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I am a liberal. I have always been left-of-centre. I believe in human rights and freedoms and civil liberties for all people worldwide regardless of any aspect of their identity, and freedoms of religion, expression, and assembly (within reason during a pandemic).
I believe that a society should be judged by the quality of life of its poorest citizen, not its wealthiest. I believe a single-payer universal healthcare system is the best system, in the legalization of all narcotics, and that people can identify and love however they want.
I am deeply concerned about the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, etc. are deeply concerning. And of course it goes without saying that the election of Trump is a catastrophe for which future generations will not soon forgive us.
Trump is a malignant narcissist, a stain on his office, and a threat to the security of the world. He is perhaps only matched in this by his ostensibly socialist counterpart Xi Jinping, and the genocide the CCP is conducting against the Uighur Muslims.
In the west, however, there is also a rising mainstream acceptance of illiberalism coming from the political left that I find very concerning. Although less of an immediate threat than the white supremacists of the right, this is still very dangerous. Here are some examples.
First off, embedded within the (necessary) recent BLM protests have been lots of misdirected violence. One would be this woman who was trying to defend the business below her home during the George Floyd protests: https://13wham.com/news/local/woman-attacked-outside-rochester-business
Many left wing celebrities and public figures have come out defending looting and rioting unilaterally despite examples like that. In the less extreme, people have been intimidated by crowds like the example in this thread: https://twitter.com/kunklefredrick/status/1298344285079838720?s=21
Then of course there was the guy who was kicked in the head in Portland:
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1295507855810928640?s=20
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/portland-protests-man-injured-head-kick-a9674096.html
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1295507855810928640?s=20
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/portland-protests-man-injured-head-kick-a9674096.html
Protestors also attempted to attack this truck driver: https://twitter.com/HikindDov/status/1280335392139550725?s=20
And some used the political climate to attempt to gain exposure by making seemingly false accusations of racism: http://www.edrants.com/when-is-a-karen-not-a-karen-the-cruelty-and-lies-of-karlos-dillard/
Prior to the recent protests, there was the violence perpetuated at college campuses, like when Allison Stanger was hospitalized for speaking with Charles Murray: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/04/protesters-at-middlebury-college-shout-down-speaker-attack-him-and-a-professor/
And obviously there were the riots at (very leftwing) Evergreen when Bret Weinstein refused to leave campus for the âDay of Absenceâ. Students patrolled the parking lot with baseball bats, and the College President was taken hostage by students:
Moreso than specific violent incidents, what concerns me is the emphasis on rooting out past misdeeds, and then acting putatively with no chance for redemption, which leads to completely innocent people losing their jobs or businesses: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/
And then ultimately comes back around on those trying to promote progressive ideas: https://twitter.com/buffsoldier_96/status/1278514040571146240?s=20
My primary argument would be that conversation is better than violence, and facts and reason have to be the arbiters of how we decide to organize ourselves, not outrage and ideology.
New dogmas are taking hold and new moral panics are making it impossible to resolve disagreements honestly. We must use reason and a scientific approach to determine what is true, what are our biggest problems, and what are the most effective solutions.
Left or right, we're more similar than we are different, and it's tribalism, reenforced by a need for belonging, amplified by our echo chambers of social media that tear us apart. We can speak to our enemies and succeed in changing them, as Deeyah Khan did
And we don't need to tell ourselves that we're all automatically racist, and that race is an insurmountable boundary between people. https://twitter.com/marwilliamson/status/1302822046695657472?s=20
I'll leave the final word on this to the last real President of the United States: https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1302622108485287936?s=20
