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> He is anti-choice ... he would not implement a federal ban

As Americans have a lot of freedom to choose which state they live in, I don't see how this can possibly be described as "anti-choice". Being anti-choice would mean implementing a federal ban.

Abortion bans aren't about religious authority or "anti-individualism", even though most religions are against abortion. They exist because at some point the foetus transitions to become a person who themselves must have basic rights defended by the government and (possibly religious) morality. At that point the choice is by definition not an individual choice because it controls the baby's life, and the baby is an individual.

That's why it's totally normal for even very secular countries to have abortion bans in place after a certain number of weeks.

> This is Plato's Noble lie [3] and fundamentally anti-individualist.

You are misrepresenting his point very badly here and it feels deliberate. Ramaswamy isn't saying he opposes secularism. He isn't even passing opinion on the phenomenon in question. The statements you quoted are phrased as neutral observation. He's arguing that this outcome appears to be inevitable regardless of what he or anyone else personally wants.

The argument for inevitability is inevitably a lie. His opinion is engulfed in the notion that there exists no individual whose will is truly free as if given by God alone.

Hmm, I don't interpret it like that. He doesn't seem to be arguing that 100% of all people need religion. That's clearly not true and never has been. There were people pointing out the Bible was nonsense in the 1600s, and getting hung for it!

His point is that although we tell ourselves we live in a secular age now, there is a lot of surprisingly religious looking behavior re-appearing in supposedly non-religious contexts. He ponders why this is, and concludes that the widespread nature of religion in the past may not have been a mere phase of history but perhaps a basic need of most humans (but not all), and now the old religions are fading they're being replaced by new ones.

It's a viewpoint that's becoming more common, he certainly isn't the first to express this idea. And you don't need to be religious yourself to make the same observation.

> He is anti-choice for abortion. Generally this is seen as an anti-individualist stance as it favors institutional religious authority over individual choice. He favors state bans and says he would not implement a federal ban.

I am an agnostic, I subscribe to no religious authority, and I oppose abortion because it violates the child's individual freedom to experience life.

I recognize this argument exists, I do not agree with it, but it is logically sound. This is why I worded it as "Generally this is seen as ...", but I could have done a better job expressing that ambiguity. Not all anti-abortion arguments are anti-individualist but most are, almost all pro-choice arguments are based on individualism which is why it is phased as choice.

That all seems like a fair representation of his positions, but I don't agree with your analysis of them.

I do agree that individualism is important to liberty, but I can't connect your dots.

Wokism is collectivism, as you seem to recognize. But how is his message of being anti-woke also collectivism? I don't get that leap.

An issue here is that wokism is a term used as an insult by the antiwoke but not a term of self-description. So wokism is defined by the people against it and this leads to it being anything conservatives don't like as understood by conservatives.

Most of what the anti-woke hate about wokism, is wokisms argument that individuals should be allowed to define their own identity. For instance pronouns: antiwokism wants to have society at large decide what someone's pronouns are and are upset that people they describe as "woke" want to allow individuals to define their own gender identity. Or consider the case of gay marriage, the argument against it that you can't let individuals decide how to understand their own relationships or else it undermines the collective authority of society over individuals.

> For instance pronouns: antiwokism wants to have society at large decide what someone's pronouns are and are upset that people they describe as "woke" want to allow individuals to define their own gender identity.

That some people believe in the concept of 'gender identity' and define it for themselves is not a problem in itself. Essentially, this is covered under freedom of religion, a widely accepted human right.

The problem is that many of those who hold such beliefs want everyone else to use 'gender identity' in lieu of sex, and lobby for law and policy to be changed so this is enforced.

A man who declares himself to have a 'female gender identity' will typically want this declaration to grant him access to female-only spaces. Naturally, this is opposed by anyone who wants women's spaces to remain male-free.

As this has such widespread impact and is effectively a top-down reorganization of society that disadvantages women in favor of a subset of men, it's become a hot-button political issue for this reason, particularly amongst feminists.

> The problem is that many of those who hold such beliefs want everyone else to use 'gender identity' in lieu of sex, and lobby for law and policy to be changed so this is enforced.

You objection is that that individual is defining how the collective treats the individual. You would rather than individual must play by the rules of the collective.

> You would rather than individual must play by the rules of the collective.

The collective in this case is women, and the individuals are those men who desire to be women, or call themselves women. These men are attempting, for their own gratification, to undermine the well-established collective rights of women, particularly regarding female-only spaces.

So yes, I would much rather these men abide by the rules of the collective, and stop trying to impose themselves on women's spaces, and refrain from forcing everyone to accept their belief that they are women simply because they say they are.

By definition, identity is something that other people use to refer to you. You can invent all the personal identities you like if you just use them when referring to yourself. The moment what other people do comes into question then it's not about the individual anymore.

It is about respecting the individuals wishes.

Consider a more general case than gender, as the gender debate has been so poisoned by right wing attempts to turn it into a wedge issue it is difficult to discuss without a bigger discussion of sex, gender, society and biology.

Let's say someone's legal name is Robert. They deeply dislike the name Robert and prefer to be called Bob.

Should they legally be allowed to change their name to Bob? Is the authority of the label Robert on their birth certificate greater than the authority of an individual to name themselves?

Taking this out of the realm of law and into the more murky area of social dynamics. Lets say Bob asks people in their workplace to call them Bob, but everyone in their workplace calls Bob, Robert instead. In doing so they are not being respectful of an individual. While all groups are made of individuals, the question here is should the individual be able to determine the name they are called or should a collective group decide it for them? I would take Bob's side and say that his coworkers are being shitty.

There are some interesting cases here. Fighter pilots don't get to choose their call signs. Instead they are given by the other pilots and often refers to something they messed up. The authority of the call sign comes from group consensus not individual wishes.

Changing your name is a pretty involved legal process exactly because identity is so widely used by other people, so it generates a lot of work to alter it. And governments in some parts of the world regulate what names you can use, and may refuse to let you change your name if they have reasons for it.

I don't personally care much what people want to be called, and would of course be happy to call Robert Bob if that is what he wanted. But that's because I'm a reasonable person and that's a reasonable request. If Robert changed his mind every week about what he wanted to be called, people would stop respecting his wishes because he'd be placing an unreasonable burden on them by doing so. If he decided his new name was 56 characters long and impossible to spell, or some unpronounceable symbol, again, people might reject his wish because it would place an unreasonable burden on them.

Perhaps more apropos for Hacker News, many websites don't let you change your username because it's a primary key, or because that's how other users identify you, or for whatever other reasons. They may also ban things like emoji in name fields, or even in some incompetent cases not work if your name is Null. Are these violations of my human rights? Well, no, not really.

So whilst I don't wish to get into trans issues here, the claim that identity is a purely personal choice is clearly backwards. Your identity is how other people identify you, by definition, so it requires their consent to have a specific identity. You can ask them nicely but it's ultimately their choice.

> the claim that identity is a purely personal choice is clearly backwards. Your identity is how other people identify you, by definition, so it requires their consent to have a specific identity. You can ask them nicely but it's ultimately their choice.

Individualism doesn't make sense without groups. The last human on earth doesn't need individualism, individualism is only a helpful idea when both and group and an individual have a claim to something and the group can force its will on the individual.

Individualism is not about who is able makes the choice, as you point out with identity the group has always has ability to call Bob, Robert. Rather the question is should the large group do such a thing.

Why doesn't the larger group not simply enforce it's will on the smaller individual? Individualism , which is core to notions of gay rights and trans rights, answers that question with the statement that there is inherent value in respecting the choices of an individual especially when it comes to that individual's identity and self-expression.