You can only achieve a fair and civil society through fairness and civility. That is what (most of) the democrats have been working on for the last 50 years.
It’s always tempting to think that you could “defeat” evil through violence, repression, suppression, and exclusion. Instead, you only become it.
edit: I really don’t mean to lecture here. I wrote this because I saw myself in the comment I replied to, and I needed to remind myself to be kind.
Everyone loves invoking the paradox of tolerance because it makes you sound smart and progressive.
Paradoxically, it’s most often used as an excuse to be intolerant of some group that you have arbitrarily branded as intolerant.
I hereby pronounce you intolerant, thereby according to the docterine of the paradox of tolerance you are forthwith stripped of your right to be tolerated.
As always, the problem is nuanced and you need to consider carefully the extent to which you’re willing to tolerate what level of intolerance under what circumstances.
You understand that every conservative would use all sorts of labels to describe you right? Trump would refer to you as “the radical left”. He would also say you’re intolerant of his followers.
It takes a complete lack of self awareness to think that no one would label you in the same way you label others. Well done.
The label isn’t arbitrary when you’ve earned it by how you act. You have decided to arbitrarily label your opponent here as “intolerable” based on no evidence. Conservatives at large have been labeled “intolerable” based on their abject refusal to support basic protections of human rights and safety, bad-faith arguments, bait and switching, lying directly to the faces of their constituents as well as to other lawmakers who require an assumption of trust in order to operate, and actively and frequently calling for violence and murder against non-violent members of the out-group.
Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa, and overstepping those bounds causes the social contract to be voided. When you void your own social contract then you are personally responsible for whatever happens outside of the protection of that contract. Don’t want to get punched in the face? It’s real easy then, don’t tell me that my sister deserves to be murdered. Like will be met with like.
Conservatives at large have been labeled “intolerable” based on their abject refusal to support basic protections of human rights and safety, bad-faith arguments, bait and switching, lying directly to the faces of their constituents as well as to other lawmakers who require an assumption of trust in order to operate, and actively and frequently calling for violence and murder against non-violent members of the out-group.
This sentence contains the problem discussed at length in the wikipedia article and addressed in my original comment.
You’ve made a sweeping generalisation about conservatives, by applying a range of very specific behaviors to an entire out-group in a categorical and binary way.
To really dumb it down, some conservatives might just be idiots, and not actually intolerant. You’re seeking to weild the paradox of intolerance against them.
Whether or not you’re an idiot has little bearing on whether or not you’re able to treat other human beings like human beings. The golden rule is taught to preschoolers and they pick it up just fine. If someone’s argument regarding being a bigoted liar is “I’m actually too stupid to understand what tolerance means”, I have zero sympathy for them. “Keep out of my business and I’ll keep out of yours” is a concept so simple that animals understand it. You’re god damn right I’m going to wield the paradox of tolerance against idiots, because regardless of whether or not you’re doing it out of spite or doing it out of stupidity, you’re breaking the social contract and you will reap the consequences of such. If you’re so abjectly stupid that you don’t know what human rights are or how to respect them, then you have a duty both as a citizen and as a human being to educate yourself, and failure to do so excuses nothing.
You seem genuinely oblivious to how intolerant you are.
As though you have a list of “social crimes” and when you, being the judge and jury, find someone guilty of being intolerant they’re green lit to be “untolerated”.
This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the paradox of tolerance is mostly used as justification for not tolerating people you personally deem to be intolerant.
I mean, our country was founded through a bunch of people getting really uncivil and violent. Sure, it still needed - and still needs - a lot of improvement to be fair for everyone who wasn’t part of the “in-group,” but the same could be said for most countries at the time ours was founded.
I certainly don’t believe that it’s necessary to be uncivil and violent to achieve a fair and civil society, but it has shown past success at ridding a country of leaders who don’t have the people’s best interests at heart.
The rest of Britain became democratic without violence. I’m not convinced that the revolution was necessary to throw off the oppressors. I think it was more about protecting the wealthy in the colonies.
Again, it’s not necessary, but it did work. I hope we can resolve the issues in our country democratically, but I’m mentally preparing myself for the violence that will inevitably follow if that doesn’t work. If our country falls to fascism, it’ll take a real fight to get it back.
Correct - every government eventually welcomes corruption that needs to be flushed out, and if it gets too strong of a hold on the country, it may need to be forced out. When the US was founded, it was prosperous for the wealthy and non-wealthy alike, and continued to be prosperous for a while. There were ups and downs, but it slowly got worse for the common citizen as the wealthy used their power to influence the country in their favor over time. It came to a head about 100 years ago, and we were able to get through it nonviolently back then.
It’s happening again now, and we might be able to pull through democratically again, but we might not. 100 years ago there was much more of a sense of solidarity against the rich and powerful, but now that we live in a world with a much better understanding of human emotion and motivation, a huge percentage of the country has been thoroughly convinced to fight for their own exploitation by the wealthy. Pair that with all of the war going on right now that we’re more aware of than ever given the technology that globally connects us, and we’re a lot more divided than we were back then.
I hope that we don’t need violence to solve our current political issues - democracy has certainly worked before - but it’s always been the backup plan when civility doesn’t get the job done.
You can only achieve a fair and civil society through fairness and civility. That is what (most of) the democrats have been working on for the last 50 years.
