove it".

I provided examples of movement by the institutional left. No, those examples don't have numbers, but they do show movement. Besides, how do you apply numbers to this sort of stuff in any reasonable fashion?

Whether or not I like those things or they're "general" has nothing to do with whether they're movement. That's likely why you didn't comment on whether they were in fact movement.

That said, as long as we're lecturing one another on meta-discussion, it's nice of you to provide an opportunity to quote Hannah Arendt: "The elite is not composed of ideologists; its members’ whole education is aimed at abolishing their capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction. Their superiority consists in their ability immediately to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose."

> The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The response was "prove it".

No, the original claim was actually this: "political animosity may be based particularly on partisans’ overestimation of the prevalence of extreme, egregious views held by only a minority of opponents but imagined to be widespread."

The counterclaim was: "There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the polarization."

My suggestion was that this counterclaim seems to be exhibiting the same fallacy discussed in the paper.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are very large, and its members have a wide variety of views. If you pay close attention, you'll see that there's quite a bit of infighting, sometimes very bitter, even within each party. Broad generalizations about Democrats or "the left" — and likewise about Republicans or "the right" — are often going to be grossly inaccurate. You can't just treat huge groups as uniform when they're demonstrably not uniform.

The American people — well over 300 million of them — have diverse political views. But we have a political duopoly. Which means that these diverse views held by Americans have to somehow fit mostly within these 2 parties. It's a mistake to overgeneralize about political parties and similar groups.

I personally find the terms "left", "right", "liberal", "conservative" to be practically meaningless. They've lost all of their original meaning and become opaque cudgels for the political parties to pretend they have some kind of coherent ideology. But this is a bit of a tangent.

Anyway, I would bet that most Democrats and most Republicans don't even know WTF CRT is. Even the ones who complain about it!

> The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The response was "prove it".

Nope. The top-level post claimed the existence of objective measures of "the left" moving "far left", of which I haven't seen evidence.

And, I'd never claim that "the left" hasn't moved. The left/right terminology is rather sloppy, so I've tried to use the language of TFA: Democratic and Republican voters. But, let's look at "progressives" for a moment. The goal of progressives is to identify oppression in the world, and work towards overcoming it. That is to say, the goal of progressives is to change with the times, which is why, for example, today's progressives hate Margaret Sanger but still support Planned Parenthood. The goal of social conservatives is to resist change and as we're seeing with Roe v. Wade, undo past progressive changes (which, I think, is technically "regressive") which is why, for example, we see today's social conservatives rallying around statues of Robert E. Lee.

But that's not what the article about. The article is about how each side sees the other. It's nicely summarized by this SMBC comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07

What's going on today is that Democratic voters increasingly identify Republican voters as the nazi-flag bearing Charlottesville rioters, and Republican voters increasingly identify Democratic with murderers like Kermit Gosnell and Christopher Dorner.

This is the same sort of argument-by-definition that gun rights supporters use to dismiss anyone who talks about "assault weapons". A whole lot of parents don't want their children separated by race and have white kids told that they bear personal responsibility for historical racism and anything they accomplish is only possible due to the oppression of others, while black kids are told that society hates them and they'll never get a fair chance to succeed (unless of course we overthrow the racist misogynist capitalist power structure). If your response to that is "well actually CRT only refers to the specific legal theories of Kimberle Crenshaw", you're not addressing the actual point.

Please define what you mean by CRT so that we know what you are discussing. (I don't mean acronym expansion, I mean substance.)

Whites are the oppressors and BIPOC are the oppressed. That anything and everything boils down to the color of your skin. That white Americans in particular are the sole perpetrators of historic slavery. That current white people should atone for the sins of past slave owners regardless of when their family came to the US.

Well, you're absolutely correct, inasmuch as that's a racist tire fire that shouldn't be in schools. But that's not "critical race theory," it's overwrought caricature that mainstream (and, in my bubble, even the quite radical) progressives would disagree with.

CRT is a legal theory taught in colleges that is based on the ideas that are being taught in some elementary and secondary schools. No, CRT proper is not taught to children. Yes, the ideas that CRT is based on are being taught to some children. When the right says CRT is taught in schools this is what they are talking about. When the left and the media says that CRT isn't taught in schools they are talking about the CRT legal theory.

https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/18/yes-children-are-being-t...

1) Areo magazine is a political hack publication.

2) The article about US schools was written by an Australian.

3) The article seems free of any actual empirical examples of its main claim.