It’s always tempting to think that you could “defeat” evil through violence, repression, suppression, and exclusion. Instead, you only become it.
edit: I really don’t mean to lecture here. I wrote this because I saw myself in the comment I replied to, and I needed to remind myself to be kind.
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Everyone loves invoking the paradox of tolerance because it makes you sound smart and progressive.
Paradoxically, it’s most often used as an excuse to be intolerant of some group that you have arbitrarily branded as intolerant.
I hereby pronounce you intolerant, thereby according to the docterine of the paradox of tolerance you are forthwith stripped of your right to be tolerated.
As always, the problem is nuanced and you need to consider carefully the extent to which you’re willing to tolerate what level of intolerance under what circumstances.
This just isn’t a thing.
Of course it is.
That’s exactly how it’s being used here.
It’s just that you don’t want to tolerate the people this comment is targeting.
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Good job ignoring the part about arbitrary labels.
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You understand that every conservative would use all sorts of labels to describe you right? Trump would refer to you as “the radical left”. He would also say you’re intolerant of his followers.
It takes a complete lack of self awareness to think that no one would label you in the same way you label others. Well done.
The label isn’t arbitrary when you’ve earned it by how you act. You have decided to arbitrarily label your opponent here as “intolerable” based on no evidence. Conservatives at large have been labeled “intolerable” based on their abject refusal to support basic protections of human rights and safety, bad-faith arguments, bait and switching, lying directly to the faces of their constituents as well as to other lawmakers who require an assumption of trust in order to operate, and actively and frequently calling for violence and murder against non-violent members of the out-group.
Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa, and overstepping those bounds causes the social contract to be voided. When you void your own social contract then you are personally responsible for whatever happens outside of the protection of that contract. Don’t want to get punched in the face? It’s real easy then, don’t tell me that my sister deserves to be murdered. Like will be met with like.
This sentence contains the problem discussed at length in the wikipedia article and addressed in my original comment.
You’ve made a sweeping generalisation about conservatives, by applying a range of very specific behaviors to an entire out-group in a categorical and binary way.
To really dumb it down, some conservatives might just be idiots, and not actually intolerant. You’re seeking to weild the paradox of intolerance against them.
Whether or not you’re an idiot has little bearing on whether or not you’re able to treat other human beings like human beings. The golden rule is taught to preschoolers and they pick it up just fine. If someone’s argument regarding being a bigoted liar is “I’m actually too stupid to understand what tolerance means”, I have zero sympathy for them. “Keep out of my business and I’ll keep out of yours” is a concept so simple that animals understand it. You’re god damn right I’m going to wield the paradox of tolerance against idiots, because regardless of whether or not you’re doing it out of spite or doing it out of stupidity, you’re breaking the social contract and you will reap the consequences of such. If you’re so abjectly stupid that you don’t know what human rights are or how to respect them, then you have a duty both as a citizen and as a human being to educate yourself, and failure to do so excuses nothing.
You seem genuinely oblivious to how intolerant you are.
As though you have a list of “social crimes” and when you, being the judge and jury, find someone guilty of being intolerant they’re green lit to be “untolerated”.
This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the paradox of tolerance is mostly used as justification for not tolerating people you personally deem to be intolerant.
Nazis and proud boys often self-identify. And still enjoy the respect and understanding that centrists deny to anyone on their left.
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And some of you don’t overtly self-identify.
I mean, our country was founded through a bunch of people getting really uncivil and violent. Sure, it still needed - and still needs - a lot of improvement to be fair for everyone who wasn’t part of the “in-group,” but the same could be said for most countries at the time ours was founded.
I certainly don’t believe that it’s necessary to be uncivil and violent to achieve a fair and civil society, but it has shown past success at ridding a country of leaders who don’t have the people’s best interests at heart.
The rest of Britain became democratic without violence. I’m not convinced that the revolution was necessary to throw off the oppressors. I think it was more about protecting the wealthy in the colonies.
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Again, it’s not necessary, but it did work. I hope we can resolve the issues in our country democratically, but I’m mentally preparing myself for the violence that will inevitably follow if that doesn’t work. If our country falls to fascism, it’ll take a real fight to get it back.
I don’t agree that it worked. Regular folk in the US have a modicum of rights now, none of which can be attributed to the revolution.
Correct - every government eventually welcomes corruption that needs to be flushed out, and if it gets too strong of a hold on the country, it may need to be forced out. When the US was founded, it was prosperous for the wealthy and non-wealthy alike, and continued to be prosperous for a while. There were ups and downs, but it slowly got worse for the common citizen as the wealthy used their power to influence the country in their favor over time. It came to a head about 100 years ago, and we were able to get through it nonviolently back then.
It’s happening again now, and we might be able to pull through democratically again, but we might not. 100 years ago there was much more of a sense of solidarity against the rich and powerful, but now that we live in a world with a much better understanding of human emotion and motivation, a huge percentage of the country has been thoroughly convinced to fight for their own exploitation by the wealthy. Pair that with all of the war going on right now that we’re more aware of than ever given the technology that globally connects us, and we’re a lot more divided than we were back then.
I hope that we don’t need violence to solve our current political issues - democracy has certainly worked before - but it’s always been the backup plan when civility doesn’t get the job done.