4) There have always been groups in the US who want censorship in schools for anything they don't like politically or religiously, most notably, the science of biological evolution. The "oh no, what are they teaching the children in schools" crowd is very hard to take seriously. There are people who don't want slavery mentioned in schools. They don't want the Holocaust mentioned in schools. It's hard to imagine a more "radical agenda" than all of this censorship and denial of facts. Wipe away history? Wipe away science?

The irony is that those who say "just teach the controversy about evolution and the Holocaust" [there's no scientific controversy] would also refuse to "teach the controversy" over CRT.

I've never taught high school, but I did teach (philosophy) at the university level in the past, and the people who complain about what's taught in college typically believe laughably inaccurate caricatures of what actually happens in the classroom. We're not proselytizing students; it's hard enough just to keep them awake during class and prod them to actually do the assigned reading in the first place.

> 3) The article seems free of any actual empirical examples of its main claim.

Yeah, I gave the article an honest read, looking for real evidence, because it runs entirely counter to my experience. I'm a mom of a kid in grade school, and I've talked to a lot of parents and teachers about this topic. I'm in the very liberal Vancouver area, and my same-aged friends are spread across Canada and the US. Nobody I know is seeing anything like the racist trash that tastyfreeze and Areo are spreading.

Ok, how about some other sources?

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/12/22/...

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/rescuing-math-and-...

> Ok, how about some other sources?

Heh, let me know when you come up with something that isn't a political hack publication.

As I suspected. Unwilling to read evidence with an open mind because they are from the "other side". Both of those sources quote school district administrators and curriculums.

> As I suspected. Unwilling to read evidence with an open mind because they are from the "other side".

I took the time to read the first link you chose. It did not show what you thought it showed. You thereby lost credibility and the benefit of the doubt in my eyes. So no, I'm not going to waste any more time reading your links unless I have a very good reason, and I also find it suspicious that all of your links are to publications with well-known political agendas. This is why I'm suggesting you find an article, one article, any article, that doesn't come from such a publication.

Your "other side" comment is an incorrect assumption, because I'm not on a side and have no political party. I'm what you might call an "independent".

>Hmm. Could it be that you're... overestimating?

As I said... wilfred social science...

Here's a nice visual graph that I like: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to...

Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it moves.

There has been analysis done by many groups which have confirmed where the political polarization derived heavily starting with gay rights. The republicans who had 'closeted' homosexuals moved left. Trump literally started a fight with russia and the middle east trying to benefit homosexuals. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-adm...

The republicans clearly moved left and it was the right thing to do. Whereas Truman != Obama. It's rather easy to objectively see both parties have moved left.

I feel like this is rather objective fact. The better discussion, why is this the case? Is it perhaps where the democrats have gone is the right place both parties eventually end up? Or are we about to watch 2nd civil war?

> As I said... wilfred social science...

I don't know what the point is supposed to be here.

> Here's a nice visual graph that I like: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to...

> Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it moves.

Ok. I downloaded the gif and went through it frame by frame. What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.

Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the last 8 years.

> What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.

Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of picking the best years for your viewpoint.

> Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the last 8 years.

Here's an update that includes 2015 and 2017: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...

It continues the same trend of median Republican barely moving while come 2017 median Democrat flies off even further left.

> Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of picking the best years for your viewpoint.

What do you think is my viewpoint?

During 1994-1997, both parties were moving left. And during 2012-2014 they were moving in opposite directions. I focused on the period of 1998-2011 because that seemed to be when there was the biggest difference in behavior between the 2 parties.

The claim of incomingpain was that "the democrats moved far left creating the polarization". But this is not supported by the given data. The parties were moving in lockstep prior to 1998, and the Democrats didn't move at all for many years after 1998.

It seems difficult to argue that the polarization was created in 2017, given the data from 1998-2011. Anyway, incomingpain, the one who made the claim, was also the one who linked to the pre-2015 data.

Here's the funny thing: incomingpain said "The republicans clearly moved left and it was the right thing to do." And Republicans did indeed move left 1994-2003... but then they moved back right starting in 2004. They moved right at the same time that Democrats were staying the same. So shouldn't incomingpain argue that backtracking was the wrong thing to do, if moving left was the right thing to do?

I do think that people are so busy being mad about the "Democrats have moved too far left" meme that they haven't really thought about it. The problem being the definition of "too far left". But yeah, I think they've moved to the left because human rights are important.

It would be interesting to go back to Women's suffrage because I'm sure people were having the same discussion. Liberals have moved left while Republicans have stayed where they are. But of course, moving to the left on equal rights for women is not liberals moving too far to the left. It's society course correcting. You don't get to say "Well liberals got women's rights so we get ____" But too many Republicans are saying the equivalent of that (hell some Republicans do https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/22/a... say exactly that.)

Human rights can't be a partisan consideration. It can't be something we compromise over. We just have to evolve as a society, get over it and instead have substantive conversations about the policies that move the needle in people's lives.

What are human rights? To have an abortion? To own a gun? To have a say in what your children are taught? To get money from the government? It all depends on who you ask. Calling something a "human right" is a rhetorical device used to make disagreeing with your political position immoral and even heretical rather than just plain old wrong.

Despite whatabouting away from the women example, some of those can be classified as human rights, and what we currently have on some of those topics you could call a "reasonable rational compromise", even if I personally disagree, but right now Republicans are planning some interesting totalitarian anti-women, anti-privacy type stuff to tackle abortion.

Sometimes your opponent actually is taking an actual anti-human rights position. It's pretty common.

The pro-choice side would say the by banning abortions you are infringing the right of a woman to choose when to have a child. The pro-life side would contend that by enabling abortions you are infringing the right to life of an unborn human. Both positions are framed in terms of human rights and plenty of "reasonable rational" people argue vigorously for each one while viewing those who disagree with them as basically evil.

Framing the debate in terms of individuals' rights is intended to remove the topic from the realm of political discussion and shut down dissent. It also completely drowns out discussion of the societal effects of allowing/banning abortion, which is just as important as the effect on individuals. The same unproductive dynamic plays out in the debate over e.g. the right to free speech.

I want to add that I believe the way forward in this debate (and others) is to acknowledge that both rights are valid but neither are unlimited. The best compromise is to be found by sounding out the limits of each right. That is a political debate, not a quasi-religious one, and one that should be rekindled from time to time to update the compromise to match contemporary circumstances. In this regard, for either side in the abortion debate to enshrine their preferred right in the constitution would be a disaster.

The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more government intervention and currently it means using and abusing small portions of society under the guise of human rights and social justice as a false pretense to expand government control. Liberals have also not 'moved left', the democratic party has abandoned liberals in lieu of progressives, socialists and other people who believe in a more involved government instead of individual liberties in order to garner more votes and retain their districts.

> The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more government intervention

Really? Does "legalize abortion" mean more government intervention? Does "abolish the police" mean more government intervention?

It was actually "replace the police with herds of social (government) workers" and the governments ability to allow people to kill unborn kids in order to lessen government burden by eliminating under privileged classes.

Well, that certainly is a massive dollop of contempt.

How dare the left want to replace armed officers executing black people in the streets with therapists and social workers!

I'm pretty sure the point of my comment was the opposite of "left equals human rights".

"I think they've moved to the left because human rights are important."

If that's the part of my comment you're latching onto, and you're not disagreeing with the notion that Repbulicans don't believe in women's rights, than we're in a much worse place than I thought.

Your entire statement was ridiculous and pompous, but the only thing worth replying to was your incorrect belief that the left represents human rights. So no, I'm not going to sit here and bicker about an ann coulter quote who is known for decades as being purposefully inflammatory for the sake of having people with your point of view bookmark and share her stupid statements in order to prove a point.

Anne Coulter aside, there is a core point here and that is that historically, we've gotten it wrong and I think most of us can agree that looking back we had it wrong. Yes, that Anne Coulter quite is ridiculous but was likely more representative of opinions around the time of Women's suffrage. Is it not possible that we can collectively figure out where we continue to get it wrong?

> Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it moves

This ignores massive societal shilf we've had - which is erosion of worker's rights.

The 'left' used to mean worker's rights, helping the poor, maybe socialism or welfare.

Now you have folks who see themselves as left because they suport trans right, but their solution to 'No parental leave in America' is 'more freee market'

And the left could have had it all. They could have built a coalition of common cause between trans rights and workers rights, with a common philosophical underpinning. Instead, they've shifted to look down on blue-collar workers as "a basket of deplorables".

Contempt for your constituency is not how you build a winning coalition.

> And the left could have had it all. They could have built a coalition of common cause between trans rights and workers rights, with a common philosophical underpinning. Instead, they've shifted to look down on blue-collar workers as "a basket of deplorables".

Is this actually "the left" though? The same people who came up with the insult "basket of deplorables" also came up with the insult "Bernie bros".

Seriously, if the left means Hillary Clinton and does not mean Bernie Sanders, then we might as well just throw all political labels in the trash.

Fair point, but... Is there any significant politician on the left, other than Bernie Sanders, who is actually pro-working-class at the moment?

If so, I haven't paid enough attention to politics to keep track of what's going on. But if not, then I think it's fair to say that the left as a whole abandoned the working class, with Bernie being the exception.

I think most elected politicians tend to betray their constituents.

Bernie has the "luxury" of living in one of the smallest states in the nation, Vermont. He can wage a ground game campaign and not worry about having to raise massive amounts of money for big market TV ads. This makes him less susceptible to corruption than other senators. Also he was never a Democrat in the first place but an independent who decided to run for the Democratic nomination, so he was never fully a part of the the party apparatus.

It's interesting to contrast with how Trump basically waltzed in and took over the Republican party, despite not having been a solid Republican himself in the past. I take this as a sign of how marginalized the left has been from the Democratic party. Sanders has taken over the spot of being the Democratic scapegoat for all their problems, a spot formerly held by Ralph Nader.

> 88 pages from 2021 involving Wilfred Laurier social sciences? You know what's more interesting...

So, I take it that you didn't read the article and dismissed it based on its length and source?

> There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the polarization.

Source please?

> You have star trek discovery a ultra top secret missions best of the best crew... but every character is LGBT.

Not even close to every character. There are quite a few romantic entanglements through the story: Burnham/Tyler, Voq/L'Rell, Burnham/Booker, Georgiou/Lorca, Lorca/Cornwell, Pike/Vina, Detmer/(unnamed), Airiam/Stephen, Sarek/Amanda, Burnham's parents, and, yes, one gay couple, Stamets/Culber. There are two trans characters, one bisexual character, and I count three gay characters. The cast list on Wikipedia lists 43 characters in total.

I think you might be misperceiving the opponent fringe here?

>I think you might be misperceiving the opponent fringe here?

Sorry, I wasn't clear, not 'all'. Clearly disproven by just 1 character if you're going evaluate all characters even if they were only on screen for 1 second.

> There are two trans characters, one bisexual character, and I count three gay characters. The cast list on Wikipedia lists 43 characters in total.

12 main characters and 6 lgbt?

Mind you, I LOVE the idea of trill being trans/non-binary. This makes a ton of sense.

What discovery failed at is exactly what is tearing the USA apart. I love they realized why it didnt work and are doing better.

Okay, that's a pretty big goalpost shift. In nearly 60 years of Star Trek, we've now got 4 seasons where some main characters aren't strictly cisgender and straight (but the majority of the couplings are still between straight, cisgender characters). In what regard did Discovery "fail"? As far as I understand, it's been pretty highly acclaimed.

> democrats moved far left

I have to wonder if you know what far left means outside of the US. Because even the furthest left of the Democratic party is barely left-leaning in Europe and most other democracies.

Very curious what objective measures you’re referring to. The downfall of leftish media itself kind of suggests the opposite: mainstream left-leaners are rejecting their more extremist media wings. Meanwhile the right is galvanizing around their most extreme.

All of this is a bit conjecturey too, so I ask again, what’s the objective measure you’re speaking of?

>Very curious what objective measures you’re referring to.

Take this one with pretty graphs. Political polarization in the usa has been ongoing for quite some time. Many groups have been recording it.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to...

>The downfall of leftish media itself kind of suggests the opposite: mainstream left-leaners are rejecting their more extremist media wings. Meanwhile the right is galvanizing around their most extreme.

I find it telling you see fox news as 'most extreme'.

To me, the polarization is objective. We need to evaluate to determine if perhaps that is the path. In 50 years from now we might be talking about how ridiculously conservative we all are back in those antiquated 2020s. What we would see is the far left doing really well. They did do pretty well while they pushed various disinformation campaigns.

The evaluation though is obviously the opposite. The polarization has derived largely because of echo chambers and identity politics. Those who are failing discovered this reality and have publicly admitted to this failure.

The USA is now sitting at the choice posed in strange new worlds. We dont need to keep fighting. We need to get back to talking to each other. This is the essence of why elon musk is buying twitter. End the censorship and get everyone talking again.

The linked source does not at all support the claim you're making. I do not say that Fox is the "most extreme," though it is certainly extreme. The growth of OAN, Breitbart, etc. is actually what I was referring to.

Yeah yeah, Musk will save the day. Got it.

> NYTimes realized their echo chamber and practically ordered their journalists to exit their echo chambers. Which upon doing so they somewhat returned to better journalistic standards, NYTimes suddenly showed some excellent legitimacy.

Details? I know they've gotten a few people who are outside the progressive orthodoxy and tend to poke holes in it to write opinion columns in the last few months.

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